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34 ISPs Subpoenaed By U.S. Government
seanonymous writes "The Justice Department, in their continued effort to revive questionable legislation, has subpoenaed dozens of ISPs for files. Considering that ISPs generally host their users' mail, this seems like it could be a larger issue than their fight with Google over search queries. Some, like Verizon, even resisted the call for information." From the article: "Representatives for McAfee and Symantec confirmed that the companies had received and complied with the subpoenas. A spokeswoman at LookSmart did not immediately return a phone call. Many of the subpoenas asked for information related to products that can be used to filter out adult content for underage Internet users. Symantec's subpoena, dated June 29, asked for a wide range of information about the price and popularity of the Internet filtering products it sells and how the products are used by customers. " Information Week has a number of the documents involved, including the letter of objection from Verizon.
Any weaknesses it can find in commercially available Web filters will be crucial to the Justice Department's defense of the Child Online Protection Act.
You know, I look at that and wonder.. reminds me of MS, they can't solve a problem themselves so beat it out of someone else who might have the solution. Except this is the government, I'm afraid to see how far they'll go to do what they want... I'm not just being paranoid am I?
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
Orwell was only off by two decades. Makes you wonder if the government uses his book as a guide?
My, that was a yummy potato!
Can somebody please explain why it is that the DoJ is being allowed to write all these subpoenas anyway? I didn't think they had any legal right to do so.
Is this just a simple matter of the DoJ assuming that at least some of the corporations will decide it's faster to comply, than to argue for their privacy?
I was under the impression that for any seiziure of private property for investigation, there had to be a reasonable suspicion that there was a crime commited.
So now "not helping the government" is a crime in and of itself?
Not to use McAfee and Symantec products. "You don't have McAfee AntiSpam, you're not protected! Click here to give us money for a green status bar!"
Hmm.. I do think that this is getting a bit out of hand now. I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long ? After all, most resources are controlled by the government and they're capable of putting an enormous amount of pressure on said corporations.
I don't quite understand the US governments crusade against online porn and for child protection. Is it just a ploy to gain votes ? It's however scary to see such a breach of privacy, even if on a small scale. IMO, this could grow into things much bigger.
I work with online advertising (read that I have a couple of websites..), and I want to share something with my fellow slashdotters. Many of you must have heard of/seen Google Adsense. Well, MS's response to that, MSN Adcenter launched in Beta a few months ago and I've been working with that. One look inside that interface and it is shocking to see the kind of targetting they're capable of. If they can target so well, they obviously have an ENORMOUS amount of information on folks on the internet. Just an example of their penetration, you can choose to target to "Unmarried Men in the age group of 30-35 in the state of New York with incomes in the rage of $100,000". (We all know what those ads are ;)) I saw this and was like "WHAT ?! How the hell are they supposed to have so much information on a person who's just opened a website to see some stuff.."
Well, my point is that all this information that lies with MSN, Google, etc. CAN be accessed by the government, and as an individual worried about my privacy, this is alarming.
I think it's time we all scroogled. (and no, this is not a promotional post :))
I am all for stamping out child porn, it is sick and damaging. But like many others I do wonder if the action taken here and elsewhere is using this as a pretext for a wider intrusion on people's rights.
Even if the Government does not currently read everyone's mail the fact that ISPs store the email for a long time (forever?) means that eventually once all ISPs comply they will.
So don't send anything that you wouldn't be happy for the Government to read unless you use a web based account from a cybercafe terminal (where you can't be tied to an IP), and wear a disguise so you can't be ID'd from CCTV. Oh the paranoia.
Private information can be subpeonaed. The Internet didn't change that.
few people realize the porn industry built the internet, but I know better. I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the people who read this article/comment could list free porn as one of their top interests in the computer/internet in 90's.
if the government takes away that foundation, the internet may crumble.
Generally the objections to adult materials come from religious groups. So why aren't they funding authoring of good content filters? Tithing adds up to a lot of money. A few million from the Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, etc. would be enough to fund a quality programming group, which could then distribute filtering software for free. Add a few folks to monitor domains, and make judgements on the "adultness" of the content (something like an extended version of the TV ratings), and you would have a service lots of parents would love to have, church-going or not.
But perhaps the desire to control others runs too deep.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Why is the government so concerned about controlling children's access to porn latley? Have the children found a way to extract oil from internet porn?
Does anyone else find that the current trend by the government to collect any and all information they can to be a little spooky, the recent fuss about the NSA phone taps on US citizens sanctioned by the president, all these attempts to get information on peoples internet habits from search engines and ISP's. It is easy to say but think about the children, or think about the terrorists and any other sugar coating they decide to place on it, but the end result is the government is building a very large database of information on US citizens.
Seriously even if this online child protection act fails they still have all the information they are requesting, what is to stop this information being cross indexed with the phone tap information, and credit information and anything else they may be gathering end result a rather worrying profile of a large cross section of the US population.
I am usually not a paranoid person I don't subscribe to most conspiracy theories but this is a rather worrying invasion of personal privacy, at this rate bring in a few psychiatrists to review the files they are building on you and build a profile next thing you know you get a knock on the door from the feds arresting you because your physiological profile indicates a possible threat to the internal security of the US in the future, because of your worrying desire to take a vacation in Eygpt and since Eygpt is a mostly islamic nation you must be a terrorist.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Republicans stand for small, limited, noninvasive government. Personal freedom, corporate independence.
--
make install -not war
The fight for the Internet has just gone global. Looking to help China is great, fabulous, noble and all, but the time to focus on America is now. ISP's are clamoring for tiered networks, the government is looking to legislate censorship (it only starts with protecting the kids, soon it will be to protect EVERYONE,) and the entertainment industry is suing people left and right for sharing, which I'm sure will lead to regulation of P2P traffic.
The question is this, do we continue with this network as it is now, let the man direct the traffic and install his regulations, or do we the geeks of the world build a new Internet in the hopes of even one more day of geekish freedom?
-Buddy of DoQ
The first part of the summary is talking about ISP's getting subpoenaed, then it starts talking about McAfee and Symantec... something about filtering software.
Sheesh, that makes no sense.
Symantec's subpoena, dated June 29,
Sure.
um.... 34 ISP's... Big brother time.
;) )
I'm not sure Verizon is makine the best move here. Either way we *need* something like this to happen, make its way to court, and set a precident.
Right now, its still a game. We can get away with a lot of stuff simply because there is a whole lot of "stuff" going on. Whats one more downloader? Its usually been like failing to buckle your seat belt. In some states, it wont get you fined unless you're pulled over for something else.
If we know we'll get stomped for DLing, and that our ISP's have to give all data to the feds, then we'll probably stop dling.
I personally stopped roving for MP3's a while ago. Can't stand most of the shared music, and the quality sucks. Mp3's ripped at 128 simply suck. (My cd collection is ripped for my iPod at 256.
