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U.S. Government Demands ISP Data Retention
dlc3007 writes to mention an article in the New York Times discussing data privacy. The article expands on the U.S. Government's 'request' last Friday at a meeting between Robert S. Mueller III, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and the executives of several Internet Service Providers. The ISPs were required to retain data on users, for trials if subpoenaed. Right now they're asking companies to do this. The threat is that, if they don't comply, legislation will follow. From the article: "The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Mr. Roehrkasse said. While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms." We originally covered this last Sunday, but more details have been released on the meeting since then.
Here is a working link to the story. Please use the RSS feed from newspapers when submitting stories!
How do you do this? Go to the RSS feed page and select the category your article appeared in. Then do a search for the title and pull the link that declares it to be an RSS user. It's that simple!
I don't think this is morally wrong as you're going to their site and you're still getting advertisements. Slashdot is really just a hand selected RSS feed so we might as well use RSS credentials. It saves us the time of registering and it saves the site admins some wasted space & e-mail traffic due to shill registrations.
My work here is dung.
So tell me again....why do the Internet companies have to retain so much data?
From TFA (emphasis mine): Ah yes...yet another shameless use of the 'Lovejoy Gambit'. If you oppose this data retention, you must hate children. You don't hate children, do you?
And once more from TFA: And we segue straight from the 'Lovejoy Gambit' to the '9/11 bloody shirt'. How relentlesly predictable.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A company that attempts to build a stable OS that can retain data as Solaris can is up to no good. So now we know that Solaris is more evil then Microsoft. Yeah with Microsoft crashing, they are single handily protecting your privacy; it is such a burden to carry and all they get is grief.
night? It seems my neighbors unprotected wifi connection seem to slow down at that time. Any ideas?
Every 108 minutes, I'll have a group type in 4 8 15 16 23 42 and press enter into the log machine. The group will do this or they know that dire consequences wait.
I'll have another group to monitor and record the action of the people entering the log. What - you don't like my logs?
It's nothing but Mycarthyism.
We just jumped back 50 years.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
do I see Americans getting sick of this crap in the future. No, wait. That is a dream.
Seriously. For all the grief we give the Chinese government for oppressing their citizens and firewalling their internet access, this administration sure seems to be doing everything in their power to make the U.S. the same!
I can see this data being useful retroactively for things like criminal profiling and possibly being valuable for targeted marketing analysis, but not for catching child molesters and terrorists.
A-Bomb
What can I do in my dad-to-day browsing to make it hard for the NSA/CIA/ect ? Does going through proxies help anything?
This is insane, and someone has to stop our supposed to be free country from going this way and allowing these nut jobs in the goverment from taking our rights, its our country as well as theirs and they have not reason to be allowed these types of survalance techs.
Nor are we trying to track where everyone goes or what they read. We're ensuring that everyone is fully protected from those bad, bad terrorists. You know, 9/11 and all.
You see, people want to be free. We're ensuring they can be free by these actions. All we ask is that people understand that we're in it for the long run and ask for their patience while we administer these proctology exams.
Just remember, 9/11 was a wakup call. We can't let these terrorists take our freedoms away.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This makes me think about an old SNL commercial for BAD IDEA jeans.
...Normally I wear protection, but then I thought, "When am I gonna make it back to Haiti?"
...I thought about it, and even though it's over, I'm going to tell my wife about the afffair.
...Well, he's an ex free-base addict, and he's trying to turn around, and he needs a place to stay for a couple of months.
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
U.S. Wants Companies to Keep Web Usage Records
By SAUL HANSELL and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: June 2, 2006
The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a meeting in Washington last Friday where they offered a general proposal on record-keeping to a group of senior executives from Internet companies, said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the department. The meeting included representatives from America Online, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast.
The attorney general has appointed a task force of department officials to explore the issue, and that group is holding another meeting with a broader group of Internet executives today, Mr. Roehrkasse said. The department also met yesterday with a group of privacy experts.
The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Mr. Roehrkasse said.
While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms.
It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with, but not the contents of e-mail messages, the executives said. The executives spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they did not want to offend the Justice Department.
The proposal and the initial meeting were first reported by USA Today and CNet News.com.
The department proposed that the records be retained for as long as two years. Most Internet companies discard such records after a few weeks or months.In its current proposal, the department appears to be trying to determine whether Internet companies will voluntarily agree to keep certain information or if it will need to seek legislation to require them to do so.
The request comes as the government has been trying to extend its power to review electronic communications in several ways. The New York Times reported in December that the National Security Agency had gained access to phone and e-mail traffic with the cooperation of telecommunications companies, and USA Today reported last month that the agency had collected telephone calling records. The Justice Department has subpoenaed information on Internet search patterns -- but not the searches of individuals -- as it tries to defend a law meant to protect children from pornography.
