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Congress May Consider Mandatory ISP Snooping
An anonymous reader writes to mention a News.com story covering a most disquieting trend in the House of Representatives. From the article: "Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette's proposal says that any Internet service that 'enables users to access content' must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed. It's not clear whether that requirement would be limited only to e-mail providers and Internet providers such as DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable modem services. An expansive reading of DeGette's measure would require every Web site to retain those records."
Citizens may consider a different Congress.
Who runs the country? The mega-companies, or the government? what do congress think they are doing? do they have any idea how much this would COST the ISP's and hosting companies??!
With the amount of data requied there will be a big boost of business for the Hard Drive Companies
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Oh... Forget about "the free". Or brave. Land of the... prisoners.
Grab some boots and make yourself comfortable.
the ball started rolling on this in 2003 while we were asleep.
From the PATRIOT act (2003):
"Creating a new category of "domestic security surveillance" that permits electronic eavesdropping of entirely domestic activity under looser standards than are provided for ordinary criminal surveillance under Title III. (Section 122) "
btw- does "Post Anonymously" mean anything anymore?
It's time for patriots in the Western world to start defending their countries against these career politicans.
What, officer? No-- I run a highly unpopular website. Indeed, no one ever comes here. Can I prove it? Absolutely. You see, I keep extensive logs, and those logs clearly show that no one has ever been here.
What's that you say-- that you went here? Well, I am sure that you accessed some other page, merely masquerading as my page. Those phishers, you know. Very sneaky.
If the virus makers started making code that did queries to the search engines with words from the 'NSA keywords' lists that exist.
Bury the data gathering system in data. Such could not happen to a nicer group of companies like Time Warner, AT&T, Verison et la.
Yay, this time the EU came before the US when it came to spending billions for zip.
What's it good for? Finding some terrorists (the excuse here)? Or child porn traders (the other excuse here)? What is it REALLY used for? P2P snooping. It's that simple.
Now, you cannot store everything that's been sent through the 'net. It's simply BY FAR more than you could credibly store. If they are dumb enough to demand that, it's time to buy HEAVILY into Samsung, Seagate and Matrox stocks. Over here, they are storing "connection data". I.e. who talks with whom.
Now, it might be me, but hasn't that already been rendered useless with projects like TOR and ANTS? Where your data is sent through multiple non-logging hops?
In other words, ISPs will have to spend more money on hardware. Since ISPs aren't some charity organisations, this means they have to up their prices to cover the additional expense. In other words, the 'net gets more expensive.
And this, in turn, means that you're going to fall behind, in use and availability of the 'net, to those nations that aren't dumb enough to demand some pointless logging.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is just incredible.
How much longer do we have until one of these scary as laws just goes through?
I gave the bat commader a high five.
...as long as we, the public, can get to see which web site you've visited, and get to see the emails you're sending and recieving.
What's that, Congressman? "Invasion of privacy" you say? Goodness, so it is.
It's claimed that tracking content isn't the intention. "The idea is not to preserve content, just identifying information in order to track down people who are implicated in the online sexual abuse of children." (From the press release.) http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/co01_degette/ statementinternetexploit.html
It might be a little inconvenient for hundreds of thousands of web services to permanently retain terrabytes of data on millions of law-abiding citizens, or be a bit of an invasion of people's privacy, and sure, it might be a little prone to abuse in terms of letting law enforcement agencies have essentially unlimited access to a person's detailed browsing history for, potentially, decades into the past -
but come on! Think of the literally tens of paedophiles and terrorists who might have their data retained by american-hosted sites like www.comegetsomekiddypornthenblowsomepeopleup.com, then be caught when that site is subpoenaed. Think of the children!
We are witnessing, first hand, the effects of government education. The lack of any meaningful civics classes in the last 35 years is one reason why our elected officials keep pulling this anti-American crap out of their arses. They can't help it -- they are ignorant fools.
it would likely stimulate additional R&D into even higher data storage and really huge backup technologies.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Say hello to my little sig.
They should also demand that the postoffice retain all records of all persons sending letters with their origin and destination (with the next step being retaining a copy of the content, indefinately).
The anonymous snailmail boxes on the street have to be banned, because they assure to much anonymity. Better yet, the mailboxes need to be provided with fingerprint- and iris- scanners to identify the sender. To make sure that any intermediate transport is recorded, all envelopes have to equiped with personal ID equipment too.
Shut down the US web hosting business! The US economy is in such great shape that every opportunity should be used to transfer businesses out of the country. It's only fair.
The Bush administration's current position is an abrupt reversal of its previous long-held belief that data retention is unnecessary and imposes an unacceptable burden on Internet providers. In 2001, the Bush administration expressed "serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes."
Looks like it's time for Minitru to step in.
"The administration has always seen it as a necessary step at stopping Goldst^H^H^H^H^H^H Bin Laden."
That, and we've always been at war with Eastasia.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
He/she is probably a NSA/TSA/CIA/FBI Government spook trying to get ideas help so he/she can try to get a promotion and climb the ranks of the Gest...Ayea mean of Government.
nT
I'm getting 504s on TFA and Google News' link to the ZDNet article covering it. Is it very different from what Reuters is repoting on what Zimbabwe's doing?