-=fshalor
It's, at best, overstating the case to claim that Verizon's response here is “resisting” anything. Most of their objections are pretty lame. They say, for instance, that the government should've sent the subpoena to Verizon Online Services, not to Verizon. They don't want the information to be given to their competitors. They say they might not know how many subscribers they have (how this is possible is beyond me). Beyond these objections and similar, they say how happy they would be to comply.
So, instead of forcing a domain, say .xxx, and then creating a single point portal that all web requests have to go through to reach the .xxx domain, they are spending millions and millions of tax payer dollars researching how to create unenforceable laws that limit our freedoms and hold people accountable when the should be held accountable.
So now "not helping the government" is a crime in and of itself?
Easy, "if you're not for us, you're against us"
This just in: Having solved all other problems, the US gov't has decided to waste our tax money and invade our privacy because apparently parents don't know how to be parents. Porn is out there. Parents must realize this and if they feel their children shouldn't see it, then don't let them! Put the PC in the living room or some other common area. Install a filter. I've never used one, but I'm sure they're not all bad. Why does the government have to get involved?
nothing
FTFA:
"The subpoenas are part of the government's defense of the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. The law makes it illegal to provide children with online content deemed harmful to them."
As easy as it is to change some words in the article, you should also be able to change the filter. Let's try it:
"The subpoenas are part of the government's defense of the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. The law makes it illegal to provide people with online content deemed harmful to the government."
Mod me a troll if you want, but I still think this issue is scary. I am all for protecting children, but not at the cost of my own freedom to access all the (legal) information I want to.
I'd of thought it'd be pretty easy these days to find an old box lying around and hosting your own mail server - has anyone tried this on a line with a dynamic IP?
On a sidenote: most of my CD collection is now converted in to FLAC and the CD's put away to stop them from being damaged. (I just wish I could do the same for my PS2, shame it is illegal here in the UK):
/. is good for you.
I noticed that one of the requested items was ALL of the URLs in Google's index and two month's worth of queries. No matter how this information is transferred (digital media, dead trees, FTP) it's going to be a lot of info and expensive. Is there any way for a company to reimburse these costs from the government?
Oh modern American parents are so busy that they cannot keep track of little johnny or susie. They can't watch the media they buy, they can't notice needle tracks, slutty/pimp cloths, etc. But wait, others claim that they can't regulate what their kids do and see when they go outside. Huh? When has that ever been the case? Heroin used to be sold at general stores alongside whiskey and military-grade firearms. Softcore porn has been around in America in small, but noticable numbers for over a hundred years. It's always been there, and then some, but never before have parents had so many self-enforcing controls like content filtering, V-Chips, etc.
Parents have **never** had control of what their kids are exposed to when they go to a neighbor's house. It's a basic fact of life. If parents did their jobs, instead of pursuing wealth for its own sake, their kids would have a very hard time getting porn. But how are they going to do that when both parents work because neither of them wants to give up their job for selfish reasons like self-fullfillment. Can't give up your uber-fullfilling job? Don't have kids. You can't "have it all," despite what the fucktard feminists and their male counterparts have claimed for decades. Being a parent is a fulltime job, not a babysitting job.
We don't need this damn law because kids only get access to porn when parents refuse to be parents. I can perfectly well understand a woman not giving up a job as an artist or scientist, but most of the girls I saw at college were headed for jobs like human resources. Anyone, regardless of gender, who won't give up a shitty ass job like that for their kids to keep them raised right is a selfish bastard who deserves to be sterilized.
My girlfriend's mom gave up a job as a realtime assembly and Ada programmer to homeschool her. My mom gave up her job as a GSA IG agent in the early 80s to be a stay at home mom, despite the fact that she'd be probably a GS14 or GS15 today knowing how good she was at her job. What's every other "fullfilled" office monkey's excuse for valuing their job more than their kids' mental, physical and spiritual health? I don't care how you have to do it, but the person who makes less and has less prospects for making money should give up their job and be a full time, stay at home parent. Either that or those who refuse to do it should just hand their kids over to the government to raise fulltime instead of the part time parenting known as public schooling.
First, this proves that the government's infamous "Carnivore" either does not exist or does not work. Which is nice.
Second, this proves that something is wrong with the government.
Porn is legal and good. The quality and quantity that you can get now is astounding, and most of it is served straight from the US in very high speed, and the companies comply with all laws, or at least as many if not more than other companies.
Porn is legal. Subpoenaing ISPs and snooping into our business is not legal.
I'm guessing that this is yet another attempt by the feds to get more control of its people they work for, and they are just disguising it as one of those "think of the children" things so that women and the like will say, "Well its for the greater good, right?"
If they really wanted to look for porn, subpoena CCBill, subpoena a porn website, subpoena credit card companies, or bank records. Oh, that might not slip under the "save the children radar" of the courts and the people. So, lets just look at ISP records for now, later....
It's sometimes better to ask for permission than it is to sue for it.
This is where we are headed.
Once this point is reached, does that mean all content providers lose their 'common carrier' status and are now liable?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why on Earth is a humble ISP supposed to provide the DOJ with this information, and how are they supposed to do it? And why doesn't the DOJ just research this themselves if this is such a big deal for them?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
The one thing that I really haven't seen anyone talk about with all these "requests" is that the government is (ab)using its power to gather information (and if you don't help them, you are breaking the law) in order to try to reinstate a law that has already been in place, but was found to be unconstitutional. Think about that for a minute - it's already been found unconstitutional.
Let's look at some other things that the the government might try to make constitutional:
- persecution based upon your religion
- slavery
- persecution for bearing arms
I know, it could sound farfetched, but if the government can prosecute you for not helping them overturn something that is already unconstitutional, what's stopping them from doing it for other things?
Do you honestly have to wonder if this is a "pretext for a wider intrusion on people's rights"? Of course it is! That's plainly obvious to anyone who looks at the situation, and also the other recent activities of the US government (both Democrats and Republicans). They're clearly not there to serve the best interests of the general American populace, let alone go so far as to protect the citizenry's privacy and enhance their ability to freely express themselves.
Sirs:
Due to the complex nature of the requested data and the security requried to gaurd such data, we must clear this information throught the board of directors and shareholders of this company. Also, due to the volume of data, we will take at least three years to collect such information. Please be advised that we intend to comply with the subpeona but your data will not be available until March 6, 2010.
We will keep you informed of the progress.
Sincerly,
Corpoerate Red Tape Caused By Government Beauracracy
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
... I am - very picky. My ISP (rsync.net, for offsite data storage) says front page, bold type:
"rsync.net does not store access logs or examine filesystem contents. No data or meta-data concerning the behavior of our customers or content of filesystems will be divulged to any law enforcement agency without order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction."
Of course I take it with a grain of salt, but then again I am running a remote encrypted filesystem on their storage, so they couldn't give the data up even _with_ a search warrant.
Go with clueful ISPs, or at least ones that are trying, and encrypt your data - otherwise you deserve whatever you get.
To stop this from happening, you have to lock the records up. Having this data open to the public, allowing scrutiny is important. As an example, look at the massive debates after the last census between the Dems and Repubs. The risk of an open records is that someone will use the data in a way you don't like.