In a speech in April, Mr. Gonzales said that investigations into child pornography had been hampered because Internet companies had not always kept records that would help prosecutors identify people who traded in illegal images.
"The investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers," Mr. Gonzales said in remarks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. "This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time," he said.
An executive of one Internet provider that was represented at the first meeting said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography from the Internet. But later, one participant asked Mr. Mueller why he was interested in the Internet records. The executive said Mr. Mueller's reply was, "We want this for terrorism."
At the meeting with privacy experts yesterday, Justice Department officials focused on wanting to retain the records for use in child pornography and terrorism investigations. But they also talked of their
We should be able to keep track of lawmakers, where they go, who's buying dinner (or whatever is spent), which people they're with, whether they used condoms, and their cell phone records.... with reverse # lookups.
Then we can let ISPs retain the records of where we surf.
Egads:
Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment 4:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Of course, log files can be manipulated and faked. ISPs will have the power to exonerate or destroy people (maybe a new revenue stream for the ISPs???).
If this does become law, soon it will be required that the ISPs use only "approved" monitoring software, perhaps software that will digitally sign the log files. And then, since they still can't be trusted, the log files will have to be kept in a central location of some government office.
How much will this "approved" monitoring software cost?
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. These people are just going to far...! We need to start blasting ISP's with so much email that they finally get the picture, that we don't appreciate being spyed on...!
Republicans bring you smaller, less intrusive government and more deregulation.
--
make install -not war
...if companies would just hold out for a few months at which point we could "throw the bums out", as it were, in the House and Senate, get rid of the rubber stampers and anyone who would enact new legislation.
But that's just in theory, of course. No company is going to take a stand against Abu Gonzalez, and too many Americans are too apathetic to pay any attention to their rights being eroded. More votes for the last "American Idol" than in the last Presidential election, indeed...
A record of all of your Internet activity, phone calls, convictions, allegations, magazine subscriptions, library records... Privacy? What's privacy daddy?
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Man what a repressive crap-hole! Sure glad I don't live there.
Hope you don't live in Europe. We stole the idea from them.
Even mandating this sort of data retention by law isn't going to result in it happening, even if the FBI & DHS won't accept the ISPs saying "no" to this "request".
The requirements for complete data retention for a standard broadband service like a T1, DSL, or cable link are on the order of several hundred GB per month, or more than a terabyte per year. Even just forcing the use of a reverse web proxy and keeping the logs from that and your SMTP/POP/IMAP logs are going to run several GB per year, per person. A site doing ~1 million hits a day fills up a 40GB log partition in about a week, or 15TB per year.
It doesn't matter how much space you've got, or even how rediculuously cheap hard drives are today, people can and will fill it up. Every service that generates significant amounts of logging uses logfile rotation to avoid filling up your finite online storage. However, if you take regular enough backups, and keep all of the backup tapes rather than reusing them in next weeks or months rotation, you can archive all of your log data in a near-offline fashion.
Still, do you have any idea of the actual percentage of companies or datacenters that manage to take full, complete, tested-restorable backups for a multiyear period? Let's put it this way: even the White House can't manage to backup all of their access records and emails reliably.
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
It makes me glad to live in Ireland, where our politicians are able to handle economic AND social AND personal freedom simultaneously! I mean, seriously, even the Heritage Foundation can see that the United States has declined. Over here, we don't consciously break our Constitution five times a day.
So an MCSE certifies you to handle private information about American citizens now? Or perhaps helpdesk will have to swear on the bible every day upon arriving at work? Maybe ISPs will be required to hire a CIA consultant? And surely internet subscribers won't be charged extra to assist government investigations potentially incriminating themselves.
Search engines and the end user must submit all their secrets to the government now, all in the name of stopping child predators. What'll be the next CIA vector? Cable installers? The wireless spectrum? Mandatory keyloggers on every PC? Maybe ban personal computers outright and install communal terminals at the end of every street, operated by Social Insurance card.
Every human being wants to assault and rape children at some point in their life. It's good to know the American government is there to protect us from ourselves.
I'm sick of all this crap. I'm sick of what the Bush administration is doing to the entire planet, let alone to the US. This has to be opposed as strongly as can be. We should send emails to all ISPs we do business with urging them to oppose this as other companies have in the past. If they have customer support... or rather, customer's supporting their opposition, they will feel a lot more comfortable about it.
I'm not sure it's all that helpful to send messages of opposition to congress or the senate. But people should send those too. If you have a voter registration card, send a copy of that along with your letter. It will stand out more.
