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Support for U.S. Mandatory Data Retention Laws
chill wrote to mention a C|Net article about an upswell in support for a mandatory data retention policy here in the U.S. From the article: "Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate. Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months."
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Politician: "Hey, we gained access to mail server logs for suspect A, let's see what else other people are up to... Hey lookie here, my political rival's internet activities..."
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
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They want to prosecute child porn offenders? Fine. Put it in the text of the law. Retain the data, but make it unusable in court except for child porn cases.
Then tell all the privacy watchdogs to go back and chew their bones.
Fragging my father since 2004
My first thought on seeing this article was... "is this a joke"?
I'm not sure... data should be retained to a certain extent, however, that data should not be arbitrarily available to governments and companies. And at the moment, i don't trust that it wouldn't be.
FanFictionRecs.net
Yeah, it's only about catching the child pornographers. It won't be used for wholesale fishing expeditions to see if anyone might be doing something else illegal or who might be saying things that don't sit well.
Just like the government won't use the list of passengers who fly to trawl for people who might be doing something suspicious like buying a one-way ticket.
No, it's always about the children.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Why should we be trying to catch them? If someone wants to beat off in their basement, let them look at whatever they want. It's their own problem and their own issue to deal with.
Now, when the lyrics.com popups on my sister's IE windows have explicit 12 year olds, then we'll have a problem.
Fragging my father since 2004
For people who always claim to be doing things "for the children," they sure seem quick to use those kids as shields.
In conservative America, you don't delete email, email deletes you!
Curiosity killed the cat, but cats have 9 lives.
How long till the US goverment mandates that all data, whether from phonelines, email, searches, etc, has to be maintained on government servers for safe storage. I'm being totally serious. First they use child porn and incidents on myspace to scare people... then once they get their foot in the door, its just a matter of time. It truly is scary. Wheneve I talk of stuff like this I am deemed a conspiracy nut or something similiar.
http://religiousfreaks.com/After that nice scandal over them illegally wiretaping us, and the discovery that the NSA is snooping all Internet traffic routed through the USA (it would be foolish to assume that *only* AT&T agreed to let them tap in), we're just supposed to say "oh, it's okay because they only want those bastard perverts--I'm sure they'll never abuse this" !?
Ooogh.
QUIT SPYING ON US, DAMMIT!
We should insure that we make this data gathering absolutely as broad as possible, so that there will be so much data that none of us can function. This will make it obvious that total control over the flow of information and total access to petabytes of emails and phone taps of my pizza order - to a pizzaria run by an Arab with a second cousin on an Al-Quaida cell phone call history - DON"T aid law enforcement. At all. Then maybe when we come to our senses we can take back control of our government from the paranoids on both sides of the political spectrum and do something sensible.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
The real need is for a law to force corporations to retain evidence of their misdeeds. Right now, some corporations deliberately infringe laws and then have email retention policies that tell employees to destroy all email over 30 days old. In the rare cases where any attempt is made to bring these companies to book, it is very difficult to find the evidence to convict.
Damn child-pornography... Our records are being held because of them!
See? These two concepts are examples of overarching legislation. Its an idiotic and rather insulting attempt from our government to lower our personal privacy in the name of nabbing niche crime markets.
One concern I immediately had -- and I happily saw noted in the article as well -- is the question of who will pay to support this? Data storage isn't free, or cheap.
This could kill small and medium-sized web hosting providers.
Nuff said. They claim this law is 'for the children', but it's going to be used for everything else possible.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I would say that the inability of many slashdotters to spell correctly is a much more serious problem to worry about. I won't even go into the issue of incorrectly extrapolating statistics based on your little slice of heaven on earth, or the morality of using said statistics to justify a police state in the name of saving the children.
I wonder how long it's still legal to abuse children as the excuse for some law.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Phfft..
..
And you joe citizen ( consumer ) fall for it every time.
Grrr
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>
> No wait... I meant CHINA!
In Soviet Russia, citizens delete emails!
Whenever I see "let's push through this law to protect the children" I always assume it is bad legislation. You know that it's especially bad when "child porn" is used as the justification for taking away privacy rights. Basically, "we can't even make up a semi-clever story to hide our ulterior motives... time to play the Sicko Child Pornographer Card!"
Perhaps we need to change the last line....
"O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free or the home of the slave?"
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Why should we be trying to catch them?
Should we be trying to catch online predators? You're asking if we should be trying to catch the guys who use the internet to setup meeting to have sex with children? Umm...
If you just talking about the freaks who wack off to pics of little girls, then think of this: People searching for pics of little kids creates a demand for pics of little kids. If the demand is there, then someone posts pics of little kids. Where do you think this pics come from? People sexually absuing and exploiting little kids and posting pictures of them online.
Pure freedom is nice and all in theory, but when people are still too uncivilized to handle it, then it's unrealistic.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
other question is when can I delete e-mail or files? if I have a draft and delete it before the backup am i in violation of this policy or what?
I think this is just a good case of lawmakers who have absolutely no clue on how to turn on their computer let alone regulate data retention or laws regarding any of this stuff.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Based on recent news events those guys seem to be experts on all things "pedo". ;P I'm sure they'd LOVE to "investigate" more kiddie porn.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
H5N1 is on the way, the CDC is already swapping out dna with known human flu viri, so they can "HELP", and the steps are in place for mandatory vaccination and quarrantines.
Have a nice summer
After all, many such things if done by postal service are yet another crime.
If this goes through I say quit fighting spam. Let it start clogging up the archive mechanisms. When the pain is large enough these privacy violations go away. I'd rather get spam I can filter than have my traffic/email/etc. mandated to be stored where it is rapidly available and providing a big-ass target for crackers and bureaucrats looking for a cause to raise their pay or get votes on.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
I would say that the inability of many slashdotters to spell correctly is a much more serious problem to worry about. I won't even go into the issue of incorrectly extrapolating statistics based on your little slice of heaven on earth, or the morality of using said statistics to justify a police state in the name of saving the children.
I know police who catch these bastards. Either you're so distant from reality that you think people don't really do evil things and it's all just "Big Brother"'s fault, or you just don't want the police to find your underage porn collection.
So... which is it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Leave it to the Republicans and surveillance happy Europeans to erode the Western ideal of civil liberty. Maybe the Libertarians and a few progressive-minded Democrats will save us, but I doubt it.
...do we say "enough is enough"?
I have the sneaking suspicion that it is mostly a bunch of creepy old men talking dirty to a bunch of other creepy old men. I find it really hard to believe some teenage girl is seriously engaging in these sorts of activities (I can imagine them doing it and thinking it is funny to rattle peoples cages, but seriously being pulled in to this kind of relationship?).
As to your specific question, 'how are they supposed to catch these people without the logs'.
No one has ever suggested that we record every minute of our voice communications over the phone or otherwise for use in these sorts of cases. Why would text be any different? I would support the ability to get a warrant to 'tap' irc or email, allowing law enforcement to log communication from the point of the warrant onwards, it seems like that would be pretty effective in building evidence against offenders while keeping the government out of the business of innocent citizens.
But over and over and over again I hear Bush administration officials decrying the evils and systematic destruction child porn is causing our country. Is child porn really as rampant and great a concern as they make it out to be? I mean, child porn is AWFUL and those caught should be prosecuted. But aren't there other more pervasive, more destructive issues in this country like the sorry state of the public education system.
but your argument is flawed also.
and I believe in the rights of adults, to do what they want, that does not interfere with others doing what they want- without consent
(kinda libertarian viewpoint)
I think adults should be able to 'beat' their meat to whatever they enjoy- if that is as far as it goes.