Is it just me or a law like this is just a police state waiting to happen? This type of information would be ideal for the profling of american citizens. I imagine this works a lot like spyware. It learns from the website you visit and from there computers put you into different categories. If we are lucky it will be something like:
Cat I. Terrorist
Cat II. Child molesters
Cat III. Everyone else
Regretably once that system is in place what will happen is this.
Cat I. Terrorist
Cat II. Child molesters
Cat III.Dangerously liberal
Cat IV. Dangerously conservative
Cat V. Too smart
Cat VI. ????
From there on, all they have to do is keep all the dirt they can on the subjects. If they ever present a problem for the goverment( by voicing their opinions), discredit them. Voila, they have absolut power. All they have to do is keep gas cheap, TV entertaining and food plentiful an the rest of the american citizenry will follow in line.
It's all about finding better ways
Maybe we should just let congress tag our ears like roaming herd and get this whole thing over with. I mean, that's where they wanna go with this anyway, right?
:-\
As long as they let us choose our own colors for the tags, I think we'd agree as a society to go along with it.
"Oh you chose red? You know the the fashion conscious monitoring target nowadays goes for more of an earth tone, maybe forest green or tope."
Yeah, that would work.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/politics.html
-Tom
Protect yourself and start using Tor.
http://tor.eff.org/
or for you debian based users
$ sudo aptitude install tor
Donald Ray Moore Jr. (mindrape)
Suspected Terrorist
Considering how often this sort of thing is staring to come up, I think it's time to start a bounty fund. The next time some elected person starts up with this nonsense, the fund should be used to reward any ISP or IT operator/technicians who post a list of every site and e-mail address visited, mailed to, or received by the representative, his or her spouse, and his or her children.
After all, of they think it's such a great idea, and not at all an invasion of privacy, they won't mind, will they?
Anyone else think this is an Orwellian grab for power?
"Bother" said Pooh as he reloaded his Uzi...
Shea. Right.
I ain't doing fuckin shit.
Here's My logfile:
06:10:00 Unauthorized User Successfully logged in as root
06:10:01 Crontab - logs succesfully deleted
06:10:10 Unauthorized User (Disconnected)
Maybe it's time to borrow an idea from SpamCop and start something called PorkCop. This would offer monthly rankings of Washington politicians, listing how much they've banked in "campaign contributions", "research" and general pork-barelling from which corporations. Naturally there would be appealing, baby-kissing photographs, links enabling you to offer your own contributions (or, if you have no money, your prayers) and cross-references to all the favours I mean "laws" these fellows are proposing.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
An expansive reading of the DOES suggest that every website should keep those records for the live of your account + a minimum of 1 year. Minimum of 1 year AFTER the end of the subscription.
Quite frankly I can only give a sorta hollow laugh/snigger. Sure sure I live in a different country but if anything dutch politicians are even worse. Dutch voters? Well, lets just say that the brightest of them would make a texan look dumb.
Our current party in power and its leader (CDA and Balkenstein) are firm admires of Bush and intent on copying everything. Although in a way that removes even what little value the republicans add. Sorta like europe always takes the fast out of fast food.
You sometimes hear old people, who been in WW2 or WW1, that kids these days need a good war to set them straight.
I am inclined to agree. NOT that war itself is good are creates character BUT after a big war there is always a period of great political change. It is the time to take bold steps while it seems decades of peace just lead to a slow rot.
America got the new deal, england had a huge social reform, holland got rid off "pillars/zuiltjes" (flattening of the classes?). Also introduced such thing as national healthcare and offcourse the buildup to women liberation etc etc.
Time for another WW. And no the war on islam oops terror don't count. We need an enemy that can put up a fight so afterwards both parties are determined never to have a war again (well only against their former allies but that doesn't count).
I am not making any sense and got stupid ideas? Cool, I should run for office.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The we may be seeing the beginnings of a dictatorship here in the United States. We should heed her warnings.
If you had to think about this, then you missed the point.
However in all seriousness. Fuck Congress.
WE WILL TRACK THE PEDOFILES DOWN OURSELVES!
Now go do something fucking productive like oversight.
Or rig your Diebold box3n
This is not my idea; a fellow slashdotter brought it up before when mandatory storing of e-mails was discussed. He said something like "If this goes through, I'll spread my adress to every spammer on Earth. Then they can store my thousands of v1agr4-mails all they want." You could whitelist your friends adresses, or any adress you're expecting mail from, and send the rest straight to the trash.
Taking this further, if they were to start storing visited sites, etc., I'd set up some kind of script to randomly visit sites (only "safe" ones of course, like news sites, and not retrieve images to reduce bandwidth load), and run it 24/7. A week worth of my infrequent surfing gave me about 10 MB of Privoxy logs - imagine what one site every 5 seconds, 24/7, will do.
This is just an idea, and it might not work - we can filter spam, so can "they" filter out news sites, but creating vast amounts of data for them to store indefinitely is something worth thinking of. If something becomes too much of a hassle/cost for companies, they quit doing it.
