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Law Enforcement Requests for Net Data Multiply
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "It's not just phone companies grappling with reported potentially privacy-intruding requests from the NSA and other branches of government: Banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers say that police and intelligence agencies have been increasingly coming to them looking for tidbits of information that could help them stop everything from money launderers to pedophiles and terrorists, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'According to AOL executives, the most common requests in criminal cases relate to crimes against children, including abuse, abductions, and child pornography. Close behind are cases dealing with identity theft and other computer crimes. Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down.'"
From the article: 'According to AOL executives, the most common requests in criminal cases relate to crimes against children, including abuse, abductions, and child pornography.
(insightful comment deleted during self-moderation)
Nice to see an honorable company like AOL standing up to the government.
Wait... wasn't the goverment supposed to be protecting the people from corporations?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Law enforcement on the internet is really hard because there's not just one country in the world. How do you deal with a nigerian scammer if you live in France, or with a russian spammer if you're in Greece? There's not much anyone can do, in these cases.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Some say online pedophile activity, from illegal activity like real KP to mostly-legal stuff like cartoons and pedo hangouts, encourages real-world activity. Eliminate it and fewer adults will have sex with minors.
Others say it satisfies their need. Take it away and more adults will be in bed with young people.
My guess is it's a little of both.
TFA: "We have a very rigorous review process here," said John Ryan, AOL's vice president and associate general counsel. "Every request that comes in from law enforcement is vetted ..."
*ping* - * You have 1 new subpoena(s) *
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Clinton and Nixon were one of the worst abusers of governmental information gathering. Both of them used the FBI to dig up dirt on their opponents. There's a story of Nixon extorting a contribution for his re-election by threatening the contributor with an IRS audit if the contribution wasn't large enough.
Both political parties decry the others abuse of governmental power but think it's just fine when they're the ones doing the abusing. Its behavior like that that drives some people to call for smaller government.
Please turn over the identity of the poster with the initials "AC". He or she is implicated in over 10,000 threats against the government and Microsoft.
Are we independent beings? Or did we turn into something of a higher order, cells in a big organism, where the government is our brain?
And if it's the latter, can you deny the brain the right to check its body blood levels, have a haircut and take a bath?
What if the brain decides to make a suicide in the name of all of us?
Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down.
...why is this the job of the ISP? Why is a private entity that's deciding the legitimacy of these requests? If you want a good example of the intimacy between government and corporations in the US, this would be it. This should be subject to a legal review by someone in the judicial branch, not some private employee after corporate guidelines.
I see a disturbing trend in the US, based on this and other cases of domestic spying, guantanamo bay and more. That is the reduction of the judicial branch to be nothing more than courts to process individuals and corporations. The courts are not to interfere with what the government is doing or try to apply the law to the government.
The United States is moving away from the ideals it was founded on with a division of power into the executive, legislative and judicial branch. The judicial branch is being reduced to nothing more than a tool to enact the law without oversight of the other branches. The legislative branch represented by Congress has been granting more and more power to the executive branch to act without oversight both from them or the courts. The "Patriot" act is a good example of that. Even when there are issues that seem suspect at best, Congress don't want to touch the issue.
So two branches are in bed with each other, the last shoved out on the street. Few if any "checks and balances" within the government. What about the final check, the democratic oversight through the free press, public information and such? For one there's so much information that's no longer accessible, the media is completely unreliable (I've seen the stats on what Amercians think happened in the Iraq war) and third the people are so afriad there's a terrorist lurking at every corner to think it's okay anyway.
And just to invoke a certain law - remember how 'na' in nazism stands for nationalism, and that the terrorists serve much the same purpose as the jews did - according to the government, there's this large and dangerous network/conspiracy out to destroy your way of life. You'd better put all power in the hands of the government and chant "USA! USA! USA!". Or was that "Sieg Heil"?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down.
Hmmm - phone records and postal mail are covered by law. It's against the law for the post office to turn over your mail, or the phone company to allow a wiretap, without due authority. Hence the EFF lawsuit against AT&T.