I don't think children of a certain age (variable based on the individual, but I'm willing to go with the state definition's of age of consent) can consent to potentially harmful acts.
my question to you- where are they (thos interested in kiddie porn) going to get whatever they look at? at some point, unless it's a cartoon- it had a source.. and there is no way it can then have a valid source.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Is there anyway that we can limit what the government knows about what we do online? I spend most of my time online, be it browsing the web, sending an essay back and forth over wires, or IMing friends, there is way more information the government is storing about us than there ever was before. There are plenty of things that I have done on the net that I don't want some ultra-right-wing creep looking through. It wouldn't be that hard to realy stop them in their tracks. Can't you just make some realy big anonomyzer for your town? That way no personally Identable information goes out to the global wires?
There are real problems with the IP monopolies though. Lol, I wonder if this is encoraged by the government, maybe some kind of reward for their carnivore project.
Btw, "ultra-right-wing creeps" isn't just irrational name-calling, just read some of the stuff from Russ Tice, and why he was fired.
From another slashdotter:
"In 1999, I worked as a contract engineer for a Linux consulting company. We delivered kernel enhancements for the Linux kernel on the Alpha processor to the NSA. The enhancements we to reduce TLB miss overhead when doing comparisons and searches on large amounts of data. The benchmark run to test it was a keyword search through a stream of e-mails. This was to run on a *massive* cluster of Alpha machines. I would guess they've upgraded it several times since then.
1999 was while Clinton was still president, BTW.
(Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons. Though I've probably given enough information that they could narrow it down to about 10 people.) "
If we mandate microphones and cameras in every room in every house, it would help in the uncovering and prosecution of these crimes as well. Ends and means, anyone?
Wait wait... You're saying spelling is more important than catching these scumbags? Please don't ever insult anyone's intelligence again; you have no ground to stand on. This post trumps all others for pure idiocy. You just lowered the collective intelligence of this board.
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
This article reminds me of something I came across yesterday. My office is a Public Defenders Office that has to retain client records for 6 years (10 years for Appeals). Our client load is huge, last year alone we served 11,000 clients. We put our old (case closed) files in boxes, maybe 50 files per 12"x10"x18" box (some files are 4 boxes big, other boxes only contain 3 files). Outside my door I can see 23 boxes, with case numbers only reaching 6,000 (meaning 5,000 (or about 20 boxes) are somewhere else.
What this has to do with the article is that there has been changes in the way files are kept. Just last month they (I still don't know who "they" are) came out with a decision that says:
"Retain until 6 years after case closed, or 0 after any minor client attains age 21, whichever is later. Subsequent to this period, the file must continue to be maintained until death of the client concerned, 80 years after the date of birth of the client concerned, or the client concerned provides instructions on disposition of the file, whichever is earlier."
So we have to either get each client to agree that we can destroy their file (something very few of them will agree to), keep tabs on each client to see if they die, or hold each file until the client turns 80 years old. Worst case senario we have to hold these boxes for 64 years (16 year old + 64 years = 80 year old). We don't file by client age and we will not start to, so we have to file each box for 64 years just to be safe! 64 years x 11,000 = 704,000 files, or a metric fuck-load of files. I have no idea where we are going to find a warehouse large enough and cheap enough to hold these files for 64 years. Not to mention the taxpayers pay for this stuff, and I can't see them paying to hold 60 year old Indecent Exposure files for some guy who died 30 years ago.
Moral of the story: Ideas like these get floated around from time to time but they never pan out when we realize the cost associated with them. My problem with our situation is this: Why aren't the rights of 81 year olds protected? What happens at the age of 80 that makes it so you no longer need your file?
Umm, let's see, how about ACTUAL POLICE INVESTIGATION. This is, plain and simple, a government regulated attempt at creating a permanent pond for a fishing expedition. I am sorry, you cannot sit back and welcome our country's parallel of the Chinese government (read China's policies on data retention in the other news today), and say that it's necessary to catch child molestors. There _are_ other methods.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is because people abuse the freedoms we have online that governments make laws to restrict our use of the Internet. The Wild West of the Internet is in the past. Europe has passed laws and now the USA is considering laws. It seems to be a part of human nature to abuse a good thing.
China censors data to "protect" the government and people.
The US wants to read all your data to "protect" the government and people.
In China, you can be arrested for posting censored information.
In the US, you can be arrested for information posted in the past that is now deem criminal.
At least China is more up front with what will get you in trouble.
"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."
Encryption is the answer to this, and it continues to amaze me that otherwise intelligent software developers continue to create software that does not utilize encryption.
95% of web traffic continues to be by HTTP, instead of the easily deployed HTTPS (and by easily I mean the entire infrastructure to support it already exists, both for clients and servers).
SMTP continues to be plaintext and bounced around like a ping-pong ball. The reasons for using encryption with SMTP are the same reasons for using letters in envelopes and not postcards. Two thousand years ago the Romans used wax seals on their private documents to ensure no one intercepted the message en route, yet every email on the planet is still there to be read.
Instant Messages continue not to be encrypted between recipients, and just like HTTPS the infrastructure is already there to support it. Why is it that it is off by default in a world where you can't buy a system with anything less than a 2+ GHz Celeron processor?
VoIP continues to go unencrypted over the Internet, for reasons that I can't even begin to fathom. We expect to have digital wireless phone calls--on a system first deployed over ten years ago--encrypted, but the brand new digital wired calls not? Thank God there are people like Phil Zimmerman out there.
Seriously, this is the most basic concept in an age where the people have every right to fear their government that most people distrust and believe is corrupt, in an age where the government (allegedly) mandates that all Internet traffic is made available for illegal spying, in an age where people have feared the NSA was already spying on citizens... the list goes on.
It is the responsibility and social responsibility of programmers and standards-makers to pursue wide encryption deployment, or the whole "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of speech away from the Internet?" cliche will be answered with "With my shoulder to the wall helping the government take away everything else."
Congress is going to call it the Federal Electronic Child Enhanced Safety Act or the FECES Act for short. For it to become law FECES will have to pass through the House and Senate. They won't be able to tack on too many amendments or the FECES could get stuck. It'll be a great day when FECES lands on the President's desk, so he can sign it. To implement the FECES Act The Homeland Security will create a new FECES enforcement unit. They'll be recognizable by their brown shirts. They'll make sure that ISP's are keeping their retention levels up.
No. The only issues that exist are child pornography, terrorism, and gay marriage. All other things must not be discussed.
In Communist Russia, running your own web server bans you.
The correct method is for the authorities to inform the ISP that an investigation is underway. At that point, they are required to start retaining logs for the eventual subpeona. Logs are not turned over without a court order.
This has been effective in the past and there is no evidence to support the notion it is no longer a valid method.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
He meant the other slashdotter who he was quoting was anonymous, dur-hey.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
...until it comes to questions of child workers...then it's all about the profit.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I know police who catch these bastards. Either you're so distant from reality that you think people don't really do evil things and it's all just "Big Brother"'s fault, or you just don't want the police to find your underage porn collection.
So... which is it?
You're missing the point. I think people do evil things all the time. I also think the police should do their best to catch criminals within a legal system that balances the rights and freedoms of an individual against being given carte blanche. The authorities are perfectly capable of pursuing online sex offenders without mandatory data retention laws. The US government is already abusing the Patriot Act, and AT&T apparently has plugged a pipe directly into the NSA, so you'll have to excuse me for blaming "Big Brother" and being somewhat hesitant to hand over yet another power to the state. This law has nothing to do with catching child porn offenders and everything to do with the government finding another way to exert more control over the general populace. You must be "distant from reality" if you think otherwise.Without the logs as evidence, how else are they supposed to catch these scumbags?
Unlike other types of crimes (like say terrorist conspiracy or tax fraud) child predators/child porn users repeat their offenses. (After all, it's a sexual proclivity, and that implies multiple frequency. (I am given the impression however that your average child molester is a one time deal (usually unrelated to the internet anyway.)) If the individual is repeating the offense, then the logs currently retained are sufficient to investigate, archive more logs/traffic and prosecute.