Think of the unintended consequences. If this passes, I think we can expect the free internet at coffeehouses, libraries, airports, etc. to end quite abruptly. Maybe we'll have to present a national ID card first...
l s)
I know your questions are rhethorical, but from this Conservative Libertarian's viewpoint:
1. Who runs the country? Lobbysts, and those who hire them. The will of the people is little more than a quaint notion. Just look at this Amnesty program for ILLEGAL aliens. 80% of America is against it from recent opinion polls, but the politicians don't care. Same goes for the Dubai ports deal. America's against it, but the politicians will make it work anyway.
2. What does Congress think it's doing? Whatever the hell it wants. It's not like that 10th Amendment to the Constitution applies any more. Seriously, have you ever (EVER?) heard any poliician say "We can't do that, that's a State Right?" or "We can't pass a law requiring XYZ, that violates the 10th Amendment?" Nobody else has either.
3. Do they have any idea how much it will cost? No. Like they care. It won't cost THEM anything. That's your problem, buddy. Now get back to work paying your taxes. (Speaking of taxes, Tax Amnesty Day is the 3rd of June for 2006, meaning that if the tax burden were evenly distributed, the average person would work from Jan 1 to June 3 just to pay their taxes for that year. Now consider that 49% pays no federal taxes. Don't believe me? Go to the IRS web site and look it up yourself. http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.x
Anything else I can clear up for you?
(And moderators, just because you disagree, it doesn't mean it's "flamebait" or "troll". It could simply indicate that I'm an idiot.)
AT&T: You want me to WHAT??
NSA: But think of the children...
AT&T: Let me look at that fiber cable...[snip]
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
An anonymous reader writes to mention a News.com story covering a most disquieting trend in the House of Representatives. From the article: "Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette's proposal...
F***ing Republicans.
What? DeGette's a Democrat?
Well, it just goes to prove that both parties are as stupid, greedy, and evil as the Republicans.
More encryption products need to be made available. They don't have to be completely full proof, just easily available. Built into products by default so it can get in the hands of the general public. Because huge surveillance is on its way. Its coming and it wont be stopped, it can only be prolonged.
Encryption is going to be the answer. Its like people getting random searches at the airport. More time and resources is required to open up each persons luggage. We shouldn't all be carrying our personal items in clear bags. Some people have freaky fetishes, some others have serious problems. But those people should not be judged by the things they own. They have the right to have a private life. And the same thing goes for our content, our personal messages/photos/audio/reading habits..... everything that travels over the air and miles of cable. It should be put in a new bag.....ENCRYPTION.
The vast majority of us is opposed to any form of illegal wiretapping or data retention. At the point where our "representatives" don't represent us anymore but try to force controversial ideas upon us that violate the Constitution that is where democracy ends and a totalitarian regime begins.
I am urging my fellow slashdotters to wake up NOW and take one minute of their time and email their "representatives" with their opinion about this matter. Hopefully our children will still enjoy living in a democracy that respects the Constitution on which grounds it was founded and representatives that actually represent the Will of the People.
I finished your improperly finished sentance, sir.
So, the "land of the free", huh?
Sometimes I'm really glad I don't live in America.
i have over 3 million users and 1.5 million hits a day, they going to cover my costs for storage?
Or consider hosting in different (more free) country.
:-(
:-|
:-(
Is there any "more free" country? Let me know! I'm afraid that all the politicians from all the countries all over the world were attending the same school of politics...
If I hear that the same things happen in Russia then I say: "What do you expect from the totalitarian regime?". And now - what I'm supposed to say about America? If I'll try to be unbiased then I must say the same sentence no matter what country it is.
So I say: "What do you expect from the totalitarian regime?"
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
So, basically, this is a feel-good wank by the Congress that passes some vague and relatively innoxious wording that gives the FCC the final power to determine broad overpowering details. Looks like a poster child for why there has to be some oversight on legislation by bureaucracy.
This is yet another blow in a long line of abuses by this government towards the people who they supposedly serve.
As others have noted it's unclear to many whether the government or the corporations are actually calling the shots - well, actually it's TOO clear.
Increasingly you hear people saying "vote out the incumbents" and similar sentiments, which are good - but the problem is that the entire system is broken - not the broken, but willfully corrupted, obscured, and backwards. This won't truly change anything anymore than simply wishing our government was the government we portray in our history books.
This will not be the last attack on your freedom, nor will it be anywhere near the type of stuff that is coming. With every step we take towards a completely authoritarian system the abuses and usurpations get bolder, the regard for your freedom and rights fade further away.
You cannot fix a broken and corrupted system by trying to work with the broken tools within the confines of that broken system where even the remedies provided for abuses are as broken as the system itself.
I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I do think that unless people are willing to organize and do whatever is necessary to take our country back - to take risks and to stand up regardless of what others will think, regardless of the law or anything else - then we're doomed to end up wherever this ship of fools is headed.
