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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?
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?
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 :))
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.
As far as I can see, the internet actually *DID* change that; at least in scope. Instead of the private information of one targetted individual being requested, suddenly private information of an enormous number of people is requested. And instead of the targetted individual receiving the subpoena it's a company; the many indirectly targetted individuals will never know what information about them specifically is handed over.
I don't know if the law was ever intended to be used in this way, but either way it's scary...
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....
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 ----
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.
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
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
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--