Why the fuck does the government insist on spending it's god damn time fucking looking for porn....
Do they even PRETEND to actually care about the security of this country?
This sig intentionally left blank.
I'm a parent of a 6-year old girl. She's been using the Web since she was old enough to use a computer (3 years old? perhaps, 2+). Her mom has often asked me to install a content filter.
I have long since learned that to come up with a solution, you have to understand the problem first. So, I just watched my kid's online behavior trying to see what she can get to that I don't want her to see. The result? I still don't have any content filters installed to this day. Why? Porn is of no interest to her whatsoever. She goes to various kids' sites. If she wants to search for something, I taught her to use google instead of typing random words into the URL bar. As a result, it is very rarely (as in, once a year) that she gets to see an image of a nude person on the Web. Her reaction so far was to navigate away from such a web site. And if she shows any interest, I feel I would be able to explain to her what was going on. I mean, she doesn't believe in tooth fairies, and she figured that Mickey Mouse was a costume when she was 3, so why wouldn't she be able to figure out the rest of the real world?
Of course, I might be missing something, but then I'm wondering what that is?
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
Even better, implement some sort of on-demand filtering so my cable box censors it if I choose.
The ClearPlay DVD player will take a file from ClearPlay to use to skip objectionable portions. Both the MPAA and the Directors Guild of America sued ClearPlay. The MPAA claimed it created a derivative work, the DGA claimed it harmed the brand name of its member directors.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Change your email and /. sigs to include phrases like "Overthrow the Government" or "Terrorize the President."
A few million participants, and soon they would be awash in false alarms.
I think you made a lot of good points with your post. However, the value of your good ideas is squandered when you use hyperbole like advocating compulsory sterilization. Take more care to be a good communicator and you will be a more effective advocate for your ideas.
In an effort to reduce children's exposure to pornography, the U.S. Government today subpeonaed all existing forests and wooded areas. "It's commonly known that the second greatest, and before the internet the greatest risk for children's exposure to obscene materials stems from finding porn in the woods," said State Department representative Ms. Fascista McRedstate. "The fight against standing timber is the fight to save our children."
This space available.
about porn. this goes back a decade almost now. Why, there are many bigger problems on the internet, like dealing with the real criminals that hide behind a company and infect users with spyware and garbage. How about the spammers, they are criminals using botnets commiting fraud. That would make people happy to have them arrested, but no the govt has always been concerned about naked people. How about a law that says, "No one under 18 is allowed onthe internet." there no more problems with children getting porn online. that would be excellent.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
But how are they going to do that when both parents work because neither of them wants to give up their job for selfish reasons like self-fullfillment
let me guess... trust fund brat? must be nice living in a part of the world where a studio appartment doesn't consume an entire salary. however, you shouldn't assume that everyone else has it as easy as you. where i am (ny), it is difficult for many families to get by on 2 incomes - even if they have no children. once you throw the additional expense of kids in, things become even tighter. perhaps you should try living paycheck to paycheck on 2 incomes for a little while and see if your opinion changes. do you have a suggestion as to how one parent can stay-at-home when 2 full-time incomes are needed for housing/transport/food, costs keep increasing, and wage stays the same? on top of that, folks are supposed to somehow manage to save enough for retirement...
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Now what's really known as a radio cut,
When you can't say shit, and you can't say fuck?
I really think you want to hear it
But the radio stations, see, they still gonna fear it
Yo, I thought this country was based upon freedom of speech,
Freedom of press, freedom of your own religion
To make your own decisions - that's baloney,
'cos If I gotta play by your rules, I'm bein' phoney.
-Above the Law, Freedom of Speech
www.wavefront-av.com
All of the above points indicate a loss of control of our private information. You can always be supeonaed, but wouldn't you like to know when?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
" "And" and "or" shall be construed either disjunctively or conjunctively as necessary to bring within the scope of the request all responses that might otherwise be construed to be outside of its scope. "
So and can mean and or or, and or can mean or or and? (Or possibly and can mean and and or... no, let's not get crazy.)
Talk about a broad subpoena. If I were Comcast, my response would be, "It depends what your definition of is is, jerk. You owe me two hundred thousand dollars."
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Yeah, because it's so easy to raise a family on a single income. When you get back from planet "everyone makes over 100k a year" please call me and let me know. As for what reality actually is, a lot of parents both HAVE TO have jobs just to live day to day. Should they not have the chance to experience the wonders of being a parent too? The world is not black or white and calling parents that work "fucktards" is a little immature at best.
Also, depending on how you raise your children otherwise, I have this theory that porn may not impact their view on sexuality much at all. I mean, if kids at an early stage understand what porn is, as opposed to NOT telling them by hiding it and making it taboo to talk about, I think they'll have a much easier time to deal with it as well. If they understand only the people with a certain physique become porn stars, that it's about fantasies and not reality, etc, I doubt parents even *need* to care that much they never get hold of it, much less need any laws like this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Look, I'm not a conservative zealot, but I do have children, and I understand the purpose the government is trying to serve here.
Is no one annoyed that you can "accidentally" stumble onto porn while browsing the web, even if that's not what you're out to see (at the moment)? The internet is structureless, meaning there is no logical way to find what you are looking for. If my daughter searches for "chicks" meaning baby chickens, I seriously doubt the first 10 pages will have anything to do with barnyard fowl.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee even said his biggest regret was not inverting the domain structure so you would go to org.slashdot.yro so your intent and destination as you navigate the DNS tree made more sense. If XXX goes through you would have had to go to xxx.porn.www under that system and your result would hopefully better-suit your intent.
Any sysadmin that jumbles together a bunch of random nodes with no structure should be fired, so why do good system administration practices not apply to the structure of the internet itself?
Everybody says it's the parents that should monitor the children, but get real. My kids are exposed to Myspace all day in school, watch basic cable, play video games and interact with their peers. I'm with them every morning, evening and weekend. Filters for the internet, Vchips for TV's, game rating systems, etc, help parents keep tabs on what's going on, but seriously aside from the tech elite how many parents actually know of or how to use these things? Go say "proxy server" to your mother, and see what she thinks it is.
I think it should be a service offered by ISP's, maybe even for extra cost, but it should be a feature people are presented with when they sign up. No kids? Don't buy it. Larger ISP's already have this, and if I owned a smaller, localized ISP I would see an opportunity to provide a service and make more money.
The government has just cause to investigate what people consider harmful. Would you want them to pass legislation without investigating the issue? The unfortunate precedent of our time is that everyone considers everything an invasion of privacy. I don't care if they see anonymous records! We should be much more concerned with non-anonymous wiretaps then collection of anonymous internet usage statistics. What they see at ISP's is the real deal, that's what people are actually doing on the internet. You can't get that information by asking "Disney dads" to fill out a survey about his porn habits, you won't get any honest answers.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
I can perfectly well understand a woman not giving up a job as an artist or scientist, but most of the girls I saw at college were headed for jobs like human resources. Anyone, regardless of gender, who won't give up a shitty ass job like that for their kids to keep them raised right is a selfish bastard who deserves to be sterilized.