I'm not suggesting armed revolution or anything that severe at this point, and on the other end of the spectrum I am not talking about something as ineffective as a simple protest where people stand around and hold signs - it's time to get creative.... a million people or more showing up in DC and marching into the capital building and occupying it until actions are taken to restore and preserve our rights....I don't know - that's just one thought and maybe not the answer, but something has to be done.
Get a sense of humour, there, Fritz!
Just for the record, the "representative" pushing this is a Democrat.
If this isn't motivation for people to get out and vote, then I give up.
Do libraries have to do this? When I check out a book do they have to keep a record of it indefinately? What about pay-per-view? Do they have to keep these kinds of records? What about car rentals? Or hardware stores?
Dude, Where's my country?
They must have discussed the "harmonizing" of Internet regulations, to have the US government monitor Internet communications as actively as China does.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
And people ask my why I bothered to install GPG on my Mac.
Maybe it's time to borrow an idea from SpamCop and start something called PorkCop. This would offer monthly rankings of Washington politicians
Here's a start toward PorkCop.
I see anonymous proxy servers getting a big boost in business now. All the ISP will see is you going to a server...then what?
Can they really see where you go after heading off to another site inside the proxy? Or will congress outlaw proxy servers next?
Hell, why not just outlaw the internet? There's so much evil going on with child porn, pirated movies and music. I mean, that's all there is right? So just shut it all off and let us go back to just reading newspapers and watching TV.
You can bet there's some out there that would just love to do that.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Apparently Diana DeGette received 86 - 100% approval ratings from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the past 6 years, according to Vote-Smart.org
How can this apparently high approval rating from a purported supporter of civil liberties be reconciled with Rep. Degette's recent anti-privacy action? Was the ACLU on crack when they scored her?
"war on terror" "crime against humanity" When will politicians realise that abstract nouns are not a justifiction for depriving me of my liberty?
Umm they have already considered it, now they are just trying to find a way to get the public to accept it and ram it thru.
Can you say manadatory encryption of all content? ( at least until they ban encryption that does not have the governmental backdoor, then content wont matter as just the 'act of hiding' will be enough to get you jailed )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The governments and Mega-corporations around the world will not be satisfied until every peon is stamped, tagged, looged, and taxed into oblivion. The answer short of world wide uprising is to use the same technology that is used against us against our oppressors. The choices are already out there. The government created ARPANET, and the resulting internet and networking technologies are beginning to make the cartel controlled media empires obsolete. Pissed off hackers can easily write software that will cause the cartels and governments to stamp and log themselves into oblivion, and worms are currently the most effective software distribution tool. The millions of wireless routers, NIC card, and computers out there can be turned into a very widespead network infrastructure that is owned by the people in general. Some people are already experimenting with Mininets, FreeWans, and other networks that operate completely independent of the Internet. Even a small box of DVD's (encrypted) sent by snailmail or courier allows a huge transfer of information. When Congress or any other government body overtaxes, over monitors, or otherwise over-restricts the Internet, then people will use alternative ways to communicate. Current technologies already provide ways for people to communicate independently of the government-cartel infrastructure. RFID is eventually going to be used in nearly every piece of clothing or consumer item we purchased. Since many governments promote recycling, I will do the same. When RFID readers become widely available for a reasonable price. Embedded RFID chips can be removed and covertly planted on the verhicles, clothes and items belonging to government officials. RFID readers contained in peoples' vehicles (or even along side of the roads) can be connected to computers. These computers can form a tracking network. The question is, "How likely is that to happen?" Not very likely until some person or group comes up with a way to sell this idea to criminal elements or dissident organizations or that someone is a criminal, dissident, or hacker himself. The wide availability of high power lasers in some industrial and consumer electronics allow people to create devices that can be used to blind others at a long distance. Just as computer and networking technology is making the printing press obsolete. Various types of consumer electronics may do the same with the gun. It is amazing at how a cheap $30 CVS disposable camcorder can be converted into night vision equipment. It is also remarkable that many different types of consumer digital cameras can be converted to covertly strip search people. The government spends several tens of thousands of dollars on this type of technology while hackers spend less than a few hundred. Since it is mostly impossible to get a fair hearing in traffic court, technology can be easily adapted to foil the tools used by governments to extort fines from drivers. Simple high gloss clear-coat paint and a few LED's can be used to prevent most digital cameras from reading licence plates. A $5 laser pointer can be used to block the view of a $5,000 police camera. A home made device that quickly and randomly changes the brightness of an array infrared LED's can easily confuse the brightness (or AGP) control circuitry of most electronic cameras. A high powered BB gun can permantly disable the same camera. A piece of tape or paper can render a camera useless until the tape is removed. A $100,000 X-ray system used to monitor the entrance to a building is useless if people can leave the same building through an unmonitored exit (prevent the door from locking when one leaves will allow that person to re-enter). A loud fire excape exit alarm can be easily muffled by duct tape over the buzzer (if a high pitched alarm) or by piercing the buzzer with a needle. Am I worried about being on some list for posting this? Yes, slightly. When the governments come after people like me or the millions of bloggers out there, they will be having much bigger problems. Governme
Let's face it, if there are enough Slashdotters to break websites in seconds, there's enough to vote in some congressmen.
