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EU Approves Data Retention
submanifold writes "The EU have ratified rules that will force ISP's and other telecommunication companies to retain data for two years. This data includes the time, date and locations of both mobile and landline calls (as well as whether or not they were answered) along with logs of internet activity and email.
Apparently the content itself would not be accessible, merely the data concerning it. However, despite being touted as an anti-terrorist measure, the record industry has already admitted interest in aquiring such data."
Heh, I guess buying stocks in storage related companies would be a good idea now :)
Dvorak on Doomtech
Retain for two, retain forever.
Yet another ploy for the record industry to put fear into individuals. I hope one day the record industry burns and dies.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
There had better be some incentives for housing that kind data. For a busy ISP, that would mean GBs and GBs of data. Where's it going to be stored and who's going to pay for it?
not in the "Hardware" section, dammit !
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
I guess thats a good reason to start using encrypted proxies.
Free MacMini
...is to publish the surfing habits and email of their executives over the past two years. If they have things like Porn, Payola, and Prostitutes showing up in public view, and they might lobby for Privacy.
Seeing that many people have been harassed by the FBI and similar entitys just because they belong in a certain group (peace protestor, black, etc.), I really do not want the government to find out that I from time to time engage in peaceful marches agianst the man. As noted, the record industry wants to have a look at the data, and that is just another pen stroke to accomplish after the money has passed under the table.
Dvorak on Doomtech
ok, is that lord of the ring-ish? One thought, to fuck them all!
/. so little gain they shall have, our rantings and ravings to keep.
Data retention is no solution and as we all know, a terrorist is not on
This data retention will not bear much fruit in the war on tourism, it will merely halp an evil music industry make more enemies.
Make a diffrence and stop watching holywood garbage and quite listening to wacko jacko. The alternative movie and music circuit is far more creative and rewarding.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
My mail comes to me through SMTP directly. I am wondering how they will keep track of my incoming mail... The mail I send, however, goes through their SMTP proxy, which is a bit of a pain but necessary because most properly configured mail servers will reject anything incoming from a DSL IP.
;(
So how can they keep track of my gmail account? That is unless they log all the throughput of data coming in and out of my computer, of course. Now I see a legal and proper use of eDonkey: keep on downloading and uploading free software!!! That way they have LOADS of data to log.
With a bit of luck, the next DMCA will also make that illegal! What a relief for the ISPs.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
If the music industry is the biggest cause for concern here, we've got bigger problems than we think...
These are likely the same parties behind the push for UN control of ICANN's business.
If you think they're merely out for fair sharing, think again. I may hate the rights I've lost through Bush and Clinton's wars and social programs, but I see no real difference in Europe. In some ways I see fewer freedom and more tyranny.
Open WiFi access points make these rules useless.
FTA: "At the end of the day ISPs are not law enforcement agencies so they should not have to pay for it all"
Am I caught by this? It sounds like I am. Am I now expected to keep mail logs for two years and be legally liable if I don't? If so, I am almost certainly out of the business. Just not worth the risk to me.
Cheers,
Ian
Yet again politicians (and their advisers) demonstrate their complete lack of understanding in the field of IT. They obviously have no comprehension of the quantity of data that TelCos shift each day...
Now we should be able to round up all of the terrorists within a few minutes, and all will be well in the garden again. I am so lucky to be looked after by such wise leaders. Seriously, I bet you will be able to count the number of terrorists caught by this on the fingers of one foot.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
That's fine, and is their right.
It only becomes a problem when the authorities grant them access. They ask all they like, as long as they don't get it. If they do get it, then it's the authorities that should be blamed.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Having every aspect of my life recorded just scares the hell out of me. We have countried collecting Internet and phone usage. Many cities are putting cameras up to monitor your travel. All your purchases made via credit card are recorded. At work, your company probably monitors your email. Even companies like Tivo monitor your tv viewing habits. What else is left?? Governments/corporations will know damn near everything about you and what you do. I say to hell with this... I'm buying an island in the Pacific and starting my own country.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Of course the music industry is interested in that data. But that doesn't mean they can just obtain it like that. As long as this is kept an anti-terrorist measure, they have no foot to stand on.
Keep in mind that data will be kept for UP TO two years; most will opt for the minimum of half a year instead.
Everything is justified in the global war on TERRA....
When the President can call the Constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper" this kind of stuff should not surprise anyone. Its a brave new world full of chickenshit people.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
To maintain the status quo, with a secondary effect of protecting the working classes from excessive risk, and the primary effect of protecting the ruling classes from losing their position of power.
The most effective way of doing this is creating burdensome regulation which only larger businesses can afford, thus destroying entrepreneurialism, discouraging efficiency, etc.
The EU's role as socialist utopia is reaffirmed.
European individuals can gain exemptions from having their data retentioned if they sign a waiver giving away all rights to their first-born to the audio-video retail industry.
Those without children may instead put their signature at the bottom of a blank terrorist confession sheet and mail it to their local secret service. This will also automatically enter them into a free prize draw with many chances to win free flights to a European location of the CIA's choice.