The problem is that, in modern America, most households need two full-time incomes to provide for two people, let alone any children. Perhaps in your silver-spoon world, people just work for a sense of fulfillment. Out here in the real world, people work to eat, put roofs over their heads, and things of that nature.
You said (subpoenas) sub-penis, heh! heh! sub pee 'n ass, heh! heh!
The way I see it there are a few possible outcomes to this. The government is trying to prove that there isn't sufficient software capable of helping parents keep their children away from porn. That is what they're looking for information to prove/disprove.
Beyond the repercussions of them wanting information from ISP's there is a greater question here and that is what will be the outcome? I work in the security and content control industry. I know what's out there, and I have seen how much a parent can lock down a PC , I have helped my friends do it so that they wouldn't have to worry as much about their 5 year old surfing. There are great tools, but it's like direct TV with an almost infinite number of channels, you can only control what you know to look out for.
Let's just say that they do find that there isn't good enough software out there and they decide to legislate the problem. I think this would be a bad idea, but what are they going to do?
a) Implement a national firewall/control system? As much of the traffic comes from inside the nation this would be virtually impossible to put into place.
b) Outlaw pornography on the internet? Hold on while I say HA! Watch how fast some less then identifiable lobbying groups representing certain multi BILLION dollar industries make sure that doesn't happen. Not to mention it would only be able to apply to US companies meaning just like many gambling sites they would move to overseas servers.
c) Some kind of government subsidy to software manufacturers to come up with a technology that can really work. Such as a free content filtering software with a government funded list of porn sites that it would block. (Imagine the job of being paid by the government to FIND PORN so that you could list it.. the mind boggles, but I bet it would pay well)
d) Pass some big wordy and much touted law which would say , much as many laws already do, that distributing porn to a minor is illegal and if we can prove you're doing it.. you're in BIG trouble mister!
I think D is the most likely outcome and what we have here are bureaucrats posturing on the need to look moral in order to win over soccer moms.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The Justice Department doesn't seem to have anything to do. All the real crime in the U.S. has been eliminated, so they're moving on to thought crimes. God knows what teenagers would do if they found out sex existed.
I, for one, welcome our aimless overlords.
It is very obvious if you start connecting the dots, that the Feds have no interest in actually filtering porn. They want to attack porn in general. They have passed more and more convuluted laws on what it takes to be legally compliant as a content provider. They pass draconian laws like COPA severely limiting access. Finally, they completely oppose the creation of .XXX domain, that would, (drum roll) MAKE FILTERS WORK!!!!
While I don't wholly disagree with your opinion, do you think your mother, who gave up her career for you, would be proud to hear you throwing vulgar stereotyping names towards vague groupings of people in an internet rant?
"fucktard feminists"?
You've either lived a very sheltered life, are very closed minded, or both. In upper-middle-class suburbia, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The kids are going to have shoes on their feet, food in their belly, and they'll get to college no matter what.
In lower income areas, however, many parents do give up their lives for their children, just not in the way you're looking for. Imagine: Both you and your spouse both work two "shitty ass jobs" and get 4 hours of sleep each night, and still get their kid to daycare, school, the doctor, etc. Many parents give up everything in an attempt to get their kids into college, and a good chance at a better life than they had. Isn't that the goal of all parents? Some don't start out with the financial stability that you enjoyed.
Calling for the sterilization of these people? Adolf, is that you?
Open your mind a little.
Know what's behind the censorship craze? Porn industry.
:)
I mean, look at it closer. It's never been easier to get free porn. Go wherever you want, no matter what your preference is, there is a way to get a hand on it. For free.
Now, of course the makers of "adult movies" don't enjoy that trend. First of all, unlike in music biz, the average porn consumer doesn't care who's fucking, as long as there's some fucking going on. Second, currently porn has to meet rather high expectations. Not necessarily in the acting department but you can't do a Debby does Houston and think anyone would pay for it, it has to be something "perverse".
Once all that internet porn is gone, you can even sell crappy porn, because it's the only remaining source of porn. At least for those who don't know the shadier corner of the 'net.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm an admin at an ISP... who's newsgroup servers were confiscated in 1998 (before I worked here) by a certain Attorney General, and set sort of a legal precident for ISPs. (The guy did it as a PR stunt, he was up for re-election. If you search google, you can find the story).
... ready, something conservative types should know about: BEING A PARENT. Wow, we *don't* need filters, and magic subpeonas and laws.
I've never understood the need for filters. Sure, there's "bad stuff" out there on the internet. And I have a teenager in the house. I *know* he goes to porn sites, and I don't care. I care when he gets viruses on his machine from those sites, that's about it. (Of course, he is a bit older).
Parents (and political types), here's the formula. Send your kid's machines' through a proxy. You can control where they go from there. You can see whatever site they go to, etc. Don't want them online when you're not around? Setup special policies. (Aka, on a router). Internet time is 6-10pm, etc. You can enforce this in the router. I'm not saying every parent has to be an admin, but I am saying every parent should know more about the Internet than their kids. Don't allow the federal government to enable you to be lazy.
This works! It works wonders! It's called
Why are we wasting our time finding difficult solutions to easy problems? Is our government really that dumb, beuracratic and full of red tape? Since when did the government become the parents of every kid in America? Is that what you're trying to accomplish here?
FLR
Here we go again. Wasn't it posted here in the last few days about the .XXX bieng shot down again?
.XXX and all porn related material had to be there, then you would not need consumers using products or apps to block this stuff.
Seems to me this is a redherring, if there were a
But let's let the government waste money and time to get whatever information they are seeking under the guise of "it's for the children".
I'm a parent myself, I have an 8 year old. My child has their own computer in their room, and it has net access. I also have a proxy server which limits the places that pc can do on the net and where it can go. It is currently setup to goto child related websites that I have browsed myself and verified the content. Why did I do this?
Because it is [b]MY[/b] responsability to raise my child and know what content they are seeing.
Big brother will be moving in soon enough, I want him to enjoy some sense of personal freedom before they are all stripped away.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Oh, shut the hell up. I manage to support my family (wife and three kids), make my car payments, mortgage, utilities, and afford to run a Linux cluster in my basement on significantly less than 100K a year (closer to half that). My wife stays at home with the kids, and does not bring income into the household. Everything I own I purchased with money I made, on my own. Nothing was handed to me, I don't have rich parents (neither does my wife), and no rich uncles have died recently and left me everything.
Stop whining, and grow up. You want something in this world, you have to work for it.
Everybody says it's the parents that should monitor the children, but get real. My kids are exposed to Myspace all day in school, watch basic cable, play video games and interact with their peers. I'm with them every morning, evening and weekend. Filters for the internet, Vchips for TV's, game rating systems, etc, help parents keep tabs on what's going on, but seriously aside from the tech elite how many parents actually know of or how to use these things?