Data retention is most useful for one time offenses...where you'd figure out a year or two after the offense occurred that something might have happened. Sex crimes using the Internet just don't manifest in isolation that way (but maybe some terrorist conspiracy communication would.)
It always seems there's this finger pointing from Europe about how the crazy Americans have limited freedom again. Well this time Europe has struck first.
This is a global problem with governments, not a single wacko government out of control. It really scares me that the western world is really moving more toward the restrictive policies of China than China is moving towards freedom.
AccountKiller
Depending on how good priceline's deal is, I am planning to move to either Antarctica or moon so that I wont be spied on....Phew
I think you missed something:
Note the quotation marks.
They think the best defense is a great offense. It seems whenever they get into trouble, they decide to push 1984 even further into the now. Crazy people at the wheel. I think the president did too many drugs as a kid.
Bravo! Bravo!!
Best comment I have read in a long time.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Is child porn really as rampant and great a concern as they make it out to be?
Not by a long shot. Child porn is a gross violation of the rights of the child being used to make it. The violation continues through the continued proliferation of the materials.
Is it rampant? No one knows. For all we know, there could simply be a pool of say, 1000, images that are simply being recycled via digital copying over and over. No one has any hard data on this. We know nothing, yet laws are being drafted, essentially on the basis of rhetoric.
Is it that big of a concern? Well, for the person directly involved, it may become the biggest concern in their entire lives, and possibly the biggest concern in the lives of their loved ones too. They are still being violated in a very real sense. Depending on the circumstances, some might be able to cope with this others might not.
Is it that big of a concern for the rest of society? Well, yes. I am personally offended that people's rights are violated in this way. Those responsible deserve to face justice and the judgement of their peers under the law. Like all sex crimes, everyone can agree something needs to be done.
But should everyone elses rights be violated in order to "do something"? Will this even work? Should more people suffer because of what has been done to the victims? I, and most Slashdotters, realise that we should have our rights forsaken or violated in response to the violation of others. Rather, we should use the law as it surrently stands to both protect people and bring the guilty to justice. It is up to the task.
I would like to think victims of sex abuse would agree with my sentiment that the rights of everyone shouldn't have to be lost or violated in response the the violation of the rights of the victims. But I don't know that this is the case. I would like to hear the opinions of an actual victim of either child sex abuse or child pornography, on all of this. What do the people for whom these laws are suppossedly made for actually think about them?
In all this, I don't think I've ever even heard the voice of the victim. Even once.
May the Maths Be with you!
Man, I'm really getting sick of both groups. Is there an on-line petition I can sign to get them banned?
...when merely saying "enough is enough" has already become criminal speech.
The problems with your little analysis are that:
Pure freedom is nice and all in theory, but when people are still too uncivilized to handle it, then it's unrealistic.
You misspelled fascist .
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It's time to start compiling lists of proxy servers. Folks seem to want to concentrate on the ones that are just lying about, open and available. Well, I don't mind paying for something reliable, but if I'm going to pay for it my choices need to be:
Recently, I've actually pondered colocating my own proxy somewhere outside the country. I'm thinking maybe I could start looking in Venezuela...Anybody got any other ideas?
The GP was quoting from this post, which was posted anonymously.
d =15083841
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182479&ci
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
This is the most insightful thing I've read in this thread. I wish I had mod points
In conservative America, you don't delete email, email deletes you!
Or better yet: In preemptive-striking surveillance state America, data retains *you*!
Back that up with facts, Jack.
Prove to me that every picture of little kids is exploitation. For every picture there is always some doubt as to (1) who took the picture, (2) the actual age of the person(s) in the picture, (3) when the picture was taken, and (4) whether or not there are even real people in the picture.
Look at it this way: Assume there is a demand for underage pictures. If you wish to fill this demand, you can (1) force young kids to pose for you, (2) find somebody that LOOKS young, but is old enough so you don't get busted, or (3) use some creative ability to otherwise simulate underage pictures realistically. Which choice has the most risk? Which choice(s) can cover your ass?
Hustler makes money selling "Barely Legal" videos of people that LOOK young, but are above the legal age to be in such pictures. This is not exploitation (unless you call ALL forms of pornography exploitation, in which case "doing it for the children" doesn't come into play) but playing on people's fantasies.
Throwing out a statement like, "If the demand is there, then someone posts pics of little kids. Where do you think this pics come from? People sexually absuing and exploiting little kids and posting pictures of them online" is simply marching to the mantra of those that would have you nodding your head to their own agenda.
Not every form of nudity is pornography, and it should not be treated as such. Mindlessly spewing the company line and saying "It's just for the children!" is playing into the hands of people that want to do much more sinister things with your privacy.
So, let's assume that you're not a child pornographer. However, if the government goes on a fishing expedition looking for child pornographers and, lo and behold, finds an email about how you cheat on your income taxes, do you think the government is going to shrug over your indiscretion?
Of course not!
Giving the government the right to search you and your data at any time for any reason "in the name of child pornography" automatically keeps the barn door open for any and every kind of reprehensible violation of your civil rights.
Just like saying that the government has the right to tap any phone lines it wants without a warrant is justified because terrorism is such a bad thing and we need to prevent it.
I thought that Americans were against prior restraint!
Without any special powers, the government successfully foiled a few plots against America before 9/11... the Millenium Plot comes immediately to mind.
However, we didn't catch the 9/11 hijackers. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! Monday Morning Quarterbacking shows that there were clues, but "nobody connected the dots." Why do Americans now happily give powers of prevention to the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other government agencies now? These agencies were PREVENTED from sharing data due to abuses during the 1970s (remember Watergate?).
However, if you fight against these new government powers, the government automatically accuses you of being on the side of terrorists.
It's the same thing with Child Pornography.
Let them take an inch in the name of the children, and you've given up just about every basic freedom you thought you enjoyed.
Our president uses the Constitution as a replacement for toilet paper, and you are willing to give the government EVEN MORE POWERS?
How stupid are you?
Wait, was that "old Europe" or "new Europe"? (I thought the Red State Brigade held Europe in contempt. Especially France...er..."Freedom".)
I realize that calmness and reason are routinely shouted down when this topic is being discussed, but the parent is so insightful it clearly deserves a 5 rating.
I know police who catch these bastards. I think we should initiate a policy of constant video surveillance of all households with children, not to mention legally mandated implantation of RFID devices in all children under the age of 18 so we can monitor their whereabouts 24/7/365. I think we should have checkpoints at every entrance/exit on the highways, and require proper paperwork to allow transport of a child through those checkpoints. I think we should make illegal all photographic record of children other than officially approved school photos. In addition, we should require prospective parents to get a license to have children, with a mandatory background check for criminal tendencies and liberalism.
If you don't support these policies, you must believe that nothing bad ever happens to children, or you must bugger children in your basement. Which is it?
Thinking outside my Head
Ya, I have a buddy who did this until quite recently, and his prosecutions had a lot more to do with meeting said predators at the pre-existing location than it did after-the-fact evidence extraction from hard drives (not that this wasn't done either).
Talk about a shitty job to have though... I'm glad there are people to do it, but it would creep me out.
Pax -- Ob
Victims of child molestation usually don't like to talk about it.
Right on.
Fragging my father since 2004
While I agree that online predators should be punished, can you answer this simple question:
Why are the children at risk online in an unsupervised environment?
You wouldn't leave your kids alone with free access to guns or alcohol.
You wouldn't leave your kids alone a room with a dangerous animal.
You wouldn't drop your kids off in the middle of a sex trade region.