--I for one welcome our new data-retentive overlords
In a recent Blog Entry titled "Orwellian Europe" I laid out a few numbers in GB and TB as well as why I'm almost all for this kind of data retention. But only with a little passus added to the law (see bottom line in the blog) :)
See my blog for my free opinions.
Surely Politics would be a better category? I know it isn't US politics I know at least 4 Europeans use this site other than me!
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I remember there was also a post here on /. about it. Terrorists are smart when it comes to IT! Their hard-disks are always heavily encrypted so forensics are very tough. Now they hope to have a look at logs so to find out who they called and mailed? What sites they looked at?
Just set up an SSL Proxy, a little bit of P2P and you've skipped around all controls. Or simply nick someones cell phone and use it until it get's cut off.
I can't help but think of how ISPs and Telcos will up their prices to cover for this needless logging.
As always, it's the good guys who lose.
Kneel down and worship my resplendant awsomeness, bicches!
pleeeeeeeease?!!!
Are there any countries left where one can still live comfortably and be fairly certain that everything you say and do isn't being monitored? Canada is the only one that comes to mind immediately, but I'm worried that if terrorists target it, then Canada will have its own nasty gutting of civil liberties.
Any suggestions?
An ISP is a relay in the internet - this should mean it can only effectively monitor unencrypted channels
If a P2P client can be set up to contact its peers using an HTTP port (TCP 80) and negotiate an encrypted direct data connection - either by an exchange of keys, a key based on say, a hash of the current date and time, or a web-accessible public/private key arrangement - then the ability of the ISP to monitor what passes between peers evaporates.
Comment from people with greater understanding of encryption would be welcome
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I run my own mail server. Will I be asked to log my own email usage? Or will my ISP simply be forced to snoop all the SMTP traffic I generate? And what if I start using TLS for SMTP connections? I really wonder (and dread) how this is going to be enforced.
I thought you guys in the US had it bad, but it looks like the EU is the current record holder in totalitarian tendencies.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
The UK opposes a lot of the good proposals of the EU (for instance, having completely free markets with respect to alcohol in Europe, so I would be able to order a crate of beer direct from Germany or a case of wine direct from Italy), and push through crap like this. And then the Brits all whine about the EU.
Not physically of course, but instead raise your voice! The 'Net is the best damn communication medium I think anyones ever seen - use it. Seriously Slashdot may not seem like it makes a difference but collectivly the ebb and flow of conversation influences people and if what you say is coherent enough maybe many people. Logging? Doesn't matter. What would really matter is if civil conversations became prohibited because that's what it would take to stop the most amazing tool of freedom ever invented.
Shh.
wouldn't that just be wonderful to get nailed for something you did 2 years ago.
-- lol pwned
Ok, here's how I see it. This law only records logs with ports and IPs, not all the actual data. Now let's assume the govt is corrupt and the recording industry or software industry or Hollywood studios, etc. get their hands on the logs. Even if they can get the IP numbers and whatnot and say that person X connected to person Y on the port normally associated with LimeWire, they still have to prove what you LimeWired (is it a verb yet?). I mean, they can prove X connected to a torrent, but not what X got off it or put in it. I mean, there are legitimate uses for filesharing, so how does this prove copyright infringment?
It seems nobody has said the obvious yet ...
Encrypt your private communications.
Use anonymous remailers.
If you actually get charged, they'll require you to give up your keys, but they won't be snooping at your E-mails behind your back.
pgp.com
gnupg.org
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
This should make archive.org's job easier...
Didja read the summary? Says right there that it's not the data, just the logs (which IP to which IP, which port, when, etc). Encrypt the traffic all you want to (and you should anyway!) but they can still guess what you're up to even if it's encrypted.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I'd have put this under YRO.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Any arguments from telcos who complain about the volumes of data are only using it so that they are not liable if someone arse deletes it.
Under UK privacy laws you have to delete the data identifying the particular person after you're done with the connection and the billing thereof.
Almost all transaction data is anonymised by a one way hash. Say md5sum. All the keys are done this way. Hashing removes the particular identification, and satisfies this. Almost always this hash uses more space than the original data anyways.
telcos use the hashed equivalents to evaluate aggregate data.
The law could ask for a tap and require you to retain those records anyway. These new laws just put into legislation what was already happening, and creating an offence for not doing it properly.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
According to this article the directive as it stands only allows access to data for the purposes of prosecuting certain, specified serious crimes which hopefylly won't include copyright infringement. This was part of the compromise agreed with the European Parliament. Of course, this may change with further legislation
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
You may think it, um, counterintuitive.
But the _reason_ they want these is to maintain social/political power over people. An elite with privileged access to all that information can control society. In a free society, either everyone should have the communications metadata, or no-one: It's unbalanced information availability that would give the police power to become the classic Big Brother. I'm a lot safer if everyone knows I have a particular embarassing sexual inclination or whatever than if only a small, powerful subset knows.