News Flash... THE INTERNET IS NOT A SUITABLE PLACE FOR UNSUPERVISED CHILDREN. If parents are lazy and won't police their children's activities on the internet they get no sympathy from me. It is no different than allowing their children to wander around in a bookstore unattended and complaining about their children finding titles like "The Joy of Sex".
42.001%
It's getting a little high so the government needs to knock it down a tad bit.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's time to surf with Tor and stop buying software from American companies... you never know where your information will end up.
No. It's a ploy to distract us with a "Mom and apple pie" issue, so that we won't worry about what's really happening, and so that we'll grant powers that can be used for other purposes.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Saying the .xxx domain would make filters work is a specious argument. It would require global cooperation, and there is no possible enforcement that would make cooperation unnecessary.
Note that I don't oppose the domain, I just don't see any reason for it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Actually, the cost of things spiraling to the point they're only just supported by two incomes is a product of both partners working.
Back about 30 years ago (at the edge of my memory), things were affordable on one income, at a stretch. The 'Normal' way things worked was that partners got married, had kids, and one partner stayed at home to raise them (usually the female, but not always).
Over the last 30 years, more and more emphasis has been places on both partners working, so that you can afford more and better.
The result has been that more 'disposable' income has been available. This has meant that the competition for resources (housing etc) has increased to the point that only those with two incomes can afford to buy/rent in decent areas.
Now, it's practially mandated that both partners work. The 'Right to work' of both partners has become twisted to 'The necessity to work'.
From my point of view, I'd love to be able to support a 'home body' lass.. And worked my butt off to be in a position to do so, for quite some time.
More than one of my male friends would be quite happy being the home body in counterpoint to a female breadwinner (and some of them have done so, but money is incredibly tight for them, to the point they can rarely actually go out places with kids).
Basically, I think the "any partner can work" was a great move, but the "Both partners can work" was misguided and very short sighted.
Most bothersome to me is that the primary impact of legislation will probably be on free pornography. Companies that charge the user directly for porn will face some restrictions, less appealing front pages perhaps, who knows...but these companies are already dealing, for the most part, with people who are willing to subscribe to their service by providing credit card information, and probably an email address.
Sites that try to collect advertising revenue while hosting or linking to free porn, or whatever else they might be doing, will probably be required to implement age verification measures, which tend to use credit card information and the like. No one will trust the sites, or the companies to keep this information secure, and to use it responsibly, and through this mistrust, the only remaining "safe" option for online porn will be expensive, well known for-pay sites.
Or cold turkey.
in the motives for this; but simply, this is a major step the government is taking to control the internet; what you see, what you hear, what you think, it's all about who controls the information (Marty!) ;)
To clarify the confusion; this step is being pushed through to give the government key information that will help them undertand the psychology of the average internet user in effort to make moves towards influencing & controlling the information (like is done in every other popular media form). Unfortuantely, Google alone cannot stop this.
Where we fail is that we think it will be obvious like:
Gov. body: "American people, can we take control of the internet to further our own greed?"
Of course the American people would reply:
American people: "Hell no!"
But don't think for a minute, for a nano-second, that these manuevers will be overtly public & obvious and without spin. No, it will likely take the standard "scare you with something to fear, then offer a vague solution that favors Gov." form that we fall for again and again.
What makes me say this? How do i know?
Because it works and is exactly what i (and any clear thinking person) would do if they had such desire and the resources (our tax dollars at work); which i don't in either case... i tend to more lean towards those crazy "sharing is better than hoarding" & "truth reigns supreme" ideas... But we all know what bullshit those ideas are, right? right?
Let me break it down in a way that's easier for you to understand
1) I'm not a trust fund baby. My parents aren't rich, and my mom actually gets by on $30,000 a year in a rural area in Virginia.
2) I live in Northern Virginia on a single income in an area where rent is $1,205 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment, so spare me the bullshit about how I live in a cheap area.
Now that your ad hominem ammo has been taken from you, let's begin.
1) Fewer workers = more demand for labor. The smaller the labor pool, the better the wage. Middle and upper class women entering the workforce without any good reason has a depressing impact on wages, and there are plenty of them so the middle and upper class wages are depressed. The same, however, is true of all classes except in blue collar fields where women are a clear cut minority like auto repair, plumbing and electrical work.
2) Most American families have an average credit card debt of at least $10,000, many closing in on $20,000. Why? Because they like their fast food, movie rentals, etc. They don't live within their means because the modern American dream is a BMW, 50,000 square foot house that they'll never use and expensive clothing that is marked up 10,000% the cost of making it.
3) Taxes are high because many people could educate and take care of their kids themselves, but don't. The public schools are an abject, institutional failure. They have been for a while. There is no reason why the average parent, if they gave a shit about their kid's education, couldn't at least do the job themselves.
4) You are just being idiotic by attempting to divert the discussion from 2 parents to 1 parent arrangements. Nowhere in my post did I mention that single parents should stay at home because that would make them a welfare leech. Are you just being willfully obtuse or refusing to put your brain in gear, when it is clear that I am talking about parenting arrangements where the parents at a minimum live together?
This is why America has so many damn problems. You make a simple, direct point and sure enough, out of the wood work, comes someone who brings up blatant non sequitors...
... did the judicial branch of government become a research tool? Would it really be that tough for the Govt. to do a little research the old fashioned way? By asking people whether they feel the filtering software is doing its job? I'm sure they could have found at least some people who would have responded.
Yah, yah, I know. The odds of anyone actually cooperating with such a study would be slim to nil. But going to court? Consider what the Bush administration would be asking for if Kinsey were alive and working for the Feds.
I'm with the guy who posted the comment about doing the research before enacting a hare-brained law. When you're supposed to perform the tasks in the order A -> B -> C, the administration feels that they can do B -> A -> C with a little help from the courts. It's really quite disgusting.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Because they thought they had a slam-dunk. The goal was to "protect children". They knew there was porn on the Internet, and didn't particularly think that they had to prove that kids could find it.
Note that the quote above may be "FTFA", but the quote originated with the ACLU attorney. I hate to draw too fine a distinction there, but the ACLU is considered a pretty radically lefty organization, and of course they're opposed to all government limitations. I happen to agree with them; I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU myself and support them in their opposition to the law. But the quote is opinion, not fact, even if it comes from TFA.
Isn't the Justice Department supposed to enforce laws, not create them? This Execuitve Branch has assumed too much power.
While I know that you're trying to be all biting and sarcastic, you're more or less right regarding Christians. Part of scripture states that if a brother commits sin and we know of it, but we do not speak to help him mend his ways, we too are liable for his sin. I can't speak as to other religions though.
Regardless of the law everyone's agreed to live under.
*shrug* That's been an issue ever since Jesus did that line about "Give unto Caesar what is due Caesar. Give unto God what is due God" when asked whether taxes should be paid. I personally see this type of battle as more of a working within the law compared to, say, burning down the local Lion's Den to try to prevent the spread of pornography.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I've seen porn for most of my life (magazines found in school etc.) This was fairly hardcore stuff from the age of about 8 onwards. Today (aged 27) I look at porn every now and then.
