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."

Comments

In a related story...

[STDOUBT]

Citizens may consider a different Congress.

Re:In a related story...

[Alsee]

We really need third, and fourth parties that have a chance in this country to see real change.

True, but the only way to make that possible is to change the vote counting mechanic. We currently use a plurality or "first past the post" mechanic which, for mathmenatical and practical reasons makes third and fourth parties inherently nonviable. Just look at the Ross Perot fisaco. He made the futile attempt anyway, and actuall pulled off an astounding percentage of the vote for teh attempt. And the result? The attempt and movment was quashed to zero in the subsequent election when the voters realize how dysfunctional our election system is and that any "smart" vote for a third candidate is thrown away and that it can and will tip the the "real" election between the two "real" candidates. That the third party candidate will just steal votes away from which ever main candidate he is most similar too. That your attemp at a "smart" vote will tip the election towards the candidate you less like. And that is true whether you are pro-Bush or anti-Bush. Both Bush elections had razor thin margins. A few thosand thrown away votes for a hopeless third party candidate could very easily have caused Bush to win, or equally such votes could easily have cost him the election.

The US is the oldest Democracy, meaning that we also have the "alpha-test" for election systems. The Founding Fathers were smart guys and did a great job, bt they just didn't know about these flaws in our electorial system and didn't know how to fix them. The good news is that huge mathematcal reseach has been done in game theory and in understanding election systems, and from the math and from historical experience in other newer democracies we now know much better election systems. In particular there is the Condorcet Method. Each voter gets to rank the candidates in prefference order. You could then vote and register your First Choice prefference for a third party candidate, and do so without throwing away your vote... because you still get to register your Second Choice "lesser of two evils" prefference and still vote against your most hated "Greater of Two Evils" in the Last Place slot.

The best part is that instead of jumping back and forth between left wing /right wing opposits in each election (as we currently do), the Concorcet Method inheren tly elects the most centrist candidate that has the broadest support. An extreme Democrat may get 49% of the first place vote and an extreme Republican may get the 49% of the first place vote, but a centrist candidate will get 2% of the first place vote and ALL of the remaining second place vote, and would win.

And if you already know all that, chuckle, well I still want to get it out there for other people to see.

The problem is that changing the election method can only be done by the legislature and changig the Constitution. And of course neither the Democrat party nor the Republican party wants to do that. Both perties would rather keep their duoploly control locked in a psudo-war with the other party, than to open the election process to thrid parties and lose that duopoloy control.

Changing the election process desperately needs to be done, but it is a practical political impossiblility - short of a voter uprising bordering on armed revolution. :/

-

Re:In a related story...

[tedrlord]

Personally, I really don't want to know. I'm sure the testimony is terrible and disturbing, and involves terrible, terrible things. But I don't think it justifies anything near the measures taken here, and I really doubt that they will restrict themselves to using these records for child pornography purposes.

Thinking about it, I -really- hate the government for going on about child pornography this much. I know a lot of people who were sexually abused as children, and I've heard enough stories of how it happened, and not once did it involve this "child pornography" that the government fears so much. Child abuse is a horrible, disgusting thing, and the fact that they're focusing on this small minority of cases where they film it, presumably because if they can't see it happening it's not real, pisses me off a lot.

Child sexual abuse has little to nothing to do with the internet, and the fact that they use something so serious as an excuse to restrict privacy makes me extremely angry.

Re:In a related story...

[Master of Transhuman]

"The herd of turtles that is the American people look to have wised up"

No, they haven't. Three years after the suckers allowed Bush to attack a country for no reason, we're about to attack Iran for no reason.

And THIS one won't be some little insurgency of 20,000-40,000 people, but a Vietnam-style war with hundreds of thousands of insurgents and it will be about two to four times as big as Vietnam in terms of US troops that have to be deployed, number of civilians killed, and
WAY more expensive than even Iraq (say, two or three trillion dollars over the next ten years.)

The US's greatest military disaster in history is about to happen.

And at least half the US public - and virtually all of the media - is behind it.

No, they haven't learned a goddamn thing.

Won't work because...

[BlackMesaLabs]

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??!

Re:Won't work because...

[Toby The Economist]

> do they have any idea how much this would COST the ISP's and hosting companies??!

The cost is of course passed directly onto consumers in the form of higher charges.

It's agonizingly ironic; that Congress forces us to pay for the removal of our privacy.

Re:Won't work because...

[ScrewMaster]

Some people claim that there is no slippery slope because they, personally, don't perceive any significant changes. Others claim that evolution is a crock for the same reason. Both are wrong. You have to base your judgment as to whether any long-term process exists by expanding your time scale to relevant proportions.

There is a slippery slope, and America has been on that slope since the nation was founded. Thomas Jefferson pointed out that, from a legal and governmental perspective, the United States Federal Government was about as good as it was ever going to get, because governments only get worse with time. He was right, as usual.

However, there have been inflection points where things got dramatically worse in a short period of time. World War II was the big one for us ... our government demanded (and got!) access to vast resources for the war effort and (in spite of promises to the contrary) refused to give them up when the war was over. This surprised no-one, really: when did you ever know a politician to a. keep a promise or b. volutarily relinquish a power or revenue stream because he or she promised to do so?

Take the Patriot Act for example: Congress "addressed" such concerns by including "sunset" provisions in the original Act, but when the time came to volutarily give up those broad powers, they backpedaled in a hurry and renewed the damn thing. That's the way it always has been and is the way it always will be. That's why, when any government official (of any government) says, "we need these new powers for 'x'" you need to fight them tooth and nail, because odds are they don't need that power, they merely want it.

Our government doesn't need to monitor communications between a couple hundred million innocent civilians ... but gosh, they sure want to, don't they?

Simple Solution

[USSJoin]

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.

What for?

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:You never know about final language

[richie2000]

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.

Is this our future?

[Gablar]

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.

Re:Wilkommen to Der Homeland!

[Unski]

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.

Time for a little goose-gander sauce

[Fear the Clam]

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?

Retired Sandra O'Connor warned us....

[QuietLagoon]

The we may be seeing the beginnings of a dictatorship here in the United States. We should heed her warnings.

Will work, just not as planned.

[JonTurner]

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...

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.xl s)

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.)

Dangerous to be a Writer these days

[rben]

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.