See David Brin's book "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force use to choose between privacy and freedom?"
Finally a new market for all of those "limited lifespan" drives IBM made a few years ago.
"ServStor" 36 GB drive! Guaranteed to die within 10 months!
Seriously though, how is the law going to deal with the inevitable but accidental data loss of that stuff? Criminal charges for obstructing justice just for being unlucky enough to choose equipment that turns out to be flakey?
There is no way to stop this now. We're on our way to an Orwellian state.
This is the fundamental step. From here on, it's let's add this crime, let's give access to that organisation, let's extend it to this data, let's save it for 100 years instead.
And when there's a war, the occupier will have the ultimate oppressive weapon pre-installed.
And what are you people babbling about? What protocols will be included, ways to obfuscate yourself, the costs of storing this data? There's a bigger picture, people!
Say what you will about the US, atleast they don't have a back door for legislation that would never get by a national parliament. Make room, I'm hopping the pond.
The recording industry has no business in data collected for anti-terrorism purposes.
Unless the recording industry is taking responsibility for issues that belong to the government.
But in this case the recording industry should have the same burden as governments: their leaders should be elected by the voters.
It seems like there are so many zombie computers, tunneling methods, insecure wireless access points, public terminals, cypto methods in a sea of trillions of packets of data/connections and ports that would render these logs useless for all but the most technophobe/idiot terrorist (which I'm guessing there are other more effective ways to nab this "low hanging fruit")
Anyone more familiar with the system know how it will help the "good guys" nab the "bad guys"? Seems like there would be a higher degree of success hanging out in a hay field and search for a needle.
Does this mean that the ISP customers are not allowed anymore ton run their own SMTP servers? All mail will have to go one way or the another through the ISP:s mail server?
--
Life is a sexually transmitted fatal disease.
Webhosting is not caught under this, since it only applies to providers of public telecommunications services and networks as defined by the New Regulatory Framework. You do not fall under the new regulatory framework, unless you do a public offering, route your own traffic (multi-homed) etc etc. You probably don't. Your ISP is not obliged to sniff through all the traffic to filter out who has e-mailed who using private e-mail adresses, since that is content to him and it would be lawful interception. It also doesn't oblige providers of corporations to save all the e-mail that goes to and from the corporation, nor does it oblige the corporation to retain all internal mail.
GMail/Hotmail/Yahoo? anybody willing to guess?
Counter-terrorism vs. privacy invasion? I doubt any government cares whether or not you're browsing porn all night. Seems to me they're increasing their workload too, but only if they're actively sifting. Seems to me they should just have a system of flags set up. Like they most likely already do.
Expect your high-speed and dial up rates to hike up if this goes through. Of course then there's the bells. They already keep a pretty decent record of your calling logs, so that wouldn't be that big of a deal.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
According to their own Press Service: Deal on EU data retention law; more comprehensive version in German: Ja zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung bis zu zwei Jahren - Keine Speicherung der Kommunikationsinhalte. Incidentally, even the latter "limitation" (allegedly no storage of the contents of communications) is void in particular with respect to URLs - these being identifiers for the contents transmitted anyway.
Loopholes aplenty have already triggered plans e.g. in Poland to extend the storage even further, to a staggering 15 years (!), and remaining safeguards (if any) are not expected to last: The media industry wants access to that data, too (and a further directive is in the works, cf. the EU Legislative Observatory).
This is just another example of how the United States is turning into a police state evil empire. This kind of big brother survialence state is just another example of the corruption and evil of American values!
Oh wait, it is the EU and not the US? In that case it is fine! Europeans governments would never abuse this power. How can you even question this policy?! Only someone who has something to hide would be worried about this.
Wow imagine all the spam people get and delete, now the EU will have to store that along with the "real" data.
I'm going to use Steganography and hide all my messages in porn-like e-mail, just read every second letter of each word.
"My erection really rips your xxx muff, alright sexy!"
Except they're working on the principle of guilt by association at least for the terrorist justifications. If you communicate with a known terrorist consciously or not it will rub off on you. That's why they're only recording times, ip's, and ports - for what they need they don't need to record the data.
Shh.
I originally parsed that as the "adult-video" industry, and remembered that in Old America, there was a law written (the Video Privacy Protection Act) that made it illegal for video rental chains to disclose customer viewing histories, almost immediately after Supreme Court Justice Nominee Robert Bork had his video rental records disclosed during his hearings.
His tastes in movies was pretty tame - mostly PG-rated movies, comedies, westerns, and spy flicks, but enough of our Rulers realized that if Bork's PG-rated habits were fair game in politics, their viewing habits could also become public record, and enough of them decided that they had enough to hide that they passed the Video Privacy Protection Act in short order.
Bottom line: If you want even a fig leaf of privacy rights back, some privacy activist is going to have get him or herself hired in the data retention department, and leak the surfing habits of some of the Rulers and their friends.
