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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.
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?
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 :))
Private information can be subpeonaed. The Internet didn't change that.
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
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?
What they're doing is trying to set up a case to argue that Congress needs to legislate more censorship and regulations to protect Americans from our own freedoms. What they should do is get their goddamn hand out of the pot and let the market decide what it needs. Do people want web filtering to protect their children? Let them pay for filters, or even better, take a hands-on approach with their children online. Either way, this is between consumers and producers. I don't see how the government belongs in this picture.
One of the most irritating things I find about television is the censorship. Even on shows that are above average as far as the brainpower of their target audience (e.g. Mythbusters), I find that I have to listen to goddamn beeps and blips all the time. I say let them swear, and don't censor it. If people don't like it, they won't watch, and will hopefully tell the producers why. Even better, implement some sort of on-demand filtering so my cable box censors it if I choose. Conservative Christian? Turn it on. Everyone else? Turn it off, enjoy the language. The same it true of the Internet. I don't want the FCC or Congress telling me what I can and cannot see or do online. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. If I choose not to expose myself or my children to certain content, I will either not go to those sites, or I will allow the free market to provide content filtering software to me.
By the way, I don't usually watch much TV. Partly because of the mind-numbing dullness and idiocy, partly because I cannot stand censorship. I want my swear words!
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I'm not just being paranoid am I?
No, you're not, especially with a DoJ run by someone who has openly endorsed torture (in terrorism cases, not obscenity, granted -- but just wait to see how long it is before we start hearing "Al-Qaeda is funded by porn sites!") Microsoft is big and bad and scary, but the government is a great deal scarier.
Think selective enforcement. Realistically, everyone knows they're never going to get rid of internet porn, and they're never going to keep kids from seeing the stuff. That's not really the point. What is the point is that this law, if upheld, will give them a club to hold over the head of every single person in the US who posts anything on the web, ever, as well as the service providers which provide the hosting space, if even one of those postings contains a dirty word or risque picture. It doesn't mean they'll break down your door in the middle of the night -- but it means they can, if you piss them off enough. And you'll never know what constitutes "enough" until you're in handcuffs.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
So now "not helping the government" is a crime in and of itself?
Easy, "if you're not for us, you're against us"
I am all for stamping out child porn, it is sick and damaging.
Careful -- you've already fallen for their manipulation of the language. They're hoping that by using the words "children" and "pornography" in close conjunction, you'll automatically think, "Oh, child porn, we've got to get rid of that!" But COPA has nothing to do with child porn; it has to do (allegedly) with children seeing porn on the web -- the vast bulk of which is not child porn; it's regular old-fashioned adult porn. Conflating the (very mild, and entirely within the parents' domain) issue of little Johnny looking at dirty pictures with the (very serious, and entirely criminal already) problem of child porn is a cynical and dangerous political ploy.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
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
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.
What they should do is get their goddamn hand out of the pot and let the market decide what it needs. Do people want web filtering to protect their children? Let them pay for filters, or even better, take a hands-on approach with their children online. Either way, this is between consumers and producers. I don't see how the government belongs in this picture.
I of course agree, but this is NOT about "the children".
Its disguised that way, its completely, as well put by the parent to:
to set up a case to argue that Congress needs to legislate more censorship and regulations to protect Americans from our own freedoms.
and I'll expand, by adding to limit our freedoms.
In talking with a friend last night, he believes that we are heading towards being a 3rd world country. And this guy is juiced into the government, bigtime. Former DOE and NSF guy, and still sucks grant money all the time. He said that the discrepancy between the "haves" and the "have nots" is going to keep expanding. Housing prices are through the roof. The banking, oil, and insurance companies pretty much rule this country, etc.
It won't affect me in my lifetime, nor probably my children, but after that, I have no predictions that are positive with the direction things are going.
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.
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.
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
I cant wipe my ass with it, it already has shit all over it.
:) I look at it that way now.
The country is failing. The ride is over. All great nations fall, and when they do, they fall fast, and hard.
Its over.
Our people do not think like the Americans of old. There is no tolerance or American idealism. It's now about control and the people are too complacent and out matched.
They've been brainwashed by corperate media for the past 10 years. Conservative radio has bread intolerance and arrogance in the name of "good" But had nothing to do with "American ideals"
People have gotten so twisted, that the American idealology of old, is lost. We're widdling away at our country because we can. Our people like to tinker and blaim, so they keep chopping away at the country, for it is to blaim for all our problems.
Freedom is our problem. We can not handle it. We are not tolerant of it anymore. We want it our way, or no way at all.
You're christian or you are not. You're straight, or you are going to hell. You're on Rush Limbaughs side or you're the enemy. The republicans are always right, truth be damned. We're going to go down with the ship because despite the obvious sinking motion of the boat, we're told that its all ok because its someone else's fault.
Its over.
We're at a real turning point in our existance.
We actually LIKE slave labor now. We actually want to legalize slave labor. We have no problem with exploiting illegal aliens as long as they clean up our shit. We'll pay them less, we dont even give a shit if they're American citizens... Just as long as they show up and weed wack our lawns.
This is not America. This is our country as it is now. We welcomed immigrants, and wanted them to be apart of our country... but now we dont care if they're legal, or if we know who they even are... because WE LOVE SLAVE LABOR.
We are in a decline. We no longer beleive that people are equal, or working men and women deserve a quality life experience.
We beleive in the ultra rich, and we say the economy is doing great... while the country is in decline. The numbers say everything is great! But the truth is... the rich are simply making more money because they're not employing people. They're spreading around the world, thats why their value goes up, thats why our country looks to be economically fine... But corperations are not beholden to any country anymore. Our country is not doing fine, the corperations are.
Our people are consistantly getting the short end of the stick in our booming economy.
The law is out of countrol. Our president is a criminal. Our entire government is currupt. They spend more time fund raising than setting foot in a commitee hearing. They get handed a peice of paper on how to vote by think tanks and outside people who are not elected officials.
Policy is created by companies, buisness interests. The same people bribing our government elected officials. The same people they're getting funds from when they go and fund raise, when they should instead be representing the people in the house/senate.
The party holds the line... BOTH OF THEM.
It's over. They have this thing wrapped up in a nice little messy game of "gotcha"
And it wont end. Think about it. If you're lucky, you will be alive for 100 years at most. You only have hopefully 100 years on the planet. Truthfully, probably 65 years...
Do you think the rich power hungry people give a shit about what happens after they're dead?
Do you think senators and congressmen do? They raise funds to stay in office, so they can be elected and raise more funds to stay in office... It keeps them living a nice life, and then they die. Their children are set for life.
Do you really care about your neighbor? Do you value your family more than other people?
I'm betting on "yes". So why in the hell would you think the government gives a dam about you?
They're taking care of themselves, and th