/.ed Congress" t-shirt would help too. 100% turnout from eligible voters would follow - in fact some non US citizens would probably find a way to vote to get karma.
How to get them to vote? If Taco offered karma points to people who can prove they voted somehow. A ThinkGeek "I
Ummm didnt you get the memo? The Corporations bought the government quite a while ago.
As far as cost, it will cost *them* nothing. They will just pass it along to you and I. Just like they already do with other 'fees'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
My foot. Bastards.
The US Constitution has been nullified by the corporations buying the government. Its no longer governent 'for the people, by the people'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Her website has a press release about this:
w ww.house.gov/degette/contact.shtml
http://www.house.gov/degette/contact.shtmlhttp://
I truly don't think that she has considered the chilling effect to privacy that this would have or the economic consqeuences to ISPs or the burden it would place on them.
Who's views does this represent? Not mine. Not anyone's I talk to. Who do these politicians think they are? No one wants this shit, except those in power. Its time we take back what is rightfully ours - our government.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
On a side note, yay, someone I can finally vote against come the next election! I'll drop her an email and explain why I'll be voting against her when the next election comes up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The US Government can snoop on me all they want. I got nothing to hide. Bring it on NSA, CIA, and/or FBI. Here's a preview of my recent actions and thoughts.
1. I know US has 300 some nuclear weapons land and/or sea based. I know it's more but 300 is the declared amount.
2. I know the chemical composition of C4.
3. I know how to survive a nuclear blast.
4. I thought about perfect time for terrorist to strike if they could. June 6, 2006. (6/6/06)
5. I solved the world's global warming problems. Convert CO2 into Oxygen and build half a dozen enviromission power plants.
6. I was taught that a little bit of C4 goes a long ways. Navy SWCC told me that C4 the size of a pen can blow elevator doors wide open.
Of course, I am fiercely patriotic and would kill Bin Laden and anyone who threatens USA in a heart beat. And I watched United 93 movie. I'm not scared of the US Government and I got nothing to hide.
\
By historical necessity. When you start out as a frontier society spending every day in the hard-scrabble for existence, that sort of experience leaves a deep impression for generations. Voters in the West do support tightening the purse strings. You may recall that Ross Perot's central theme was paying off the national debt. He did very well across the western states.
On other economic issues, too, people in the West are unhappy with the way things are going. It's not like the urban centers where public transportation is available. Across the whole of the West everyone drives very long distances to shop, work, and all the other things Americans do. So $3/gallon bites hard. Plus the price of natural gas, which a great many people switched to during the 80's to avoid the high price of oil, has skyrocketed as well. Had the past winter been colder, you would have seen a tremendous uproar over the price of heating. As it was, it hurt too.
There are right-wing pseudo-Christian elements in the West, to be sure, but voters are more independent than anything and supported Republicans where they did more on economic issues. But now the divide is widening.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The constitution is to protect us from the will of the people. The people would be spied upon as they have nothing to hide. The people would give up their 1st amendment rights for perceived safety, and the rest of the bill of rights for that matter. The people would have drug laws to protect them from the responsibility of parenting. The people would have loyalty oaths and mandatory flag worship and government as a religion because they love their country so much. The people would close our borders and insulate us from a big scary world and globalism, except for our armies which would show the world the American way at the point of a gun. The people think they are entitled to cheap gas and the rest of the world's resources. The people need politicians to stand for constitutional principles and act like a responsible parent by setting rules and boundaries to the government, but they act like the irresponsible ones who give their petulant children everything they demand. Its time to stand up against the people and for the constitution.
Why should people from other countries get their info logged because of some stupid US law? I doubt that every surfers IP would be looked up, verified to be in the US, and only then the information is stored.
I write fiction, so I look up all sorts of wierd things on the Internet. At one point I was researching the layout and construction of buildings at Cape Canaveral because one of my stories is about people stealing the space shuttle just before a category six hurricane. It wouldn't be hard for a paranoid sort to imagine that I was planning some attack.
Anyone remember the movie, "The Man with One Red Shoe?" Anyone can appear guilty if placed under enough scrutiny.
We need to fight back. We are losing the war on terror, because we are helping the terrorists. We are allowing our representatives to take away our liberties in exchange for empty promises of security. If we allow this to keep going forward, we'll be giving up our liberty for good. To paraphrase an old quote, all it takes for evil to triumph is for the rest of us to do nothing.
The U.S. has enemies and we need to be vigilant in our defense against them. But how is this change going help protect us? The sheer volume of information being kept will be prohibitive. Those that are really up to mischief will find a way around this monitoring. The rest of us will have our every experience on the web left open to scrutiny.
I can easily imagine people writing viruses that cause your computer to visit all sorts of questionable sites, so that millions of innocent people now have profiles that match those of the terrorists the government is looking for.
I don't know how to solve the problem of terrorism, but I do know that taking away my rights isn't part of the solution. The U.S. needs to stand as a beacon of liberty. We should be the one place in the world where you can be sure that you are in no danger from the government if you have done nothing wrong.