The tamer the stuff you leak, and the cleaner the record of the Ruler whose habits you leak, the better. (If you leak about the Ruler who happens to be into the goat/midget thing, the other 90% of them - who are into everything from moose necrophilia to squirrel-gerbiling - they'll simply turn on him and claim he was an isolated incident. But if you just casually leak that some guy looked up the directions to the nearest McDonald's, but then it looks like he changed his mind and went to Burger King later that afternoon, you'll put the fear of the electorate into all of 'em.)
All pirates murder, rape and steal indiscriminately.
Those who murder indiscriminately are terrorists.
Therefore :
All movie/music copiers are terrorists.
(For simplicity, I'll omit the formal symbolic logic and the labeling of each step with the logical rule used.)
It wasn't just that the data wasn't retained, the data was never even collected unless you requested it -- otherwise the only billing information that would be kept was a running counter.
Today, the supposedly-democratic countries want to use surveillance that would have given Gestapo and Stasi wet dreams; it's probably no coincidence that the prime ministers in the countries that have pushed the most (UK and Sweden) have been ones acting like power is a God-given right to them personally.
I just can't believe that we in the USA didn't institute this first. At least with our overpriced broadband connections our ISP's will already be able to afford all the necessary storage to keep this information FOREVER.
Just wait until that job interview where your future potential boss says "lets look into your surfing habits" to see if you fit the company's ethical model.
So much for the right to privacy.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Big Brother is watching you. I mean, can there be any denial over that? Good God! I hope this doesn't come to the US.
Use anonymous remailers.
I'm in two minds about those things. On the one hand, anonymity is very, very good; on the other hand, one of my users was getting harrassed by some jerk, and when I blocked his incoming emails, he took to using anonymous remailers instead. I ended up blocking the remailers he was using by blocking any address matching "mixmaster@*".
So, as a user, I love freely available anonymity; but as a sysadmin, I demand that people be accountable for what they want to say if they want to send mail to my users.
-Stephen
"Control can never be a means to any practical end... It can never be a means to anything but more control..."
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
others will be needed to storage enormous amounts of data.
We will need terabyte and petabyte optical disks.
check out technology using ferroelectric molecules having a density
of 200 terabits/cm2 and above.
Yeah, thank goodness my old Slashdot post's are not retained indefinately...
Especially the ones I don't want my wife to read....
Oh Hell... now I have to keep my wife off of Slashdot for at least the next 2 years...
*Wink* Really isn't that much of a problem...She just LOVES Slashdot! */Wink*
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"...and telecoms companies say they cannot afford to keep more information about their customers..." Records will be kept for up to two years under the new measures. Would it have to be stored physically? Because if a company restricts itself to storing the data digitally, it's a walk in the park by my understanding. Small buisnesses may have to higher one new tech to handle the database or extend the duties of an existing one (i.e. a pay raise; or not if they're stingy). Larger companies would obviously do the same, scaled to their size. The digital storage space necessary to store a few extra strings of data per call would be a drop in a bucket. Again, that's all if they can do it electronically.
Get Tor (http://tor.eff.org/ and this legislation has no effect. The only problem with ToR is that it slows your connection way down.
Any smart criminal should be using it already.
The question is, can timing attacks (and other things) be implemented if so much information about every connection is known? Of course, if you use ToR servers outside the EU, then they can't.
"Its a brave new world full of chickenshit people."
I would add
"... that make baseless allegations, and pawn them off as fact with absolutely NO credible evidence to support them"
I always wonder what's wrong with people like you that your standard of proof is so low.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
but at least we still get to vote in private! :)
Most ISPs that I know already block the SMTP port (so, no, for the most part, you cannot run your own MX).
Ok, assume the following scenario:
We catch a terrorist. I'm not talking about somebody we just think might maybe be a terrorist, I mean we yank him out from behind the wheel of the van bomb in the basement of the skyscraper, or the other passengers monkey-stomp him unconscious as he tries to break into the cockpit of the airplane.
We search his home, and find a computer. On it, we find an email from Ayman Al-Zawahiri, saying "Abdullah will email you the instructions for where to pick up the anthrax." We don't find a copy of the email from Abdullah, and Thunderbird is configured to always prompt him for his Earthlink IMAP password. When we ask him for his password, he says "your mother sews socks that smell". After we type that in, we find out that it's not actually his password, it's just an insult.
Are you saying that you don't think it would be a good thing if we could go ask Earthlink for a list of everybody that's emailed him in the last two years, and cross-reference that with emails received by other known terrorists? Maybe go talk to anybody with the address "abdullah1987@hotmail.com" who emailed him?
If what people are objecting to is a feared misuse of this information, then oversight and legal protections are a better answer than throwing the smoking baby out with the bathwater.
If you honestly think it's not safe for a private company to have this information sitting where a court-granted search warrant could retrieve it, then you probably need to be lobbying to replace your local landfill and garbage trucks with curbside incineration service, too; but don't imply, as the submitter did, that it's not an anti-terrorism effort just because it could also be misused.
