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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.
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.