Any of the above would get you in trouble with the law, but putting a kid online in an unsupervised environment is tantamount to putting them in a room with the predator. People need to realise this and take responsibility for their *own* actions before running off to the gov'mint to solve their problems.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Not a real law type law, but a "Godwin's Law" for Child Pornography. If the feds are looking to snoop around in my data for no reason besides the possibility of kiddie porn, they're lying to me. They're doing it because they think they can.
If they were really concerned with the welfare of the children they'd do things like remove the statute of limitations on sexual abuse of children so that we can lock up criminals we know committed the crime they're sniffing my packets for.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
Its very hard for me to swallow your thesis that any one of your listed crimes has a higher repetition than the others. I'm not saying you are wrong, but it isn't really intuitive enough to buy into without some kind of evidence.
I did look briefly for recidivism numbers, but all I could find were claims about high recidivism in property crimes (as opposed to violent crimes). Do you have info on this kind of thing, or are you shooting from the hip?
Somewhat unrelated, but more to topic, I don't think that data retention laws are going to do anything but make a lot of people unknowing criminals. I wonder what kind of logs exim retains for me? Perhaps I could become a criminal for not knowing.
Pax -- Ob
Agreed, I realize that it's a tragity that some people do bad things, but forgive me, how does that give government the right to punish me?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Or better yet: In neocon America, email detains you!
I do think a retention policy would be good for tracking down pedofiles/corrupt CEOs and the like. I just don't think the federal government actually has the authority to prevent anyone from deleting email (or just being lazy and not backing it up).
Can anyone point to something in the constitution that give the US government this power?
science is a religion
The real summary is at the end of the article. Criminals will just use anonymous access points and encryption. "You haven't done anything but increase surveillance of law-abiding citizens."
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
They could probably arrest you for posting information posted in the past that is now deem criminal, but I don't think they could prosecute succesfully. Those types of laws are called Post Ipso Facto, and as far as I know aren't enforcable. I know they aren't in Indiana, but IANAL.
My hometown (pop 30,000) has caught something like 7 online preditors in the past 2 years. Without the logs as evidence, how else are they supposed to catch these scumbags?
Don't you watch Dateline? When they show up at the sting location with alcohol and condoms meant for a 12 year old boy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
We have a similar issue here. Technically, since I work for a state school, this post on Slashdot can be asked for under FOIA just because the packets went over thier network. This is a extreme lack of understanding on how things on a network works. It's not so simple. The college can't keep every bit that flys into the school via the internet....it would be impossible. I post on Slashdot from work because Slashdot covers IT and sometimes I get good info (ok probably 10 percent content 90 percent junk....but I digress). Why would anyone ask for this under FOIA is beyond me, but technically they CAN ask for it! Anyone can also ask for MY address in phone number as well....in my opinion, that's crap!
Gorkman
Yeah, but deleting files on your computer affects interstate commerce, and therefore the federal government has the authority (no, the duty!) to regulate it. I mean, how could you sale your files to someone living in another state if they've been deleted?
Who is logging my transmissions for any period of time? I wasnt aware that anything besides some connection logs were still around after the data had been sent.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Its very hard for me to swallow your thesis that any one of your listed crimes has a higher repetition than the others.
This is slightly paradoxical argument, but bear with me here.
Sexual offender recidivism is actually fairly low. (We're talking people who molest/rape children and adults.) Now keep in mind, however, sex offenses don't tend to start online...they happen to people who are already known to the offender in real life.
But the parent was most interested in on-line sexual predators and those who download porn (for the sake of argument I'll leave out those who make child porn, as that's very unusual.)
If an online sexual predator tries only a few times, and really doesn't succeed, then he's not exactly all that great a threat anyway. If he does succeed, then they become a sexual offender, and they leave a whole different trail of evidence, if you will.
If an online sexual predator tries continuously, then the evidence of that will manifest and you don't need 2 year logs to figure that out (regardless if they succeed or not.) The same thing for a child porn consumer. The child porn consumer who does it only once or twice is not the threat to society that a CPC is who does it regularly. The frequent consumer's addiction will manifest without needing the extended logs.
An old man, once tall and proud, now tired and beaten, slumped in his chair, speaks one last time to his grandchildren. He hopes, in vain, that they will hear, and understand, and that maybe something will change.
He knows, deep down, it never will.
He speaks.
"Once, we were free. We didn't really know it; we took it for granted. We assumed that people would always do the right thing, in the end. We thought that people loved freedom as much as we did, we just quibbled over the details.
"If you ask me the day we lost our freedom, I won't be able to answer you. That's because it didn't happen on one day; we didn't lose a war, we didn't pass a Tyranny Act, we didn't plunge into economic chaos and come out of it a dictatorship. No, we lost our freedom in pieces, bit by bit, and with each piece we said, "We're doing it for our safety, and for our children's future. We're doing it for the children, we're doing it for ourselves and our posterity. We're doing it because we think it's right."
I remember when we could buy a CD and listen to it wherever we wanted. You think I'm crazy, don't you kids? You've never even dreamt of such a thing. But it's true, and I got to live it. Oh for a few short years, I got to live it.
"I remember when I could record my favorite TV shows on my computer and watch them over and over again. You can't do that anymore though; after the Content Rights Act of 2011, it became illegal to possess any content on your machine that you didn't pay for every time you watch it. Or if you preferred, you could accept RIAA-approved AdWare to display advertisements at predetermined intervals as you watched your recording.
"I remember when I knew that my privacy was protected, that the government needed a reason to search my private data for wrongdoing - remember the 5th Amendment kids? You learned about that in history class right? Remember what year it was appealed? 2012, good, you've been studying.
"I remember trusting my government and my elected officials. I remember not being afraid of everything I did, because I knew I lived in the land of the free. I remember being proud that my country upheld personal liberties above corporate power and the rule of politicians. But alas, I didn't realize I was free.
"And so it is gone. Each time a freedom was taken away, I did nothing. I sat and accepted it, because I had my own things to worry about. I had to go to work, and clean the house, and pay the bills, and throw in some vacations. I didn't have time to consider revolt. I didn't have time to remember that our Founding Fathers revolted for far lesser grievances than have been visited upon the world these days.
"Remember my words, kids, because it's illegal now to speak of them. You won't find them in books, or in emails, or on television or in music - those are all sanctioned now, only approved content can be delivered in them - I remember that too.. TV used to be so interesting.. until someone said "Think of the children." Even cable TV can't have cuss words now. You probably don't even know any, do you? Too bad. A good swear can really take the pressure off once in awhile.
Only one thing will change the world, kids, and it ain't talk. Have the courage to stand up for your freedoms - your freedom of thought, your freedom of speech, your freedom of action, and your freedom to live without fear.
Remember this:
The worst they can do to you is take your life.
The worst you can do to them is destroy their civilization.
I think a few lives are worth it."
And with that, he died.
What happens next? It's up to you.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
...they stopped using terrorism as an excuse to create this privacy and liberty restricting laws. Now we are going after the child pornographers. Something both the dems and reps can agree on I guess.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Why not simply delete it from the server once the intended receipient has has opened it? What purpose is served?
Not to mention the fact that even owning encryption software is considered as proving you have something to hide. There was a court case recently (sorry, no link) where the fact that the defendant had a copy of PGP was taken as evidence that there was kiddie p0rn at some point on the defendant's computer.
The local police department (Keene, NH) has an officer who focuses almost exclusively on child predators. No data retention, no warrantless eavesdropping, no sneak&peek searches. He just logs into a chat room with a teenage-sounding screenname and waits. It doesn't take him that long before someone is offering to meet, send bus tickets to him, or sending pornographic materials to him. They arrange a meeting place near Keene and pick up the predator when he arrives. Simple, straightforward sting work that's netted nearly 400 arrests in the last few years. Occasionally they get search warrants for the guy's computers if he sent a large amount of porn to the cops and add that to the charges, but they have more than probable cause for that search warrant.