This is akin to deciding that a school isn't being honest when they say they're buying new computers for educational purposes just because some kid says he's going to install Quake on one of them.
I have a very good broadband connection because of the work I do, but I am a BIG believer in sharing.... I piggyback a lot of open WAPS when I am out and about, and to return the karma, I share mine. I have a separate, public WAP, firewalled off of my home network by a linux box and Novel BorderManager. Any unrecognized MAC address is fed a DHCP config that will send all port 80 requests to my CGI that asks them to agree to my terms (i,e, no illegal stuff, under age porn, copyright violations, etc., and warns them that my usage is a higher priority, and they will be throttled when I am using the b/w) and when they agree, it adds their MAC addy to the table that allows them to get through the router. I even have the router congifured so they can do BT is they know how to follow the instructions on my consent page.
Since I've had this setup (almost 2 years)I've only banned 1 MAC because he was just a leach, 24 hours a day.
I don't keep logs more than a few days... so now I have to keep 2 years of logs? Not bloody likely. I don't even know who the users are.... just their MAC address (which of course can be spoofed).
Go to http://www.stoppaovervakningen.nu/ (stop the monitoring) and type in your name, after "Jag heter", a number of webpages that you have visited, telephone numbers after "telefonnummer" an optional comment in the big textbox and finally your e-mail address.
:)
When you click on the "Skicka"-button, the information will be sent to the Swedish minister of justice (the guy on the picture), so that he has access to the data immediatelly instead of having to look through the ISPs.
Now, the point with this protest is to make mr. Bodström realise how much data that is going to be stored. So, slashdot-people, you can do it.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
>Just set up an SSL Proxy, a little bit of P2P and you've skipped around all controls.
You know, it's a shame that it has come to this, but I think the time has come for complete encryption of data streams. I used to only encrypt things that were "important", but now I think it's important to encrypt everything.
How exactly does one go about setting up an SSL Proxy and this P2P stuff you are talking about?
I pay for commercial web spaces separate from my ISP. Can I set that up as an SSL proxy?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It is some weird hybrid that is partially elected and partially appointed and partially employed (like regular bureaucrats). The elections are A usually just a popularity poll for the local goverment of the country the voter is in B have low turnout C has a lot of issues and only one way to vote.
In many ways the american system (or at least I think in california) of combining an election with a referendum on several issues is to be preffered. I think you could for instance vote both for your leader and on such issues as medical joints.
Recently the EU members held a referendum on a new constitution and it was a disaster. Especially in my own country where it became blindly obvious that the politicians of all the big parties had no connect with the feelings on the street. The prime minister even suggested that those who voted against the constitition would cause the EU to collapse and start a new world war. Really.
It was of course rejected and so far politics has reacted to it in the usual dutch fashion, stick your head in the sand and hope the herd of stampeding elephants goes away.
So the elected part of the EU does not work, the appointed part is usually, well the tv show "Yes Minister" said it all, a way to get rid of local politicians in a nice way. EU is where you go off to when you are finished locally but can't just be kicked out your party.
The hired part works for two groups who got no-one they are accountable to and are typically foreigners on high salaries meaning they live in their own society totally detached from their own countrymen and the country they live in. The sort of enviroment that leads to statements like 'Let them eat cake' (on the subject of peasants not being able to afford bread).
It is not a lack of knowledge about IT, it is a culture where the entire elite is totally detached from the real world. Any normal person could have told you that the referendum on the constitution was going to go bad. Especially in holland where the introduction of the Euro has caused a lot of grief (general belief it caused an inflation and politicians responsible countering that A that people were imagining it and B they just didn't understand.) Then there is the subject that holland pays more per citizen to the EU then any other nation and finally the subject of allowing turkey to join.
But it was pushed through wich such arguments as we must just accept it and the citizen can't comprehend it anyway and we know best.
You americans may think you got it bad but the EU is a 100 times worse. Imagine a situation where New York payed less in federal taxes then California (england pays far far less then holland) but a new law is being pushed that gives NY a far bigger vote. Would that be accepted? Well in the EU it would be california/dutch politicans arguing in favor of it.
Total disconnect with the voter and the real world. Time for the revolution.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You can just "forget" the keys. People do forget passwords and such all the time. You can't turnover information that you don't have... (allthought in USA, CIA will fly you around the world to refresh your memory)
- They do not know how to use encryption
- They can't steal phone to make calls
- They can't hack into other peoples networks to access the internet
- They do not have any other forms communication
- They do not know how to setyp anonymizer on foreign soil.
Truly, they must be of very limited mental capabailities. But then again, if we assume that all terrorists are idiots to begin with, then why bother at all?All that this achieves a transparent citizen that is now open to all kinds of spy attacks from Record Industry and friends. And like the extensive camera system in London it will not help to catch a single terrorist.