I have a totally normal view of women and sex. I'm not into anythng weird or violent.
I think it's insulting to human intelligence to say porn will turn a child into a messed up rapist. It just doesn't work that way. If anything, I think shielding children from something as natural as nudity and sex will turn them into rapists.
Ask for general search terms. then they see that there are 2345 searches a "naked baby sex" or whatever.
They then have probable cause and can subpoena these search records for these searches and ask for indentifying info and take the second dip to trial
I googled "chicks" and not one porn related result was returned on the first page. Google's ads on the right border however was all about "dating" and meeting chicks.
MARCH 31--The Washington headquarters of NASA was raided this week as part of a kiddie porn probe targeting an executive with the space agency, The Smoking Gun has learned. On Wednesday morning, federal investigators seized a laptop computer, a hard drive, CDs, and other material from the office of James Robinson, ...
link to SmokingGun
So ya, this is a BIG problem and these people are sick.
You're right, no baby chicks on Google in the top 10. But no porn either. You're daughter is safe.
"I think it should be a service offered by ISP's, maybe even for extra cost, but it should be a feature people are presented with when they sign up."
Won't happen. Why not? Because if they offered the service and it failed as much as once (which it would) they would be sued.
Years ago I was invited to give a presentation to a number of Canadian MPs about this very issue. I encouraged them to allow the market to deliver solutions to the problem and their role should be one of education. Let people know of the dangers, but don't restrict their personal freedoms (including the freedom to raise their children how they see fit).
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Not everybody sees this round of subpoenas as a privacy threat in itself:
"Unlike the Google case, the subpoenas revealed Thursday do not appear overly broad, said Aden Fine, an ACLU staff attorney."
We should stay alert because the sky is indeed truly falling, but this little chunk of it may not be dangerous enough to call for mobilization.
So now the gov't can haul you into court over proposed legislation? Quite a precedence being set here. Of course next they'll want to see your phone records to check out the 1-900 sex lines you've been dialing. And that nice new "convenient" RS-DVR? And what web based apps are you using, eh? Why do you people hate your freedom? so much? Or more correctly, why do you hate other peoples' freedoms? Well, all I can say to you Mr. Government is: "Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits"!
What?
Holy shit, there is porn on the internet! Who the hell cares. Why the hell is my government so damn concerned about porn? It's like they're...obsessed. You'd think they'd care more about important issues like, say, border security and immigration, massive deficits, a grueling guerrilla war that's draining the country, the massive health care problem in the country. For the love of god, please knock it the fuck off with the porn obsession already.
If you don't like porn, nobody is FORCING you to view it on the internet. Just stay away from it. This a non-issue.
What's next, the thought police coming to for us because we are thinking thoughts that don't conform to state morality?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This isn't about markets, or protecting children. Its not even about porn.. Its all about control of the population. Plain and simple.
Anything else is an excuse to get people accepting of it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's called the first amendment. We well not stand by and let the government violate our rights. We will not let it happen. Repeal the patriot Act and withdraw from Iraq immediately! grrr.
Try finding gobs of essoteric tuba/euphonium/trombone music and big brassy russian classical music, also ripped in at good bit rates.... It was a waste of time for me.
:( There should be an exclusion clause or some thing that states that if you loose a piece of IP that you purchase, the company who made the IP is responsible to replace it or be sued for breach of contract. If there was any justice in the world that is...
Fortunatly, my collection is to the point where I'm happy with it. I *still* hear new things occasionally when I random play my iPod. I also have a lot of tracks on it that I've played in. 4 hour long concerts a year for seven years is a lot of music!
The PS2 backup thing sucks.
Since they wont let you legeally make a copy for backup purposes, then they should be responsible for ensuring that you have perpetual and uninterupted access to the information. Arg....
(PS: I'm about to add a "pedantic pirate" clause to my sig...)
-=fshalor
The government has just cause to investigate what people consider harmful.
NO. the government has just cause to investigate a crime. Do you think its harmful to not wash your hands after you take a crap? Better get the government on that. We better legislate that.
In this case, the government is attempting to get broad sweeping, but detailed information about what EVERYONE is doing on the internet in an attempt to uphold its own unconstitutional law. What will they do with this information? throw it away when they're done with it? nope.
Would you want them to pass legislation without investigating the issue?
But that's exactly what they did! They passed legislation and then waited for the courts to settle it out. So now they're trying to cover their asses by getting as much info as possible in hopes of finding something to support their actions. its all rubbish. they're reaching and YOU will pay for it one day when they come arrest you because you accidently surfed to a porn site. or worse, you didn't delete your spam and they found porn sites advertised in it. Or how about when they click track everything you do and they discover that you clicked on one of those pron-emails and went to the site cause you weren't thinking? Gee too bad. go to jail. [/rant]
man, I feel like mold.
It really doesn't. This is all about the november 2006 elections. (you did hear about them, right?)
Look at Bush's approval rating. What if the voters decide to take it out on congress? Leave the president stranded in Iraq?? We haven't even invaded Iran yet for fucks sake!
So all of a sudden our precious innocent children are ingesting copious amounts of that terrible porn. And who better than Washington to take care of that problem for us? It's really a pity they have to trample over privacy to do it, but in a post 9-11 world, you just have to make some sacrifices.
Expect to hear more about this in the months to come.
Amen. The problem is, people don't think about kids any more. It's just assumed you should have kids. Why? Who the fuck knows. We have plenty of people on earth, and vast quantities of orphans needing homes. Children are more like accessories or dress-up-dolls. Gee, is it tough to raise your child? TOUGH SHIT. Why should I, a single tax payer, have to subsidize not only your child's education, but their upbringing. It's not as if anybody FORCED you to have a child. It was a CHOICE you made, fully aware of the dangers of this world, including wars, poverty, homelessness, mental and physical abuse of all sorts. You committed to bringing another living being here, so YOU are responsible. We might as well have a Defense Of Everything Act, where every citizen can be safe of all hazard through complete surrender of their rights.
(I'd like to note that from the tone and characterization of feminism that the parent poster appears to be right of center. I'm left of center and associate myself with "feminism" which is really just "humanism", and nevertheless I believe I am in wholehearted agreement and I don't think there is any conflict here. In fact, I think it is necessary and just for the parents (women and men) to be responsible (and to be allowed that responsibility) for deciding whether they are going to have children or not. Children don't just fall out of the sky one day.)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I've been using commercial ISPs for at least eight years now (since my free school-provided dialup went away), and I have never used any of my ISP's mail services. Heck, with the last two, I never even bothered to activate my email account with them. I don't want their fluff, I don't want their "added services", I just want their pipe. So now I see that was a good decision :)
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
And this is why all personal hosting should be on your own personal machine. Your email, your website, etc. Sure, hire someone else to maintain it for you if you want, but you need to own the hardware, the software, and the data. Which brings me to an interesting thought. Who owns email on someone else's server? Can the government subpoena my email from someone else or do they need to subpoena it from me?