It seems that certain politicians want to automate this basic police work by casting a wide net and filtering for certain phrases or activities and eliminate the pesky payroll obligations. Same thing with cameras on street corners and traffic lights - why pay some cop what an image-matching algorithm, face-recognition system, or radar gun will do for free?
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Having encryption will do nothing to save you from this sort of snooping. They can retain records for later, encrypted or not. The explicit goal of cryptography isn't to prevent people from reading your encrypted messages, its to stop them from doing it in a timely fashion. Any method of encryption short of say, a private cypher, can be eventually cracked.
Now someone will probably make a point about a 4096 bit key to make the effort take years, but consider this: how long ago would a 64 bit key been considered sufficient?
The solution here is to simply stomp this initiave flat before it gains traction. The government does not have a need or right to know what you are doing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There are dozens of better ways. It is silly, expensive, and pointless to retain all data. Why are we retaining it unless someone plans to illegally search through it?
If your trying to block child porn, why not have the isp retain logs for people looking at child porn.... Theres no reason for them to log my visits to Amazon.com.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
One could make the argument that if I buy a loaf of bread from a local bakery, that affects interstate commerce because the bakery might buy some of its ingredients from other states. However, if that logic was followed, the federal government would potentially be able to charge a sales tax on the purchase of my bread. Since they arn't allowed to do that, I thing the same principle could be applied to personal correspondence, just like they can't listen in on phone calls without a warrent unless one of the parties is _actually_ out of the country.
After thinking more about it, couldn't this be construed as unreasonable seizure(sp)? Essentially, they would be demanding that we hold on to something for them, even if we don't want to. One could say that if the government alreaddy exercises that much control over it, haven't they already seized it? It just happens to be locatd on your premises-you can't do anything with it that might damage _their_ data.
science is a religion
It is ex post facto, and the constitutional prohibition against it has not, and will not, stop the US government from doing it, except in perhaps the most egregious cases.
But really, it's a very large problem. My hometown (pop 30,000) has caught something like 7 online preditors in the past 2 years. Without the logs as evidence, how else are they supposed to catch these scumbags?
I don't see us passing laws to have the post office open our mail and make photocopies of all the letters I write for temporary storage. I feel that my email should be subject to the same general privacy (cacheing by relays and normal email process forgiven) that my post appears to be granted.
If the police want to catch someone, let them start investigating them and then start having the ISP grab email and monitor traffic. But only once they are suspected. My problem is with the idea everyone is being recorded all the time for no justifiable reason beforehand. "If you innocent, you have nothing to hide" reasoning my ass.
As far as this town is concerned, I would look for reasons why so many people have been caught in Kiddie Porn recently in what is such a small city. There must be some reasoning for this anomoly.
But then, implying everybody is a criminal is a lot easier for city managers than admitting there's a local crime problem on their watch. [smirk]
WAPTOC - "Won't Anyone Please Think Of the Children?"
Laws intended to protect children in any way are rarely intended to do so, and often fail to do so once passed for obvious reasons. If you see a law designed - supposedly - to protect children in any way, take it with an additional grain of salt - it's usually a cover for something that would otherwise become controversial or be shot down immediately. This also applies to laws concerning terrorism and the so-called war on drugs.
WAPTOC hard at work, here.
So when I look at child porn I should fire up one of my free encrypted SSH proxies first?
Oh wait, the government can't force the server i'm tunneling to, outside of the US, to retain any data... I suppose we better wrap a firewall around our country and not let those damn foreigners access to our internet.
Why don't we just all move to china instead?
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
n/t
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Don't spread stuff like that around! If everyone starts encrypting their traffic, then the government will get all excited and tell people that the kiddie porn rings and the terrorists are using encrypted communication, and they'll pass a law that makes all encrypted communication using an algorithm that's not approved (*and backdoored) by the US Gov't a crime.
Thinking outside my Head
From TFA:
At a hearing last week, Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who heads a House oversight and investigations subcommittee, suggested that data retention laws would be useful to police investigating crimes against children.
Your point about blancing privacy rights against government protection is well stated, sir. If everyone would just wear a gps neck collar, we could track everyone's movements 24/7. Manditory fingerpinting and DNA collection would solve quite a number of crimes, and having a sizeable secret police force, you could monitor the activites of many social, religious, and political organizations. These are simple facts. The closer you watch people, the more crimes you can catch.
However, what these dimmwits in washington don't seem to get, is that nobody would want to live in a country that was like that. People don't excactly flock to police states, begging to emigrate...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Exactly. DMCA violations. Past due bills and late payments. What porn sites you visited violate your local statutes. The fact you are reading up on uranium enrichment.
Data retention is nothing more than having the option to exercise making anyone criminals when the time and place is needed for them to become so in the eyes of society. Shame on you. You'd think people like yourself would remember the J. Edgar Hoover days at the FBI when people had files on them for adultery or having a communist acquaintance.
See, the problem with looking holier than thou is that you damn well better be holier than thou now and in the future.
After all, if data retention was comprehensive, they'd know that copy of Titanic you bought in 2002, that they know you haven't sold online, may be due cause to issue a warrant to search your home, since the Titanic violates CDA laws, since it depicts underage teenage sex, which violates your local decency laws.
Or that copy of 19 year olds having sex when the age of consent in your state is raised to 21.
Why do you think it would help track down pedophiles BETTER than our current tools? It would not. You just think and hope it will.
You think data retention will find corrupt CEOs? How? Why? In what way? It wouldn't. Not to mention, email is already part of the corporate law. What further data retention of personal networks and the like would due is it'd be used to bring undue charges, similar to how 'A bank that is perceived to be insecure will become insecure whether or not it actually was.'
This is nothing more than about control, the ability to label someone at whim, to redefine laws and classify groups of people perverts, slackers, etc. It will be embraced by the likes of you that think they have nothing to hide. Then extended to other crimes, like copyright and DRM violations. It will be used against your friends, classmates, and family. It won't be used against you, of course, given that they already know you'll bend over and take it, except when you get in their way.
Actually, it's my online crack dealing business that I don't want them to find about while they're looking for one of maybe a few hundred kiddie porn freaks in the country.
The Farewell Tour II
Just like owning a scale is evidence of marijuana use and/or sale.
This is sortof like the gun control debate. If you look at it with a fair eye, both sides have some good points and people still don't agree on where to draw the line. When looking at privacy issues, there are obviously good and bad things with more or less privacy. Yes, I know J. Edgar did some stuff I wouldn't want done to me, and I think piracy is blown out of proportion (Get real! Look at the origin of the word and compare the harm done with the original meaning compared to the new meaning). But just remember that if someone had been able to look at Zacharias Mousoui's labtop, 9/11 arguably could have been prevented.
I don't consider myself a privacy nut or a big-brother wannabe. I do think most of congress is clueless and generally makes laws reacting out of some sort of personal fear or to please a subset of their constituents/contributors. This is largely why I point out that it should be a moot point--I don't think congress actually has been granted the constitutional power to compel others to have a data retention policy. In my state (Minnesota), some pretty dumb laws get passed from time to time, but there is a better chance of getting things straightened out before they become the de-facto status quo in a state legislature than at the federal level.
science is a religion
If you're going to hijack an airliner and kill thousands of people with it, I don't think that the obstruction of justice charge over burning your hard drive is really going be the biggest of your fears. The thing you have to remember about any of these sorts of controls is that the people you're trying to catch are *already committing criminal acts*. If someone is committing a real crime (that is, doing something that actually directly hurts someone), being charged for a victimless crime is really not that big a deal.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
once its deleted, its not gone. under such data keeping laws, even if you delet something on the internet, the hosting companes are still required to keep that data around and archived for government use. Which is a problem for privacy and security, while at the same time being a bit problematic for companes, as they have to pay the bills. all in all, such laws only benifit governments that want to spy on its people, like china, and do nothing for people/companes.