5. Postal agencies retain sender information for all mail received at physical addresses (bulk mail excepted).
6. Wireless companies retain GPS location information for all customers.
and the grand finale,
7. Under the equivalent of the US PATRIOT Act's National Security Letter, the western "democracies" allow their equivalent of Total Information Awareness to gather *all* of the above information from all customers in order to search for patterns.
If you've been paying attention, you can bet #7 is happening in the US with some subset of data available from commercial entities.
I have worked for an offshoot of BT and been in england for a couple of times and worked together with brits for a long time and in general, I hate to say this, but you guys are tools.
I mean dutch people can be led by the nose like so many sheep but brits? Yuch.
The media in britain excells at creating moods and your politicians are very successfull in exploiting it. At the foundation lies the idea that britain is still of any importance. It isn't. It has no military power and it has no economic power.
Yet the media can perfectly exploit this sense of superiority and in general can perfectly install a hatred/fear of anything EU while blindly accepting any proposal the media makes you think is your own.
Yes Minister is a comedy show but the suggestion the britain joined the EU to split it up from within sure explains a lot.
It also says a lot about the EU that they have not simply kicked england out of the EU. Simple ban. No more england getting all kinds of cuts on its contributions while claiming every benefit it can.
Surely considering the hatred of the main land and the eu that would be best no?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
FTFA: The article states that only the following will be retained for the 2 years:
-data that can trace fixed or mobile telephone calls
-time and duration of calls
-location of the mobile phone being called
-details of connections made to the Internet
-details, but not the content, of internet e-mail and internet telephony services
Now, do I trust the government to not look at the contents? No. But IMHO most of the posts seem to be blowing this out of proportion. I mean, they are going to be bombarded with a ton of data. I doubt that it will be feasible to search this data for violations of any kind. Rather, I think the government (or record industry if they are given access) would first have to have some leads or a specific suspect before they could begin to poor through that data to "nail" someone for a "crime".
So, if you are not being a blatant idiot and sending all sorts of email or making phone calls about your terrorist activity or bragging about all your pirated music files, you are safe until you allow yourself to become a suspect. I doubt this will truly impact the majority of the people in terms of being "watched". I think there should be more outrage over what this will do in regards to ISP pricing. That's the real problem, IMO!
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
Any chance someone could give me some links to good encryption (but free) stuff please? I have Gaim encrpytion and I use Gmail for e-mail, so I'm really looking at firefox (and maybe thunderbird) encryption mainly. A torrent program would also be nice.
Basicly anything to make this as difficult as possible for them (as I'm opposed to it and refuse to let them monitor me without even trying to shut them off).
I like muppets.
I'm surprised no ones mentioned this already.
What if someone created a screensaver that continually accessed thousands of websites, IP addresses. Basically create as much junk data as possible to pollute their logs.
A similar technique was used to poison the databases of spammers who used web bots to harvest e-mail addresses.
Myself and most all of my friends, have already bought all the CD's we want..to replace the older forms we had (abums, tapes). And considering the dearth of really exciting new music put forth by the recording industry...there's really nothing out there compelling to buy.
The music industry engine, has, IMHO, basically killed off the ability of good and talented groups to come to the public, and grow...if it isn't an immediate quick buck from a good looking person, it ain't gonna happen. I'd dare say Pink Floyd coming up as a new band today, would have ever seen the light of day...nor the dark side of the moon.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Since they only specified that data must be stored and not how. An ISP could choose to store it in an extremely mathmatically intensive encrypted format. They would be able to truthly say it is stored and they would be able to provide it on request, however the time it would take to decrypt it would be extremely long. So they can say, "Sure you can have it, here it is.", Then 2 years later when they have finally decrypted it they can go about their merry way with it. They could also simply provide it in paper form, in say one line of a printed roll 20 miles long. They are not required to make it easy to find just to provide it. For that matter they could simply store it in any unindexed way. People hear data and the think database, but why do that. Since these people seem too stupid to comprehend how much data this is and what they would need to do to locate anything specfic let them find out. Sure here is the 1 Petabyte log for Tuesday have at it.
SO any online banking you do or online transactions will now be saved off by these idiots and then they will be able to look at it anytime they please. How the hell isn't this stuff illegal to do? WHere are all are freedoms going? It seems like we won't be able to do anything without being monitored....Damn I want my own island!!!!!!
And if they do leave it open, everybody tends to filter out mail from dynamic IPs - even if it uses SPF or similar mechanisms to identify itself is a legitimate domain mailer. Even though I'd like to send mail via my own SMTP server I end up relaying through an ISP just to get around these blocks...
This sounds to me more like accountability.
Sure you can go blow up whatever you want, but if you are caught, they can then start combing your internet logs and try to see who else is in your network, may have helped you, etc.
Hell, you might not know yourself who you have been in contact with, or who has helped you, the best kept secret is one that you don't even know yourself.
However with this, they can get one person, get his accounting logs, and then start looking at web forums. Start looking at odd little servers you conect to with ssh or ssl tunnels.
Then they can go get the ISP logs (assuming its in the right country) for that system.... hop hop hop. Between phone numbers and IP logs, chances are you slipped up somewhere.