Fight back. Vote against anyone who tries to take away your rights, and remember, the Bill of Rights was meant to protect the most important rights, not to list the only rights you have.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
This may be inevitable -
... "Fuck the mandated snooping!" and "Kiss my encrypted ass!"
But consider a future where high speed ubiquitous full duplex internet access is available. I know this is a big "if" and I don't want to debate it here - suffice it to say that it is likely to happen soon (think WImax and Fiber to the home currently in rollout)
Won't Darknet(s) and Freenet become feasible? They are not now because broadband is so limiting (throttled uploads) - but when a good portion of us are lit up on glass won't we be able to say
no?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
A couple months ago I wrote up proposed legislation that would have gone far beyond what this law would do. Under my bill, each national-ID-card-carrying citizen would be required to spend 50% of their waking life spying on other people, recording everything they ate, everybody they interacted with, and every store they might walk into. No, I am afraid that simply watching what people do online is insufficient for creating Planet Nerf, where everything is soft, safe, and votes for Jesus. This is because the offline world still provides too much opportunity for non-observed interaction between consenting adults.
/sarcasm
If you want a copy of my (oddly rejected) legislation, drop me a line, I know I have it here somewhere...
This will be extremely useful in proving political corruption. Examining all calls between K Street, Capitol Hill, and the White House should provide enough information to put quite a number of politicians in jail.
It's agonizingly ironic; that Congress forces us to pay for the removal of our privacy.
Look to one of the oldest books: The Bible. In that day, the government supposedly made Jesus carry his own cross up a hill before nailed him to it.
In essence, they made him fund the means toward his own execution.
Now in modern times, the government is making citizens fund the removal of their own privacy? I am not surprised.
Also interesting is to note that the former was considered a criminal and a terrorist (after all, he spoke of the collapse of government). The latter are just ordinary citizens such as ourselves...
Is there a difference?
Disclaimer: I am not Christian.
Why the does the Slashdot icon of the American Flag only have 12 stipes?
I'm from Colorado. Whenever she's here she's always talking about how all different sorts of Americans need to do all sorts of things to give up different freedoms. She also has a committee that oversees the EPA in a time which is seeing many places with water with the pH of vinegar. She's useless.
How do they honestly expect to be able to comb through such a vast amount of records anyway? Google's infrastructure is incredibly large and still doesn't catalogue every inch of the internet. What this is proposing is to have millions of individual records from millions of individual sites, are they going to attempt to build a Google-esque infrastructure to search this?
I obey the law even though my car allows me to go 130mph and to be used as a getaway in a jewel heist - both of which are illegal in my state - so does this mean they'll next pass a bill requiring a device to log everywhere I go in my car just so police can use it to track me if necessary? What happened to this country? To its people? Or am I being naive and blind to the fact that it was as it always like this?
any Internet service that 'enables users to access content'
Sign up for my new supplementry internet service, $9.99 per month.
*WE DO NOT LOG ANYTHING!*
Note:
This internet is fully in compliance of all relevant "mandatory data retention" laws. This is a supplementarty post-only internet service, and does not enable users to access any content of any sort. We recommend all users also subscribe to a second service for all of their content access needs.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Seems separately they (Google AND the US govt agencies) are trying to create realtime-neural net awareness, or some sort of "Mind of God" (Remember Bolts from the Gods" "Hand of God", "Eye of God" projects?) wherein the agents are "plugged-in", or "on the net" via some synaptic hookup.
I mean, maybe in 15 years, they'll have a crude mind-meld "Your thoughts are my thoughts". It won't be two-way but by then, maybe the govt will have "Mind MELT" capabilities, a la "Telephon". Talk about MIND COPS/THOUGHT POLICE. Then, literally, in real time, you could be summoned or arrested in seconds thanks to geospatial (imagine Arc GIS.)
Initially, I am sure it will be truly, massively "mind-boggling", to say the least... (Or, is that "to think the least"?)
Would that be Inference, Conference? Maybe the way to combat that then would be to have EVERYone "think nice thoughts". Might make heir jobs boring as hell. Or, everyone think in the most chaotic, random, tortured manner , from the most depressing to the most heart-rending thoughts and overwhelm their "mood sensor".
Seems the government and the wealthy are single-handedly, with the snap of two fingers, bringing back the mood ring, well, as soon as they "link up all the agents". Sadly, the public will be pushed into a cowered state, until, at some point, the population lashes back so hard in a deep, undulating, resonating way that secession, sedition, treason all look like malleable, meaningless words.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Fortunately, nobody's asking you to kill the people who are threatening the USA -- just vote them out of office.
Goatse comes to mind.
I have written to DeGette in the past. She doesn't listen.
