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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??!
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.
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.
...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.
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.
If it is acceptable to monitor the time and participants in an on-line conversation (e.g. through email snooping) then why is it not acceptable to have microphones in our gardens, even in our houses, monitoring the time and participants in our off-line conversation?
We would absolutely regard the latter as the grossest, most revolting violation of our individual privacy.
Yet here there would be an acceptance of exactly that violation, with the sole caveat that it is being limited to a given medium of communication, email.
Note in the EU that this violation is now law, for emails and in fact also for all mobile phone calls.
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?
That's what they said about the EU Data Retention Directive as well - pedophiles and terrorists. Now, they're talking about using it to catch filesharers, even before the law's gone into effect.
Money for nothing, pix for free
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
I'm not sure I understand Vy you are speaking like ze stereotypical German meine herran, perhaps you making ze racial slur disguised as ze humour?
Seriously, WWII ended over 60 years ago now, only someone really insular would still find Nazi jokes funny. I presume that's what you were implying in your own muddled way, no? That America is turning into a Nazi regime? Go to Germany and you will be hard pushed to find people proud of the events of WWII. Sure, there is a far-right minority, which worryingly is gaining some mindshare, however in general I think mocking privacy curtailments in a faux German accent is just a shite, lazy thing to do, and it sounds even more hollow when you suspect it was posted by an American. As we all know there is no room left for Americans to be mocking the (lack of) freedoms and democracy in other countries.
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?
The we may be seeing the beginnings of a dictatorship here in the United States. We should heed her warnings.
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.)
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.
There is NO way they are going to limit this to "terrorists and pedophiles". They will abuse this power like they have every other one in the past.
Want to know what the result will be? Nobody will host websites in the US. They'll just host it in another country where these laws don't apply, and pay less since that hosting company doesn't have to store extra weblogs.
"for the children" is the new rallying cry of modern fascism.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Just for the record, the "representative" pushing this is a Democrat.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
:)
A bet you'd lose
I suggested and discussed the Condorcet method because it it is generally considered the best known method for running a multi-candidate election for an office such as presidet.
in a multi-seat election
You're absolutely right that I did not address the multi-seat legislature elections. I agree that those elections could use an overhaul as well, and that they do indeen involve different considerations. A proportional election system would be better... but an ensemble council would be even better tah a proportional system. (Ensemble council is mostly proportional, but also adds a stabilizing centrist minority elected through a Condorcet style proceedure.)
For anyone interested in learning more about how to best design an accurate democratic system, I higjly recommend the website Accurate Democracy. It covers all of this in great detail, and far more. It gives excellent examples and explanations of how and why different mechanisms of democracy fail, and how to fix them.
Even just reading the front page is incredibly informative and powerful. A must-read page.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.