The concept of "harmonization" has been used to justify lengthening copyright terms around the globe. If a major area has a longer term, it is easier to convince everyone to bump up to that than have the term lowered. Governments almost never give back power or revenue willingly.
In this case, Europe was used as a trial balloon by the U.S. While the data retention laws were discussed and debated in Europe, the U.S. policy makers publically commented about the dangers of this sort of thing and how it could lead to a totalitarian "big brother" mentality. All the while they were telling people in the U.S. how much of a breach of privacy this is and how it will never happen here, the back-channels to Europe were doing nothing but supporting the push for mandatory retention and gauging the reaction -- and attention levels -- of the peoples.
Once the E.U. backdoor hammered thru a mandatory data retention law, the U.S. changed its tune. Newly appointed Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and staff started talking up data retention in the U.S. and pointing to Europe as leading the way. We are now well down this path. For those of you hoping to stall for two more years until there is a change in administration (aka "regeime change"), don't get your hopes up because the Democrats are just as bad. They'll still fuck you over but will be telling you how much they love you and how it is for your own good. (The Republicans just leave out the "but we love you" part. It is still for your own good.)
While Europeans love to preach to Americans about how much more privacy aware they are, and how they have Constitutional guarantees and strong laws protecting their privacy and data use, they miss a fundamental difference.
In Europe, the concept of privacy doesn't include the government. Yes, they have strong laws dictating how data is used, kept, stored and brokered so as to prevent misuse by third parties, individuals and corporations. But, they have no real protections about government access and use to all that data. All in the name of paternalistic government, enacted thru "anti-terror", "anti-drug" and "immigration control" laws the gov'ts of Europe have no privacy when it comes to bureaucratic eyes.
In the U.S. the concept of privacy really means just you. It is *your* data and *your* information and privacy means ONLY YOU get to determine where it goes and how it is used. The government is NOT (in theory) given a free pass or exemption to use, store or broker your data. For the longest time the U.S. Social Security numbers had printed on the issued cards "not to be used as I.D." so great was the fear of a "national I.D.". Of course, this is offset by most American's apathy towards anything to do with government. As long as they can afford their beers, pay the bills and watch their idiot box most of them will be complacent about damn near anything that doesn't interfere with any of that.
Don't believe me? How about his for a statistic: more people voted in the last American Idol episode of that television show than did in the last Presidential Election.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Transfer the costs of spying to the ISPs.
Priceless.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Despite your intended meaning, truer words have never been written. Indeed, as you might have noticed, many of believe there might just be a much bigger problem here. So what exactly should we do about it? Well, I figure it makes a whole lot of sense to start by rallying support against this particular request/litigation. That's what this whole democracy thing is supposed to be all about, no? Write your representatives; make sure they actually represent you, and vote them out if they don't.
Worried by that?
Actually yes, and I take it you're not.
Don't prey on children and don't plan terrorist acts and you'll be fine.
Ok, I know now why you're not worried. I guess we're all safe then. The government shall protect us from all the bad people. Ah, the good old "if we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear" rhetoric. I'll see your trite remark, and raise with a "let them put cameras in every room of your house" counter. By the way, it's not at all a bluff; I don't think you've been paying much attention to the control some parts of the government have been trying to exert over the populace (yes, I said control; ubiquitous monitoring is a natural first step).
Putting aside for a second just how effective this data retention would be in catching child predators and terrorists, the probability of the DOJ and police forces abusing this vast database of information is staggeringly high.
Law enforcement agencies love pursuing internet crime because it is so exceedingly easy for them to do. They can sit behind a desk, eat doughnuts, and bust a bunch of teenagers on Myspace for posting a picture of a pot plant or a 16 y.o. boobie. Giving them mandatory data retention for two years would make their jobs easier still. If I was convinced they would be going after actual terrorists and real child-abusers then I would perhaps be more understanding, but I don't want the privacy rights of all americans sacrificed so the cops can bust a few more dumb teenagers and closet-perverts.
This is another good reason to use https instead of http. Unfortunately, most web sites will only use https for commerce. If Google used https by default, then the government would have to subpoena them directly to find out what a particular user searched for. Likewise, if Slashdot used https by default, then the government would have a lot more trouble figuring out who an anonymous coward was.
Can't you guy invent your own stuff rather than taking our Snow White, our democracy, our data retention initiative...?
Let me quote Thomas Jefferson (younger people can e-mail me and I'll tell you) to show you how perverted you Americans have become lately:
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance."
"Remember that McCarthy exposed quite a few soviet spies."