A close friend of mine works for a large local ISP and web hosting provider. He fears that mandantory detailed logs will drive his company out of business. The telco in our area is actually a customer-owned cooperative that somehow managed to absorb a bunch of exchanges once owned and operated by GTE and USWest. Despite its size, the telco is barely staying in business. Telco equipment is expensive, maintaining and trenching cable is expensive. Energy prices rise. Customers are switching to cell phones and are demanding low prices. The ISP portion of the telco is done in conjunction with a once-small mom-and-pop business in the area. They have grown to do DSL for all of the telco's exchanges, cable modems for several cities, business grade T1/T3/OC3, and web hosting. This side of the business is also constantly skating on the brink of bankruptcy. To create a detailed logging policy, upgrade routers to do more sniffing and blocking, install sniffer PCs, create storage space for all of the logs, and most importantly, buy or write software to sift through hundreds of gigs of logs, will cost the company far too much. It's basiclly impossible given their current razor thin margins.
If the governement wants ISPs to do detailed logging, they had better start issuing grants so smaller ISPs and smaller web hosting providers can actually afford these strict requirements.
Any internet service that allows users to access "content" ? What the hell?
Unfortunately, the strategy of bombing oil-producing countries does not seem to be able to bring gas prices to less than ten times what they were when the Interstate Highway system was designed, TV has not been entertaining since the "Burns and Allen" show went off the air, and you can easily go to the supermarket and spend fourty dollars on nothing really, and that's before the tractors run out of gas, and global warming turns the farmland to floods and deserts.
--Programmer in Chief
is regrettably no longer anti-American. Given the recent and rapid degradation of the personal privacy of the American public, this type of thinking is sadly becoming quite the defining characteristic of our country. It is only anti-American in the sense that it hurts the citizens which it ostensibly aims to protect, but it is a wholly American way of thinking today.
Didn't users in China have this problem and someone wrote a really nice network anonymizer that lets 1000's of people participate in a virtual network that made all request anonymous and virtually untracable?
Am I the only one who has started investigating things like TrueCrypt for file storage and now strongly want encrypted email messages as a standard? I have nothing to worry about, but if our government wants to declare war on private citizens, I'm planning to go completely off their grid by using as much obfuscation and encryption technology as I can find, and share that with everyone I know.
I'm hoping that email message encryption will become a standard...its been available for a long time in various forms, but not all email clients implement the various forms, and people find them too confusing to setup and/or use. I want it implicit that to use a particular email protocol, messages must be encrypted and not just connections. Does anyone know of anything like a secure SMTP that not only accepts SSL connections, but also inspects the unencrypted data and rejects messages sent without encryption? I would like things to get to the point where I can bounce email back to people if they don't encrypt it- maybe emailing them a link to software that does the encryption. I know its a pipe dream now, but only when such tools are available will I be able to go 100% encrypted email in storage and transport.
If this happens, American internet service providers (as in the ones providing the services, ie google, yahoo, msn), and content providers (penny-arcade.com, youtube, wikipedia, etc) who decide it's uneconomical to store every record (the service I help run can't keep logs longer than 15 days or it runs the disks out of space, and even 15 is pushing it (the weblog is 1.5GB per day minimum, to store logs for one year given the service doesn't become more popular would require a 250$ investment in a new hard drive every 2 months) and it's a free service dammit.
The company I work for colocates servers and allows the customer to have root access while we have none. How are we technically going to retain these records on servers we don't even have access to? What if the customer is from outside the USA?
And the really stupid thing is that only non-techies users don't know how to cover their tracks by using Tor, proxy, hacked proxies, etc. What a waste.
Sheesh. Why don't we just all move to China, Zimbabwe or Iran?
It seems the US is sinking to the bottom of the pile when it comes to government intrusiveness and snooping on Net users.
Now US citizens have to deal with:
- massive, systematic NSA snooping,
- un-checked, covert FBI investigations,
- DoJ judicial suppressions of EFF advocacy; and
- a Congress that makes the Belarussian parliament look liberal democratic.
On top of this, beleaguered American net users also have to deal with the DMCA, and the draconian powers given to the RIAA and MPRA that allow these organisations untrammelled power to pursue and persecute thousands of net users every year!
Like I said, I doubt that any place in the world now has such a level of State intervention in the Internet and the online lives of its citizens, and condones the victimisation and suppression of online users by private companies to such a degree.
So give China, Zimbabwe, Iran etc a break! They ain't that bad after all.
how long is this permanent?
isnt that a tremendous burden to place on a small business? whatever few remaining small town internet providers there are.
does the company have to retain those records if the company goes out of business?
in a way this could open up a new market for ISPs that conveniently loose files. ir even better ISPs that reqularly change thier name so as to drop the old data.
The sh@tty thing about this is going to be for all the cristians out there. They are going to send you to the gulags like they did when they took over russia. Obey or die
Obey or die
That's all you need to learn
watching a government screw its people dry is as satisfying as pron:)
Screw these idiots. The internet is our extended mind. The State has no right to our every thought with intent to criminalize everything it doesn't like. Encrypt everything and fire this pack of unamerican twits.
1) ...elecromagnetic transmission media...
Last I knew, light isn't electromagnetic. Therefore, the impact of this proposal would only affect localized (e.g. ISP -> customer, or home LAN) areas, instead of the entire Internet. My access to /. runs over fiber somewhere, so /. shouldn't be responsible for tracking my access.
2) ...enables users to access content...