Let's come up with another law no individual is going to want to follow if they don't want to. Drug Laws - if someone wants to do drugs, they do them - period. Wasted enforcement. Seat Belt laws - if someone doesn't wear their seatbelt - they don't. Wasted enforcement. Prostitution laws - if someone wants a hooker, they get one. Wasted enforcement. Remember the sodomy laws, it was illegal to be gay?! Now the government wants to come out with 'Privacy Laws' - if someone wants to be private, they will. Not only wasted enforcement, but yet another cut into personal freedoms, just like the above laws. Imagine how much better the country would be if we took the 'drug war' money and used it for education and free substance abuse treatment? Have you ever tried to find an open bed in a rehab? It's not possible for less than $6 grand a month! The affordable and state sponsored beds are usually a 3-6 week wait, if not more. Picture the amount of taxes they could generate off taxing pot - an easy extra 250-500 BILLION a year. ($2+ a joint tax x 1 per day times 365 days x 20 million users). Tax prostitutes and make another 200 billion or more... Bye Bye deficit. This is a FREE country (except you pay taxes lol), as long as you do not harm another person PERSONALLY, then you should be free to do as you please. Our congress, an uneducated public and 'fear' have led to the slow and increasingly often removal of freedoms one after another - all 'to protect us' ?? Why are we still continuing to let this happen?
Most of the laws that Congress passes fall under the "Nessasary and Proper Clause" and the Commerce clause.
The nessasary and proper clause reads: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." This has some wide interpetation with conservaitve (NOT republicans) reading it mean that it only applies to the execution of the enumerated powers of the constituons, wiht liberals (NOT Democrats) meaning that they can make any law needs to be made. It has been interpeted by the courts to mean that Congress can make all sorts of laws following the liberal definition.
The Commerce Clause reads: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." What it means is that Congress can pass laws governing interstate commerce. Under Chief Reinquest, it the commerce clause is interpetted to mean that Congress can regulate interstate commerce, anything which affects interstate commerce and the methods of that commerce. It has been interpeted that when anything exchange of money, goods or services crosses statelines then it becomes interstate commerce. This is why Congress put the moritoruim on internet taxes, and why criminals that commit a crime(s) in two states are subject to federal juristion.
This law would fit very well under the Commerce Clause. Since internet service has to cross state and in many cases statelines, then it is clearly under the purvue of Congress. States can pass laws regarding servers in that state, but cannot require data to be retained by a company doing business in another state. But this whole issue actually gets more neabulus because an action done over the internet can actually be in two locations at once.
Anyway, I hope that sheds some light on the subject. MOST laws are either under the Nessasary and Proper or Commerce clause.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
It is very unsettling to know that someone else has had the same vision of their future life in their golden years. I said something similar to this not too long ago. My only comfort is in knowing that I am not alone. That, in itself, is not much to comfort me when I read the words of the parent poster. This is just par for the course; I expect that it will pass as law soon.
actually, the requiring people to get licensed before they have kids part of all that sounds like a pretty good idea. There're a lot of stupid people having a lot of stupid kids out there. The kind of stupid people that would allow all of the rest of that to pass.
my pet machine
Lets see .. I was just at an INS office the other day getting my manditory fingerprints of all prints on both hands as part of moving to the US. And that was along with a full description of me as well as a photo.
.. they are really fun :-)
nobody would want to live in a country that was like that
You should check out the requirements for legal immigration to the US
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Look at it this way: Assume there is a demand for underage pictures. If you wish to fill this demand, you can (1) force young kids to pose for you, (2) find somebody that LOOKS young, but is old enough so you don't get busted, or (3) use some creative ability to otherwise simulate underage pictures realistically. Which choice has the most risk? Which choice(s) can cover your ass?
When I say kiddie porn, I mean the freaks looking at naked pre-teens, not high school or college age women. Pretty hard to confuse a your average 10 year old with an 18 year old
rest of your rant...
If you follow the thread, I was replying to someone who was suggesting not going after pedophiles at all. My point is that it is ridiculous to give total freedom to people who will abuse it. If that's the case, them remove the organized army and police force. Just don't come crying to me when your family members are raped and murdered by roving gangs (see Congo). You always need *some* controls in place.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Yup, that's exactly why no new Pornography is created.
Everyone just passes around the same 60's era Playboy magazines and those satisfy everyone. There's no demand for new porn, so none is ever created.
idiot...
1. Kiddie-porn can be manufactured without children and it is legal to do it. The SCOTUS ruled that virtual kiddie porn is legal. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=16075
2. Images are non-rivalarous - you can make as many copies as you want. Thus if a kiddie-porn-pervert is, on average, satisified with 1000 photos and videos, then all it takes is the SAME 1000 photos and videos to satisfy 1 or 1,000,000 kiddie-porn-perverts. No new demand is created.
Nice, but your points do nothing to disprove mine.
1) ok, virtual porn. Well, we have virtual kiddie porn and it is legal. Guess what? The real kiddie porn is still being manufactured.
2) That is a ridiculous example. You know that the internet thrives on new content. Just look at the outcry here when a dupe article is posted. A lifelong pedophile won't be happy with the same thousand pictures, and you know it.
You misspelled fascist.
Tell me, please, where is the breaking point? What is the happy medium? Are the laws from pre 9/11 good enough for you, even though they really don't address anything in the virtual world?
Realize that in the US, you need a photo driver's license to drive, and that the license is used for a ton of things. If we did not previously have that until now, would you be screaming about it, or would you like it? Do you want photo ids abolished? If so, then how far back do we go? How many laws do we undo?
Note that my arguments here are not to support the data retention law of the main article. My point is about pedophilia, and that another poster suggested that the problem be ignored. My point is that you cannot have lawlessness, that some things are important enough to go after. Do be lazy and toss out "facism" everytime someone makes a point that some laws are necessary.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
what exactly would you like to see happen penetrationwise that isn't potentially harmful?
do you WANT a john holmesian penis penetrating a 6 week old vagina?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I don't think you get it. Uttering the words 'kiddie porn' grants an automatic victory to the prosecution. After all, pictures of naked kids is such a horrible crime that a few innocents and political activists (and a fat chunk of our Constitution) are a small price to pay.
In case no one got it, I was being sarcastic. Pictures in and of themselves are just pictures. Child abuse is what should be cracked down on, which will include some child pornographers but primarily otherwise upstanding parents, professors, and guardians with very painful and abusive child rearing habits.
At what point do we admit that we live in a police state?
"People searching for pics of little kids creates a demand for pics of little kids"
Pedo's mess with kids whether there is 'demand' for them to share the pics over the internet or not. I think it should be illegal to do stuff that's wrong, mear looking at stuff that's wrong is a very difficult subject... where do you draw the line? I came across a clip of things going wrong and someone getting a kickin (I didn't know what i was gonna see, and I dunno why the clip was uploaded to this particular clip site, but leaving that aside)... as far as I know, having that clip on your hdd isn't considered illegal. It's hardly normal to want to collect those kinda clips, so should it be illegal? Does it create demand for people being beat up? What about video's of people speeding causing crashes?
Where's the line, and why?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
That's the same kind of thinking that led the US to declare the War on Drugs. Go after demand and pretty soon supply drops. Of course, we've seen how well it's worked so far in lowering demand for drugs. I expect we'll have about the same amount of sucess with this endeavor.
It sounds to me like you should go after child molesters rather than pedophiles. Or are you going to arrest people purely based on sexual orientation?
No, the first one was much better than yours.