Sure its alot of data for even one person, but lets face it, they can quickly come up with some filters to apply to the data. (oh well we can probably filter out traffic to www.slashdot.org or www.cnn.com...)
It could also be useful for proving conspiritorial connections between people that have been sepratly caught.
I am not saying that this is a good thing, mind you. Or even terribly effective. Just that it is accountability here that we are really talking about.
Its like sure you can get a job as an accountant at a big bank, and you can probably squeeze through a mighty big transaction into a bank account that you set up...
but when the accounting kicks in and starts following the money trail, you had best have skipped the country or be ready with an all new identity.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
If this is the case, what if there was some sort of bot that would simply go around the Internet visiting random sites. If everybody had this installed, then the noise ratio would be too high for accurate data retention, right? After all, you don't pay for the usage of bandwidth generally, you pay per month. Just use all the bandwidth you can on useless stuff. In the end, it will push the amount of storage the ISP's have to use and their bandwidth usage through the roof.
I hope the two years of data will be stored in Mork format, like Firefox's history.dat, cuz if so pretty much nobody could tell what you did in the last two years
You just got troll'd!
Our major telecoms providers have been doing this for years (and the required legislation was passed last February).
Then came World War Two. As the German Army overcame and occupied Allied countries, they immediately headed for the Post & Telecommunications (or Telegraph) offices. This was to sieze the call records maintained there. They then looked up call records for known Allied agents and sympathizers, Jews and other groups. They used these call records to discover who was talking to whom and went to investigate and/or arrest people who might also be agents/Jews/Etc., or collaborators. These people were then sent to prison, or worse.
After the war, Western European countries decided not to keep call records any longer and instead moved to a metered system. This prevented a reccurance of the bad situation they found themselves in while occupied.
Now these records have been reinstated, in a blatent case of not learning from earlier mistakes. It seems the phrase "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" has once again been demonstrated.
I'm a former resident of Germany and have been living in Canada for a couple of years now. I don't know if I should feel sad or fortunate and I can only imagine what kind of horrible implications this has. This course of action brings us a step closer to Orwellian dystopia.
Now that the shit has hit the fan and we are stepping backwards, the questions are:
- What legislation will be able to get passed on in the future?
- What kind of information will have to be stored in the future?
o Your financial transaction data?
o Your insurance data?
o Your academic career?
o Your social interaction patters?
o Your genealogy?
We're getting reamed up the butt and we ask if they want seconds. It's pathetic.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Can I interest you in some professional-quality archiving harware and media?
Laws like these are stupid, ill-conceived, ineffectual and pointless. They won't work. However, there will be thousands more jobs for government beurocrats and people like me will get rich (hopefully).
I'm getting old enough now just to smile and get on with things.
Stick Men
But hey, if it gives the enforcers^H^H^H^Hpolice what they want ....
ummm, where was I ... gives the police what they need to fight terrorism, then we have to give it to them don't we ?
OT but, does anybody have an ascii art picture of a middle finger salute ? I could use a new email .sig file.
It is estimated [german text] that the central german internet exchange DeCIX produces 639.000 CDs of Data per day!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I save all my email logs to /dev/null
/dev/null gets backed up every night.
Hard to believe, but I never seem to run out of space! And I know my data is safe because
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
Proposals have just been put out by our wonderful 'space cadet' goverment to require anyone carrying any cash over £1000 to be able to prove they came by it honestly and be subject to seizure if they cannot.
Now I honestly don't know which is worse, the UK or the US. I'm moving to Spain as soon as possible,as I'm reasonably well educated I'll probably be classified as an assset to the Uk and emigrating will be illegal soon. its turning into Germany in the 1930's
In other news a woman was arrested charged and convicted for reading out a list of the war dead in front of our parliment, Its getting really bad
And some of it's not even scheiss pr0n!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hmmm. At risk of sounding apocalyptic, consider a scenario where a country (e.g. the US) is massively in debt and has no chance of recouping that debt via its industrial output because its industries' main rivals in other nations can under-cut them price-wise.
If the government cannot raise revenue from its industries via corporation tax (because industry isn't making enough money) or from its citizens (because unemployment would lead to reductions in income tax and VAT), then its only way of raising money from corporations which operate above and outside national boundaries might be the sale of national resources such as information...
You've got to blind the cyclops or he'll eat you.
The only way you can be sure that this data won't be used improperly (either by the government using it inappropriately or by its falling into the wrong hands) is if it is never collected in the first place.
Perhaps it is time to start agitating for a right to anonymity?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
"expressed an interest"? I'll wager that they were at least partly responsible for this abomination appearing on the political agenda in the first place. Nice to know that our European friends have outdone us in the important up-and-coming new field of privacy invasion. For now ... I don't doubt that our own Imperious Leaders have something at least as interesting in the works this very minute.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Here we just have ECHELON record all our traffic for us. Very convenient! Thanks, NSA!