Regardless, I host my own email, webpages, etc. I control my personal data. No-one else.
I do security
Frontline ran a show early in the Bush administration on how the DOJ under Ashcroft was gearing up to go after porn. (I don't have time to search the PBS site for you -- but I'm sure it's there.) Then the Admin got sidetracked by more sensational and politically useful (for a while) wars -- War on Terror, War in Iraq, etc. Now that that's under control (wink), they can get back to basics here on the homefront for their base.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
So, we are "free-ing" a couple OTHER countries from their dictatorships but heading ourselves down the path to dictatorship... NICE!
At least there is "balance" in the world.
They are trying to find evidence to support their position, when they should be examining the evidence to determine if the law is warranted in the first place!
No one should be frightened about what the government may discover if this subpoena succeeds or is enforced. Why not? Because it is all a sham. The data won't be seriously looked at for what it is and what it tells about the situation. The Bush administration, as it always does, has already decided what it wants to do. Now it is just fabricating the lies it needs to be persuasive. No matter what it recieves, it will twist it to fit into a false justification, when the real justification is "we hate pornography". Or more truthfully "our meal ticket hates pornography and we must appease our god. Or their God, or whatever. Shut up. We're at war."
Which is the way it has always done things.
34 -companies-. Not ISPs.
From the informationweek story:
"The full list of companies subpoenaed by the Department of Justice includes: 711Net (Mayberry USA), American Family Online, AOL, AT&T, Authentium, BellSouth, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable Company, Computer Associates, ContentWatch, Cox Communications, EarthLink, Google, Internet4Families, LookSmart, McAfee, MSN, Qwest, RuleSpace, S4F (Advance Internet Management), SafeBrowse, SBC Communications, Secure Computing Corp., Security Software Systems, SoftForYou, Solid Oak Software, SurfControl, Symantec, Time Warner, Tucows (Mayberry USA), United Online, Verizon, and Yahoo.."
Quite a few of those are not ISPs.
Wow. Um.
You certainly are holier-than-thou and more than a little uptight. I think you are making a fairly gross assumption - that it is better for kids (how, exactly?) to have one parent at home than two parents working. I'm not sure I buy that. I'm sure we can throw togeter all kinds of anecdotal evidence about bad things that have happened in working-parent households, but I'm sure I can come up with an equal number of anecdotes about how two parents working meant better schools, affording college, better food,...
So, put up or shut up. You cast dispersions on families where both parents work. Why is it better for one parent to be at home? Seriously. Concrete reasons. Then back it up with some science, not some Focus on the Family pap.
Personally, I think that circumstances vary widely. I know, for example, that my kid can't handle some things that other kids his age can, but in other things he is light years ahead. I tailor my parenting to my child, because I know him best, and what he can handle. I would never presume to tell someone else that they are parenting poorly, because I *don't* know their kids, and what they can handle. I believe that the vast majority of parents love their children, and try to do what is best for them. Therefore, I have to trust that they know what they are doing, and give them the benefit of the doubt. This is because I realize that there are more special situations out there than stars in the sky, and if I try to paint everyone with the same brush, I end up looking like - well, a fucktard.
Your misogynistic tendencies aside, I believe that you are speaking from the heart, and you are concerned about other people's kids. You just don't have any problem marginalizing anyone who disagrees with you. This is really the heart of the difference between liberal and conservative - conservatives are always right, and liberals believe there is more than one way to look at it.
My only consolation is that in the end, conservatives always lose. If they didn't, we'd still be living in caves.
Wasnt too long ago that they had tv ads saying "Buying and smoking weed helps finance terorism" Chirst that is a lot of pro terrorist activities spakred up every days here is Canada.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Back in 1997/98 I wrote dozens of letters to the government and to the controlling entities of the TLDs... .XXX or .SEX TLD.
My idea was to create a TLD called ".XXX" or ".SEX".
At the time I worked at Microsoft, testing the Operating Systems. One of my tasks was to verify the IE Filtering worked. It was one of the only times a person could surf porn at work, and not get fired.
In my testing, I found that the filtering worked less than 10% of the time. So my reasoning in writing the letters was that these TLDs would allow porn manufacturers and distributors to freely "do their thing", while allowing simple filtering programs to block any
Now, my idea is stuck. The keep brining it up for consideration, and they keep smacking it down.
I think I know what is happening...our Government is so HOT to have an enemy that they will do anything to find one. Not terrorists, not Iraqis, not even Big Business can provide as many enemies as the American People.
This is why they keep casting their nets...they want to find email, web sites, search results, anything to have an enemy to go after.
This "problem" could have been resolved 10 years ago, yet it is still "stuck" in debate. It isn't about solving the problem, it is about fighting an enemy.
--E--
This is a little OT, but why would those people be interested in giving their money to such a cause?
There is nothing in the Christian bible which says it is wrong to look at naked people. There isn't even anything in it that says you can't have sex before marriage. What it does say that if you are married, you shouldn't go sleeping around with other people. But then their bible condones people having 1,000 sex partners, so even that is a toss-up.
The whole bit about making sure only couples married within a religious institution can have sex is a form of church-instituted eugenics. It is relatively modern concept in the grand scheme of things. They want only people with “faith” to have kids. The Catholics even have a more proactive breeding program where they forbid couples to not have as many children as possible.
Anyway, the people caught up in these messy schemes have no personal interest in preventing human beings from engaging in human sexuality (oh noes). So they should keep their tithes. It is the orgaizations that have suckered them in that want this crap because it ensures more income from future generations.
Join Tor today!
Speak all you want. But when I ask you to shut up and stop bothering me, because I do not share your sense of what is sin and what isn't, have the decency to shut up. In the US, I used to think that the 1st Amendment to the Constitution gave me the right to not believe I had an everlasting soul I was endangering by looking at pictures of naked women.
"The right to wave your fist ends at my face." I agree that one can't forcibly restrain you from viewing porn. In general, what happens is that it's a matter of impact on the community. The community has every right to decide that there oughtn't to be an adult book store in the area and deal with it legally. It's a matter of protecting you and yours. In the same manner, you have a right to protest such actions and assemble your own group. These are the legal rights we're given in regard to freedom of speech and they've been discussed in numerous court cases. Personally, so long as these sites don't target people who aren't looking for what they're selling, I generally don't have a problem with internet porn. I don't force my beliefs on others although I'll speak freely. However, I do agree that they shouldn't be using fraudulent means such that someone looking for information on My Little Pony winds up with beastiality sites. I also feel people have the right to protest things like adult book stores because they have an impact on the community. As for the rest, I'll speak my piece and leave you to decide your own conscience.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
"Real median household income remained unchanged between 2002 and 2003 at $43,318." (source)
That includes a whole lot of two-worker households. Unfortunately, not everyone is privileged enough to support their family on a single person's salary.
Unfortunately, most parents can't be there all the time for their children. I think it would be great to stay at home with my children, but the chances of my wife supporting both of us in the near future are slim to none.