Sure thing, chief. And Pol Pot worked wonders in preventing a Cambodian population explosion. I also hear bleach kills HIV. What's a little collateral damage in pursuit of a noble goal, right?
Moron.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
"Big Brother" does not prevent crime.
"Big Brother" just changes who commits the crimes and then protects them from prosecution.
"It would be easy Mein Fuhrer, I mean, Mr. President..."
The democrats aren't any different, they're just Kang to Bush's Kodos. Remember, Clinton was in office when the NSA Wiretapping began, (not to mention when the DMCA was written). The democrats aren't the answer, and thinking that they are is playing right into their game. The two major parties have BOTH been taking turns eroding our rights for generations. Just swapping out one set of criminals for another wont change anything. Doesn't the public see this? How can our collective memory be so short? The Democrats piss us off, so we elect Republicans, they screw something up, and hand back off the the Democrats. Rinse, repeat (always repeat). This has been going on for a VERY long time. If we want real change, we need to have some MAJOR housecleaning in Washington. Stricter term limits, tighter reigns on corruption and lobbying, maybe actually USE all of those checks and balances our founding fathers so thoughtfully provided us. The real source of our problems here are not the terrorists, the Bush Administration, the Republicans, the Democrats, or even the corporate lobbyists - it's US - the American People, for buying into their crap, time after time after time.
When Bush blows an intern, then we'll do something about it.
Remember that McCarthy exposed quite a few soviet spies.
No, in fact he didn't. This revisionist meme has become popular with the right wing in its attempt to rehabilitate that repulsive un-American sack of shit, but it's still shit.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Having "https://www.google.com" *actually* exist, rather than simply redirecting to the non-https version would be incredibly non-evil.
I don't know the overhead difference between http and https offhand, though, that might be a dealbreaker.
I wonder whether such Government claims make any sense for an ISP. ... etc. The number of records could be multiplied by 100 or even 1000, thus yelding a number of record betwen 360 billions and 3.6 trillions for a 500K users ISP.
Maybe for a phone company it can make some sense to record the details of every single phone call. If you place 10 calls a day and receive 10 a day, a 500K users company will have to record about 3.6 billion records. Doable but you still don't know the actual contents of those calls.
In an ISP things get worse because on a single connection you run email, IM, P2P, web browsing, IRC
The main isssue there would be how to search and browse among all those records. A secondary issue would also be the storage.
Things are actually worse.
The really bad news come when you need to know the contents of conversations. While tough cryptograpy in phone calls is very rare, it is quite common on the Internet.
So if it's rather easy to wiretap on a phone network, it can be almost impossible on Internet, especially if the interesting conversation are done with a P2P model, thus not using an intermediate server, and with a fairly good cryptography.
And you can bet that the bad guys that want to avoid wiretapping have plenty of technologies to defy almost any attempts.
So, why bothering ISPs with data retention?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
-b.
I have nothing to hide but I am a privacy advocate and I feel very uncomfortable knowing that all my data, emails, etc, can be potentially stored & recorded at multiple places on the Net. Then later retrieved for any reason by people other than me, including the government. It upsets me and makes me feel sick to my stomach. As I said, I have nothing really to hide, I just _hate_ the idea of anyone potentially spying on me.
It is time that someone, an individual, a group, an organization to come together and start fighting all of this up.
When I came to this country, 10 years ago, I felt it was a country of freedom, and I was proud to be here and feeling 'free'. Freedom of expression, freedom of speach, freedom of trying things, and eventually even failing with possibility of coming back, a good lesson learned.
Now it feels like it is going towards one of the most excessively monitored, regulated, policed, country in the world, dominated by companies for their profits, and paranoia of some governments. If I feel safer now than 10 years ago? No. Is it because of terrorism and all? No, it is become of the Paranoia and inflexible stance of this government towards the outside that most other countries hate us. It would be easy to make peace with others, you just have to have the right attitude.
It seems that few a things took over this country and made it worst over the past few years:
- Paranoia, close mind of the actual government, and unwillingness to negotiate, watching over their own interest.
- Dictatorship of a few companies/groups that are having too much power over the government, name a few? MPAA/RIAA/Hollywood industry/Music industry/All the companies that work very heavily towards influencing the government and making laws for THEIR profit.
- $$ and heavy lobbying of the richest companies to become richests.
- Lawyers trying to bend everything their ways to make more $$
Do they care about people? No. They care about their own bottomline. Google? net Neutrality. Good for them. AT&T? Cisco? NO NET Neutrality. We need more money.
This country is governed by $$, and way too much influence on the government. Someone has to be done. Something has to be changed. A new fresh president/face promoting changes should come up. Wreak havoc all of this and work on one thing. Make America again a successfull and respected country. By both its citizens, and people outside. It is time the constitution is changed. That laws are changed. Companies do reorgs all the time.