That is not the case (AFAIK) with, for example, credit card records (unless you've filled out the privacy request form). What about email and surfing records? "AOL says that most requests get turned down." Is that just their choice? Should it really be just somebody at AOL's choice? What if your ISP is run by one of the, "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to fear" people? Do they have the right to just turn over your information?
As for the credit card records - those are already for sale, I think. Advertisers buy them, right? That's why casinos I've never been to send me stuff in the mail. So... if there's a bunch of data that is already legally available - what do you think the odds are that the gov't already has it? Good, I'd say. That is - I'd bet size cash the gov't already knows about my occasional trips to Las Vegas and my penchant for cheesy spy novel audiobooks.
Just my random tinfoil hat thoughts.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If by "real KP" you mean pictures or films of children engaged in sex, I don't think there is any such stuff. Even in the Freenet, which has been accused of being a pedophiles hangout, you don't see any authentic child pornography. The closest you get to child pornography in the internet are women with small breasts and shaved pubic hair who could be any age between 16 and 30.
This "pedophilia in the internet" meme is actually more disgusting than adults having sex with children. Because a true pedophile can only harm a limited number of people, whereas the people who keep bringing the fear of pedophiles are the meanest evil bastards one can find in the world. They want to turn the natural instinct of any normal human being to protect their children into a tool for domination.
Politicians who keep insisting on this subject are only trying to find a way to become dictators. Just check them, they are the same kind of people who insist on any possible safeguard against "terrorism" and people who keep calling file copying "piracy" and want to enforce DRM by legislation.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that you cannot open a door to censorship, because once you have it, who will be able to verify if a story was banned because it went against morality laws or because it told an embarassing truth about someone in power?
Maybe if we sent them to North Korea instead?
Seriously though, the scenario where some "undesireable" sect of a society is to be scooped up and stuck on island/all killed/all put in jail/etc. is ignorant.
To quote Nietzsche: "Even the most harmful man may really be the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the species; for he nurtures either in himself or in others, through his effects, instincts without which humanity would long have become feeble or rotten. Hatred, the mischievous delight in the misfortune of others, the lust to rob and dominate, and whatever else is called evil belong to the most amazing economy of the preservation of the species. To be sure, this economy is not afraid of high prices, of squandering, and it is on the whole extremely foolish. Still it is proven that it has preserved our race so far."
Also, in the West, please try 'n make a distinction between Ephebophilia and true Paedophilia. At the very least it will make you sound smarter.
...stop eating fat burgers and leave MY freedom alone. 1 in 5 Americans dies of heart attacks every year. OTH as tragic as the deaths were on 911 for the families involved, compared to heart attacks, strokes, or auto accidents they are a drop in the bucket. If people would worry about the real killers and not curtail freedoms based on hype from demagogues the country would be in MUCH better shape,
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I work part-time at a mid-sized family inn in Rhode Island, and one day while I was working the front desk, I answered a call from (supposedly) a police investigator from a nearby town attempting to ascertain if a particular person or her aliases had been a recent guest. Being a small family inn with a cantankerous old lady who doesn't put up with crap and isn't a particular respecter of authorities other than herself as the owner, we take privacy quite seriously and so I asked if he had a warrant. He said no, so politely declined his fishing expedition and told him that he could go get a warrant and either show up personally or fax a copy over.
I had never before or since heard a cop sound more absolutely shocked than he did. He asked why we required a warrant, and I started belting off the reasons that came to mind, starting with the fact that it would help a rgreat deal in proving that he was actually who he said he was (at hotels, we deal with all sorts of crap with people, mostly wives, fleeing abusive relationships and those bastards can be crafty in trying to track their victims down). It was quite apparent that the thought of us saying no to his request had never even entered his mind, which in turn indicates to me that the vast majority of companies and what-not put up no resistance whatsoever to these sorts of requests unless a direct interest of theirs is harmed. And that alone scares the crap out of me.
The postscript of the story was fairly banal. He was in fact a cop and he did eventually end up getting a warrant and it turned out that one of our guests was a convicted petty thief who was fleeing another prosecution. And of course she was polite and a model guest while she was there, which in the end is really all that I find myself caring about when they stay at the inn.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)