On the other hand, I agree the parents need to be responsible for what their kids do on the Internet. If you don't understand how to set up filtering software, and you don't want them to see porn, take away the computer. Problem solved.
An even better solution: talk to them about sex and sexuality.
How do I get PGP working on my Mac Mail program again?
After all, if God is making policy through Bush, then the principles of open government mean that we have a right to see what the deliberative process was between the deity and the commander-in-chief.
I wonder what people would think if Bush went in front of the nation and said he was talking to Zeus, Mithras, or the channeled spirit of William the Conqueror?
Maybe then people would realize that talking to your imaginary friends to make national policy and significant decisions is completely insane.
No matter how this information is transferred (digital media, dead trees, FTP) it's going to be a lot of info and expensive.
Too bad you can't print them out and ship them in a couple (dozen) trucks.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"Why is the government so concerned about controlling children's access to porn latley? Have the children found a way to extract oil from internet porn?"
LOL. You made an excellent point. This whole child pornography fiasco is just a facade... The government is looking for an excuse to invade people's privacy. Plain simple.
It seems like the only way for citizens to ensure privacy these days is to subscribe to a satellite internet provider, and make sure that internet provider is in another country (including their mail servers). Someone (here in the USA) should seize the opportunity and begin promoting this, earning commissions in the process.
You only know about this because journalists were able to investigate and publish stories quoting people (even if most quotees said 'no comment'.) If they had received National Security Letters, you would not know about it. Neither would the journalists. Google search.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Unfortunately, this really has nothing to do with porn. The government has been archiving and filtering all electronic communications including email and web traffic for years now, under the name of the war on terror. This is not some crazy conspiracy theory, it is exactly what they admit to doing in this whole NSA spying case right now.
At the moment they are getting pressure to go through the courts to follow up on leads they get from this rounding up of information, which they really don't want to do. By gathering up all your personal information from your ISP in one database at the DOJ, and then just cross referencing that with the archive at the NSA, they can now see exactly who is saying what on the Internet, without having to go through the hassle of getting a warrant to find out which user is associated with which IP address.
Pornography is just a really easy excuse, because it is one of those things that a large number of people are interested in, but no one will openly admit to being interested in. Plus it gives them the great option of asking anyone who opposes the move "why are you so eager to protect child pornographers?"
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. " --Ayn Rand
It's not just you. From outside the U.S., your country appears to be steadily heading towards totalitarianism.
What do you think Nazi Germany was like to live in, in 1938 (at least if you were a German)?
What do you think the United States of 2008 will be like to live in?
I can say, I am very glad I don't live in your country. Your citizens have forgotten how to stand up for the great ideas your country was founded on. You are letting corporations and corrupt governments trample you down and take away the freedom your ancestors fought and died for.
we can do something about it. Voting is not bullshit, and neither is taking action. That's the first and best way that the powers-that-be defeat you, by convincing you that you are powerless to fight them. In reality, we hold all the cards and only have to do a very little to upset their applecart. But first, this "the whole system's rigged and there's nothing we can do about it" whine has to be thrown right out. If you're smart, and I'm assuming you are, and motivated, which I gather from your post you are, then you have everything you need to change the country. Get online and do a little reading about citizen activism. Join the millions of us who already have and are actively working to bring these bastards down.
And in addition to that, I humbly submit that we should form a class action suit to sue the Department of Justice and the United States for violating our constitutional rights, since the current crop of congressmen don't seem terribly interested in upholding the Constitution. If we can get members of the Slashdot community to sign on, that's already a sizeable body. And I say we sue for damages of $10,000K each. That would quickly bankrupt the entire anti-American Republican movement.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
...that used a "skin tone filtering system" to determine that Robinson was viewing child porn from his office computer...
Here's an interesting use of technology. These NASA guys must be rocket scientists or something. I wonder what would happen if I put this detector on the firewall where I work? Also, to determine whether it was child porn wouldn't it need wrinkle detectors? Some kind of spatial filtering, I suppose.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I had a very traumatic experience as a young boy which involved beer at a church... but it also involved a Catholic priest and a locked back room, you insensitive clod!
Join Tor today!
Get your facts straight. This is not a "case" in front of a "court". This is a fishing expedition whose data will be spun six ways from Sunday in some study to "prove" that a new law to "protect the children" is in fact needed.
In Google's case, they want to prove that an innocuous search can pull up a significant percentage of links to porn sites which, if accidentally clicked on, will suddenly and irreversably warp the precious child's mind forever.
In actuallity, their agenda is in fact to eliminate all porn and, failing that, to prevent any adult from having any access whatsoever, all under the guise of "saving the children".
After all, "Father" knows what's best for the poor citizens of our country, who're obviously unable to choose such a wise course of action for themselves.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Has anyone actually read said Verizon objection? Doesn't sound like what it's cracked up to be. They're just worried about their data being somehow of use to competition. Not about the legality of the request per se. Then again, I suppose they're not meant to guard our rights either. Although, not complying with an (yet to be determined as) illegal request would also count as defending their own rights, in my book. Oh well.
Aren't e-mail messages private, as in, privlaged information? Isn't it a violation of privacy to divulge them? Aren't the ISPs, by conforming with this act, opening themselves up to suits from people who are in fact having their privacy violated? And where exactly is the government getting the subpeonas for these fishing expeditions, anyways? I guess it shows what kind of judges we have on the courts these days. =/
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
But you don't get it! In sacrificing all of these freedoms, we're gaining security from terrorists. I think that's a fair trade, especially considering my unfounded fear of terrorists.
Signed,
John Q. Public
Step 1. Ask for search data without names (no problem right?)
...
... Profit
Step 2. "notice" 4321 searches each day for something like "naked baby sex"
Step 3. Subpoena for the IP addresses
Step 4. Issue press releases "to protect the children..."
Step 5. Gradually notice more stuff like "cross urine" and "homosexual marrage"
Step N. Women burned for not wearing hats in church.
Ok, I can't resist
How much of this data that has been collected will the public be allowed to view via FOIA?
Amen. There will always be people who abuse the intended purpose of domain names. How many ".net"s are ISPs? Imho, they should've ditched the whole "categorized TLDs" from the start and stuck to the regional ones... possibly with a generic international ".x" TLD for multinational interests or places where the local TLD is not being used.
You cast dispersions on families where both parents work.
Aspersions.
Dispersions would probably mean he's trying to make them get divorced and the kids sent off to foster homes.
*bows to the master* thanks for the correction
The only lawful way to remove these citizen-spying, rights-denying, war-relying, baldfaced-lying religionist / plutocratic / fascist / incompetent neocon scum is to elect a Democratic House and Senate this November. The House will be a cinch, and it will take little effort to also take the Senate. I know that most of the Democrats have not showed much spine lately, but at least they'll appoint a few independent counsels and get the impeachment under way, and block any further absurd legislation pending the removal of King George. Commit now to bring 2 other people with you to the polls. Kick the butts of your apathetic friends and family, and get them registered.