Seriously, let's examine what the article really says. "People with a vested interest in control support a law strengthening their control". That's it; that's all it says. Despite the use of emotive words like "upswell" (which BTW only appears in the
Or, to phrase it in a more sinister fashion : "let's make laws with a wide scope and potential for abuse, and justify them by focussing on a narrow scope that all right-thinking people agree with". Laws so wide that, from the point of view of their application, there's no difference between a child-molester and someone who doesn't agree with the government line...
Future headline : "Protest Group Arrested Under Kiddie-Porn Laws"? Not so far-fetched; just read some of the headlines in newspapers today and compare them to the actual article text. Technically accurate, emotionally manipulative, but factually deceptive...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Tell me, please, where is the breaking point? What is the happy medium?
You brought it up. You tell us. Who amongst us uncivilized masses is going to decide? If we're so uncivilized, then what right do we have to a representative democracy? Who will appoint the civilized dictator to put us on the "one and only" path to righteousness?
What?
But I thought the Internet was supposed to be safe as a mall! Or a city park!
Oh.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Check this from way back in 2000:
6 05,352394,00.html
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3
And:
Gmail.
Images are non-rivalarous - you can make as many copies as you want. Thus if a kiddie-porn-pervert is, on average, satisified with 1000 photos and videos, then all it takes is the SAME 1000 photos and videos to satisfy 1 or 1,000,000 kiddie-porn-perverts. No new demand is created.
If this were true, then wouldn't it also be the case that there would eventually be no demand for new movies of any kind? Or rock bands, etc? If a young kid today just wanted to listen to music from the 60s and 70s and watch movies from the same era, would they not be able to listen to just as many movies/music as if they were listening to new music/movies?
I could start a newspaper that is just a reprint of a newspaper from 50 years ago. So, April 14th 2006, you get the paper from April 14th 1956. It could be like a vintage newspaper.
The reality is that (I think) people want recent media whether it is movies, music, pr0n, whatever. I don't see anything obvious that would make kiddie pr0n different in this regard.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
For all we know, there could simply be a pool of say, 1000, images that are simply being recycled via digital copying over and over. No one has any hard data on this. We know nothing, yet laws are being drafted, essentially on the basis of rhetoric.
d porn
n ternet-pornography-statistics.html
From http://www.protectkids.com/dangers/stats.htm#chil
140,000 child pornography images were posted to the Internet according to researchers who monitored the Internet over six weeks. Twenty children were estimated to have been abused for the first time and more than 1,000 images of each child created
Another interesting site with some statistics:
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/i
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
You wouldn't leave your kids alone with free access to guns or alcohol.
My parents owned guns and had a liquor cabinet when I was a kid and I was a latch key kid. (I also never touched the gun or the alcohol.)
I don't leave my children alone very often, but we have left her for brief periods when we had to attend a parent teacher conference, when my wife and I wanted to go for a walk, and when I had to take my wife to the emergency room and my daughter was on her way home from school (she let herself in - she is 10). When doing that, we had some wine and beer in the house. And we weren't worried about it either. (And our daughter didn't touch the booze.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Maybe I'm more worried about a police state than about crime.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Which scumbags? The parents and priests and little league coaches that coerce 10 year olds into sex by abusing their position of authority over the child? Or the older guy trying to use online chat to convince some high school senior into having sex with him? The way I see it, neither is good but the former is in a whole different class than the latter.
In fact, if some teenage girl is really chatting online arranging to have sex with strangers then the older men who are agreeing to it are the least of the problem. If society is to intervene in that situation it should be to try to talk some sense into the girl. Actually society should try to talk some sense into the guy too because getting involved with a teenage girl who is so messed up that she is soliciting strangers online for sex is a Really Bad Idea.
What "online predators" boils down to is people being colossally stupid. On the other hand, parents and priests and little league coaches who have sex with ten year old children are evil.
Theres no reason for them to log my visits to Amazon.com.
The administration wants to know what books you might be reading. They might be subversive. Maybe you bought a book on how to use solar power, so they need to put you in jail.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The thing that finally stopped people from using drugs was more law enforcement. Thank god we finally solved that problem. I suggest we apply that same fail safe concept to this problem also.
>Either you're so distant from reality that you think people don't really do evil things and it's all just "Big Brother"'s fault, or you just don't want the police to find your underage porn collection.
I think most of us realize that people do really evil things.
A few of us also realize that the police are people.
I will note that recently the supreme court invoked the commerce clause to strike down a federal law as unconstitional for the first time in like 40 years just recently.
They have shown a willingess to pretty much say that ANYTHING you do could have an effect on interstate commerce.
Sadly this means that the limitation of powers is essentially null and void and the only way to strike these down is to find that they are contrary to something else.... because the commerce clause has now been interpreted to mean the gov can pretty much do anything... and the 9th ammendment aparently has little to no meaning either.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This post trumps all others for pure idiocy.
Ah, unintended self-referential humor. Thank you.
In Soviet Russia, email reads you.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
My point is about pedophilia, and that another poster suggested that the problem be ignored.
NOBODY has said that the problem be ignored. What I have said is that we do not need to criminalize behaviours that are not directly harmful. The act of making child porn is where the harm occurs so that is where the crime should be defined.
1) ok, virtual porn. Well, we have virtual kiddie porn and it is legal. Guess what? The real kiddie porn is still being manufactured.
Is it? Got proof? Compare the rates of creation before and after digital manipulation became easy enough to make the fake stuff. You wave your hands an AWFUL lot when it comes to supporting your beliefs.
2) That is a ridiculous example. You know that the internet thrives on new content. Just look at the outcry here when a dupe article is posted. A lifelong pedophile won't be happy with the same thousand pictures, and you know it.
"The Internet" is NOT the same thing as online market for kiddie porn. Again you are waving your hands and making all kinds of specious conclusions.
When you start advocating for the criminilization of what amounts to a thought crime, you really, really need to have your ducks in a row. Especially since these laws are really the first widespread thought crimes in the history of the USA.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The reality is that (I think) people want recent media whether it is movies, music, pr0n, whatever. I don't see anything obvious that would make kiddie pr0n different in this regard.
A major difference is that movies, music, regular pr0n, books, etc are all heavily marketed. In fact, a vast majority of such content is pure marketing and cross-promotion. Without the incessent beating-into-the-subconscious of marketing, there would be much less demand (this I hold to be self-evident, it would not be cost-effective to pay for the amount of marketing we have today if it wasn't necessary to maintain the level of new sales).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And do you intend on never leaving your house?
Watching the kid's every move might be practical when they are 8, but 13? Not even the best parent is going to have their kid under their supervision at all times, and moreover, I don't think they should.
The last link is hardly interesting.
"If you just talking about the freaks who wack off to pics of little girls, then think of this: People searching for pics of little kids creates a demand for pics of little kids. If the demand is there, then someone posts pics of little kids. Where do you think this pics come from? People sexually absuing and exploiting little kids and posting pictures of them online."
That's so deeply insightfull. So all we have to do to stop crime, is to lock in jail anyone who ever used money.
In Soviet Russia, stale jokes post you.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
yes I agree. The Bush Administration is turning our democratic nation into a Police State. I think that this is absolutely abhorrent and that the government is just trying to take away more and more of our rights.
please see my paper about the USA PATRIOT Act here
Ahh.. So, given the current political debate on immigration, this just might be what they intend.
Anything that is stored and retained for the "possibility" that the government may need it, can and will be exploited by organized crime, ie. the mob.
Forcing ISPs to archive all this data would be, in essense, a huge boon for every would-be extortionist who can either hack or bribe their way to the data.
Now I'm making a distinction between organized crime syndicates and the actual government, which might seem unnecessary, but I'll point that out to be fair.
You don't bust them without the logs. You get a warrant and THEN start logging their activity and bust them.
When I say kiddie porn, I mean the freaks looking at naked pre-teens, not high school or college age women.