You do know what an anonymous remailer is, right?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Assuming a proper framework, one could simply block all unsigned messages and avoid the issue of spam, etc. entirely. The resulting signed messages would only be accepted from pre-approved senders, and the rest either entirely discarded or made available for later scrutiny when one is bored.
I must admit that most of this would be somewhat difficult for the average person, as of yet.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I would save the data to CDRs and toss them downstairs into the basement - unlabeled of course. If the police ever want the data, I'll just point them in the general direction...
Oh well, what the hell...
If you don't hand over your encryption keys (even if you don't remember or don't know/have them) you could be sent to jail for 2 years.
Nice little POLICE STATE that the World is turning into with Europe and the U.S. leading the way.
Although the EU approved such measures just now, it is already a law in a small country of Latvia, which is also a member of EU. Although with some difference. Latvian politics are not tech guru, so their version of the law states, that all data, including the data being sent and received, should be stored. Technically impossible, and if enforced, this law would lead to unexpected consequences in this tiny part of european internet.
:)
Personally, I think even storage of logs of all network activity (not only ports 25-110-80) will lead to necessity of huge investments, probably kicking off small providers out of business, raising the price of internet services.
Moreover, we will see some scandals caused by theft of such data, using it, selling etc.
I think this is a bad thing for european economy and will anger new members of EU even more, but there is a good side - things like anonymizers, personal proxies and encryptors will gain a commercial quality and support, and old good hacking scene will probably rise again. People will have to be more IT-educated, because going against the government is always interesting, thanks to Hollywood
Yeah, I know facts aren't as much fun as speculation and fear mongering but...
p age/019-3536-348-12-50-902-20051206IPR03225-14-12- 2005-2005--false/default_en.htm the press release
F =-//EP//TEXT+TA+20051214+ITEMS+DOC+XML+V0//EN&NAV= S&MODE=XML&LSTDOC=N&LEVEL=0&SAME_LEVEL=1
http://www.europarl.eu.int/news/expert/infopress_
Details:
- The directive covers traffic and location data generated by telephony, SMS and internet, but not the content of the information communicated.
- MEPs also establish that access to retained data should be limited to specific purpose and on a case by case basis (push system): each time, the authorities would need to request to the telecom company that the data related to a concrete suspect, instead of having granted access to the whole database.
- Spanish MEPs strongly supported the Council position to include the retention of unsuccessful calls, since the terrorist attacks in Madrid were prosecuted thanks to the investigation of specific lost calls from mobile phones.
(phone goes boom!)
http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?L=EN&PUBRE
Actual Text
By "connections" to the internet, Amendment 77 defines this clearly as:
(c) [...]
(2) Concerning Internet Access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony:
(a) The date and time of the log-in and log-off of the Internet Access service based on a certain time zone, together with the IP address, whether dynamic or static, allocated by the Internet Access Service provider to a communication, and the User ID of the subscriber or registered user.
(b) The date and time of the log-in and log-off of the Internet e-mail service or Internet telephony service based on a certain time zone.
(e)..
3) Concerning Internet Access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony:
(a) The calling telephone number for dial-up access;
(b) The digital subscriber line (DSL) or other end point of the originator of the communication.
With that information, if someone posts a message on a bulletin board, or sends an email, using the IP address would reliably backtrack to the person who controls the computer used. It seems that for the most part, this must already be possible, given how quickly recent virus/worm authors have been caught.
So basically, what this covers (for internet access) is retaining RADIUS logs, DHCP logs and SMTP logs - for *Public* communication systems.
The real substance of the bill is for cell phones and SMS messaging... the main complaint or concerns about cost are that some telcos currently do not log uncompleted calls on landlines, as they generate no billing record.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
1) Create a server somewhere outside the EU.
2) Create a proxy app so that my requests go to my server with the same address on each, but the content that is sent (and not recorded) contains the address that I want to retrieve from. My ISP simply then sees and records each request as going to myserver.com.
3) Server retrieves data, and passes it back to me as though coming from my server, but containing message information which my proxy can then translate back to my browser.
What's the point in only retrieving where requests go? It lacks any context. I could visit a chat room in another country and talk about anything at all, and it's going to add nothing.
Of course. But no matter what, it still has to go through an ISP. And it still has headers. If your ISP had logs, they could coincide the logs of you connecting to the anonymous mailer at the time the anonymous mail was sent.
"anonymous" means nothing when every packet is logged.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The UK already has a number of data collection/retention requirements. They were the primary state pushing for this to be required across the EU. And yes, you are right the EU has a number of privacy requirements, and to my mind they are in direct conflict with this new directive.
You encrypt your message to me.
You then add the 'to mike' header.
You then encrypt it to the second remailer.
You then add the 'to second remailer' header.
You then encrypt it to the first remailer.
You then send it to the first remailer.
The first remailer decrypts it, holds it for a random amount of time, then sends it along to the second remailer.
The second remailer decrypts it, holds it for a random amount of time, then sends it along to me.
I decrypt it and nobody is the wiser.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)