My website doesn't allow any users access to the content. It provides the content to another computer, which then enables the access to that content via CRT, LCD, braille interface, text reader, etc. Whatever is enabling the user to access the content is on their end of the connection, and therefore not my problem.
3) ...identification of subscribers...
I don't require any subscription to access my content. All that's needed is the URL.
I read the article you referenced, and I read the proposed amendment itself, and I do not see where it requires, or even mentions, logging the connections ISP customers make. It appears to only require recording who the ISP's customers are, and retaining information on a customer for up to a year after that customer stops subscribing to the service.
Not that I like the amendment, nor do I trust our government to refrain from abusing their access to this information, but it seems to be a much less big of a deal than everyone is assuming.
The text of the proposed amendment (it's short!):
edited because Slashdot originally refused to accept, saying: "Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters .. now what does that say about the state of legislation? :-)
That is all!
-- TTK
"The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed."
:-)
I've been using my present ISP for about 9 years and may continue to do so for 10, 20, or even 30 years more. Can you imagine the size of data storage that would be required as the years roll by. It's not clear that offline storage on optical or magnetic media would even survive that long.
Hmmm... This might be a good use for all those old 180K or 360K 5.25" floppy diskettes. Imagine handing the police 100,000 floppies when they come calling.
And I bet you know nothing of Arrow's Theorem that lists a number of voting criteria and proves that it's impossible to meet them all. My point is that while Condercet voting elects the most centrist candidate and is good for single-seat elections, which I am opposed to in general -- in a multi-seat election, choice voting or party voting allows truer proportional representation. If Condercet voting were used for an entire chamber, it would be filled with nothing but "centrists", and no principled politicians would ever get elected so as to provide a plurality of ideas. Doing Choice in at least one other chamber would be desirable in that case, but I still don't like Condercet, in general.
While I post as an anonymous coward, I was elections admininstrator for a state Green Party for a number of years and thus speak from experience.
Yet Another Stupid Government Measure That Won't Work:
If it gets past and the millions of voters that download using bittorrent, kazaa and so forth, can someone try to calculate how much storage all this will require?
If I'm not mistaken, that means you'd have to have more than 3 times the amount of data going through the US network already: one that gets stored by the originating ISP, one that is stored by the receving customer's ISP, and one for whoever's the carrier in the middle.
WHY OH WHY CAN'T THEY REALIZE THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE?
You'd need a few thousand Terabytes of storage for a single month!
This law is complete insanity on the technical level, that is if they want to know who accessed what content, since the content on the web is never constant. There is no safeguard that it'll always be there. They'd have to save the content with the customer data to safeguard the integrity of their data.
It's just plain STUPID!
Even the internet archive wouldn't try this!
Anyone else feel the same way?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
The ACLU has been irrelevant to civil liberties for most of the last 20 years. They became partisan - (trying to block, for example, Schwarzenegger's election as Governor of California) and adopted some extreme feminist positions.
Lately, and especially since the "Patriot" Act, they've sobered up a little bit and turned their attention more to issues that really affect civil liberties. But I don't trust them, because of their track record.
Better to give money to the EFF.
It seems these Congress people are working agianst the american people trying to create an Orwellian hell which is something the people do not want.
We should vote them out and press law suits etc because we are supposed to be in control of the government congress is supposed to serve us the people.
When a memeber of congress or the senate works agianst us he or she should basicly be fired because they acted agianst the best interest of their boss which is the people.
For trying to pass such an invasive law the end of their political careers is the only fitting punishment they should not even be allowed to run for city dog catcher afterwards.
I vote. I know I never asked for the police to have the ability to do this. I just wonder how much more of this is the american people going to take before the "straw that will break the camels back" happens. Seriously, we need to bring home the troops, and figure out what the hell is going on over here. Any moron with a fucking tin can , can steal someones internet. How is isp snooping going to help then. My local subdivision has 30 , yes thirty wide open networks. I can hit about 11 of them from my balcony. How is this going to help anyone?
It's the USAPATRIOT Act, and it has nothing to do with patriotism, so I pronounce it "the you sap at riot act" to avoid confusion.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The only potentially good way to have a multiparty system is a parlimentary system, and that has its own whole host of problems that are just as bad, if not worse, than those of a 2 party "winner takes all" system.
Let's suppose there were a viable 3rd party. What would it look like. Well, there are really only 2 relatively stable choices: it could appeal to a lunatic fringe, or it could attempt to appeal to the center.
If a supposed viable third party appeals to a lunatic fringe (of any stripe), there's the serious danger that a lunatic reviled by almost 2/3rds of the people could get elected president, or that that party could take control of congress. This is not a desireable outcome. If you don't think it could happen, study the Weimar Republic some more (c.f. Godwin's Law).
If the supposed viable 3rd party successfully appeals to the center, the other 2 parties will by necessity be forced to move further off-center to appeal to their core constituencies. Ultimately, then, you end up with 2 fringe parties and one centrist party, leading to *double* the chance that a fringe group reviled by almost 2/3rds of the country can take control of the government.
No, if you're going to have a non-parlimentary political system, 2 parties is evil, but it's less evil than 1 or 3+ parties.