In the extremely specific context of the exact statement that you made right here, right then.
When you back it up in law you have allowed it to be redefined as anything from a newborn to a granny so old all her pussy hair fell out.
That is the reality and it happens *every* time. Don't pretend that isn't the way the world works. Grow a pair and face reality.
The vast majority of kiddy raping is done by the family. Don't make up nonsense bullshit to justify wiping your ass with the constitution because you are too cowardly to deal with freedom in a productive manner.
You always need *some* controls in place.
Which was the fundamental basis of this country. You are arguing against exactly that. Pedophiles are statistically a non existant problem. Cowards desperate to rape the constitution in the name of "saving the children" are legion.
However, what these dimmwits in washington don't seem to get, is that nobody would want to live in a country that was like that. People don't excactly flock to police states, begging to emigrate...
--
Ummmm.... The dimwits you mention were *elected*. There are a lot of people who want to live in exactly that sort of society....well, as long as their "morals" are the ones being enforced. That's the entire point of the constitution; to say to those asshats who elect the dimwits: No. Fuck off you cowardly bitches!
But the cowardly bitches are legion and even working on amending the constitution to let their hatred rule.
I think your heart's in the right place, but you are light years away from reality.
I think we should initiate a policy of constant video surveillance of all households with children, not to mention legally mandated implantation of RFID devices in all children under the age of 18 so we can monitor their whereabouts 24/7/365.
I know your sort, you god damned leap year kiddy fiddler!!!.
If children are the concern,
I don't see police rounding up juveniles and under-agers out on the streets after 1AM
I don't see police arresting a minor who lights up a cigarette - or seen packing them.
Arresting minor in places they should not be.
Decent treatment for wards of the state.
Clearly, it has nothing to do with human decency.
But lets not get upset about the homeless, Katrina victins, or those who die for lack of health insurance.
Instead, some crackpot scheme to track emails. Really, congresscritters should be made to wear recorders 24/7, because they seen to have a nasty habit of not being able to recall things during investigations.
These is no groundswell for this, or is this a late initiative given unauthorised domestic tapping has been extrajudicially greenlighted.
The last link is hardly interesting.
Are you kidding?!
From the link:
Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.
Women favor chat rooms 2X more than men.
I'm going to a chat room, now.
I quit!
Actually, you should be the one setting the breaking point, because you are the one flinging the hyperbolic label, the ad hominen attack. I would guess you have spent zero time with the people who have been harmed by kiddie porn... the parents, the children and the pedos too. When you do, then try climbing back into your position and see how it feels. No enforcement and no attempt at protection is going to be perfect. Mix with the victims a bit and see if you think that due to all the imperfections we should simply not try. You might disagree with the poster, but you have not come up with anything better.
One of the first things that George Bush did when he entered the White House was to lock down the automatic release of presidential papers. Guess whose papers were coming up to be released? Reagan/Bush, followed by Bush/Quayle. Which means that (currently) his papers are also locked, at least until the next Democratic president takes over and reverses his decree.
So how much do people want to bet that all the Bush/Cheney White House data is intact and that the current administration is obeying its own rules? It will be very interesting to see that. Ollie North was hoist by his own petard because of email, as have several other politicos. Unless, of course, some future president comes along and gives Bush/Cheney blanket pardons.
I wonder if the current administration might be looking at bringing in a l337 hax0r d00d to do a number on their email system and launch a worm to delete certain messages....
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
So you're saying you don't support a woman's right to choose to have children?
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
Pure freedom is nice and all in theory, but when people are still too uncivilized to handle it, then it's unrealistic.
Freedom as an organizing principle of society doesn't mean people aren't held accountable for their actions. Just the opposite is true.
So, now if we want to live in a free society we are all supporting pedophiles? What is the terrorist argument not working for you anymore, George? "War on Drugs" didn't work either? What's next "War on child rapists", who could possibly be supportive of child rapists. Oh and by the way we will need to monitor all your communications take a DNA sample and anal probe you every once in a while just in case you are a child rapist. But if you are not a child rapist then don't worry because nothing bad will happen to you... except the anal probing, but hey you might enjoy it.
A society which allows people to exercise their freedom to the greatest extent possible until their choices comes into direct conflict with another person's freedom is the best form of society not because of any esoteric theory. Freedom is the natural state of a human being. Doesn't mean we can rape and pillage as we please, that wouldn't be freedom for the victims would it?
Controling violence in a society is never naturally in conflict with Freedom, anyone that says otherwise is up to something no good.
Hmmm....
;-/
People marking post about the USA banning email servers, "funny", reminds me of how dogs wag their tail when they are nervous of a bigger dog taking their bone.
Slight problem -- how do you tell who is an ISP? If I put up a comments section, I guess that makes me a "Service Provider?"
Rhetorical question: How does one tell who is responsible for retaining what logs? Answer: by requiring anyone who wants to provided services to register, post a "secure website" bond to AOL, or AT&T to ensure compliance? Uh...and how are P2P apps going to work in this scenario?
Yeah, I can see this working...as soon as they shut down public access to the internet and end-serfs find themselves on something as connected as USENET for P2P with only "licensed web service providers" able to provide "live" content.
Maybe the "FCC" will start issuing ISP licenses and begin monitoring "decency". Finally, media will be safe for children again...*cough*.
Oi vey!
-l
Actually, you should be the one setting the breaking point...
...because you are the one flinging the hyperbolic label, the ad hominen attack.
I have. But it's my breaking point. I have no right enforce it upon anybody else. And nobody has a right to force theirs upon me.
I have?? Where?? How far back did you go in the thread?
Mix with the victims a bit and see if you think that due to all the imperfections we should simply not try. emphasis mine
I said that?? Where? Where did I say that we shouldn't try? Does the maintenance or extension of freedom mean "not trying"?
You might disagree with the poster, but you have not come up with anything better.
And you have?... Besides, better for you is not always better for all.
Maybe you should make a feeble attempt to understand that things like kiddie porn and bestiality, etc. arise from sexual repression. It is a result of the attempt by the authorities to enforce abstinence. You want something better? Try more sexual liberation instead of repression. When people are allowed to have normal sexual relations, the depravity will be greatly reduced. The boilerplate solutions being proposed will accomplish nothing. As history as proven. As a matter of fact, it has made the situation what it is today. And after all this, you haven't answered the question, who will rule over the uncivilized (note the last sentence) masses? Since you complained about my lack of one, what's your solution? Are you one of those who simply believe that more prisons will make the problem go away?
What?
In Soviet Russia, your comeback still sucks.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
ROFL... dangit
Anonymous Cowards are at -6...
Am I the only one who sees it, or are they using a hard to turn down excuse like stopping child pornography so that they can get laws to pass which normally wouldn't much more easily.
Also, is it just me, or hasn't China just been noted in the news for a similar thing to do with e-mails? Yeah, while we're at it, why don't we just go ahead and switch to communism where the government controls our lives.
No, what he is saying is that he doesn't support a STUPID woman's right to choose to have children.
Lets put video cameras in peoples homes that will record everything that happens. It's really okay that we do this, because we won't look at the tapes without a warrent.
It helps to look at how we can use these same methods outside the electronic world after all.
You don't really know much about encryption, do you?
Yes, I know plenty about encryption. But you will probably go on to explain it to me, since you are so brilliant. Most modern-day encryption techniques are based on mathematical problems which (always assuming that no genius comes up with a shortcut) have an exponential time-to-solve curve based on the size of the problem. Oh hey, there is is. No kidding? Mathematical problems? Like, numbers and stuff?
So this, 'exponatinunshiun time to solve' curvy thingy, would that be your attempt to say that this class of problems can be computed in P time?
Asshat.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think your heart's in the right place, but you are light years away from reality.
...and this from a person who has a sig advocting murdering Republicans. Wow...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.