America needs a massive reoganization.
Any volunteer?
I am the owner of a small ISP in Santa Cruz, California. We get a couple/few subpoenas a year from the FBI, like most ISPs. My concern with data retention of logs, which is what is being asked for here, is: 1. privacy - 'nuff said 2: the cost to the ISP.
We're a small ISP, and we keep a week or two of backups and it's already several terabytes. Now, the feds want us to extract all the access, email and web log files from the backups and save them from 2 years. There's a couple thousand ISPs in the US, spread this cost over the US industry, and you are looking at millions, perhaps tens of millions of dollars per year in additional storage and staff costs.
As a final point, I have 3 kids. Anyone invites me to a meeting and opens it with slides of child porn and my one thought is they are sick sick sick. Most of the people "invited" to the meeting are probably parents, you can sell anti-child porn without showing it to us! What does it say about our AG that he supports torture and has a collection of child porn which he shows to people?
My servers remove their logs, and create new ones once a week. I care about my customer's privacy. If they arrest me, then so be it. But they will have to face a judge, and get his permission first. But the government has no business meddleing in mine.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
We need to find out what sites they're monitoring, and develop scripts that will continually access those sites all day long, from millions of computers.
If the system is swamped, there is no way this data can be useful to them.
I hate to even suggest this, but a virus that does this from every infected machine would also be useful in this endeavor. Or maybe a 'false virus' you could place on your own machine that would do nothing, but which could be pointed to as a defense tactic if you were ever arrested under these pretenses.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
So that leaves, what, stream data? What kind of info is available from a stream capture? Originating/destination IP addresses and ports, time/duration of connection, and maybe number of bytes transferred?
I need to get off my ass and get my site's mixmaster reamiler up and running in order to contribute my part. This government shit's getting spookier by the day!
Better living through obfuscation. Project White Noise
More like Cointelpro, actually, 35 years ago during the Nixon administration. Nixon was using the FBI and IRS to go after his critics and other political dissidents in a variety of underhanded ways.
What we have going now under Bush is potentially far more efficent, though. Instead of making life miserable for just a few hundred selected targets, they'll be able to cast a dragnet that will snare millions of political undesirables. Initially, the intent will be to intimidate, rather than imprison them. We'll all think twice about posting that insightful comment on Slashdot once we suspect that there might be real and significant consequences.
The Republican credo of smaller government and less regulation applies only to corporate campaign contributors. If you are an individual, make no mistake that conservatives are for more regulation and control of your private life with a bigger, more invasive government. It's not an opinion, but rather is definitionally true. Check out a good course in political science if you disagree.
Want to be able to check out a library book without the government looking over your shoulder? Want to rent movies without having to get the approval of the Attorney General's Office first? Do you want to browse the Web without a mandatory browsing history stored for the government's use? Do you want to talk on the telephone without your records being submitted to the NSA? If you want any of this you'll stop voting for Republicans. Smaller government my ass.
It's beginning to be about the time that liberals should start buying guns should the need to forcefully defend against our own government actually arise.
There is an inflationary risk to retaining this data. ISPs will need to pass this cost along. I'd like to see some of these costs layed out. Who will pay? As an added bonus, with the new fabulous AJAX stuff y'all are putting in, everything I didn't push submit on could still be archived. Think about that.
I never clip my fingernails for fear of dangling symbolic links.
McCarthy didn't. The NSA or its predecessor did, via the VENONA program, which cracked Soviet embassy codes and tapped embassy communications. McCarthy mostly threw out a bunch of false accusations, hurt a bunch of innocent of people, and actually made correctly accusing someone of being a Soviet sympathizer *less* credible for a while.
Crying "wolf" when a herd of deer comes onto your property is seldom the correct answer.
-b.
This looks insane, but actually resolves rather easily.
To oversimplify, libraries keep statistical information, so they can get their grants for books loaned per year, retain patron loan information until the book is either returned or paid for, and then destroy the link from book to patron.
This is so common that all the vendors of library circulations systems "enforce" it in software, citing the need to use precious disk space for current records.
In at least one case, we made it surprisingly difficult to reconstruct old patron-book links from backups.
Consider this a word to the wise authors of ISP record-keeping systems.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
This violates the first admendment. If the govt is allowed to track and scrutinize all your reading and web searching habits, then the 1st admendment is dead. The reason is that people will no longer be able to read about controversial subjects for fear that the some gov agent will decide that he/she is a subversive/pervert/terrorist/Bush-basher. This program is nothing but a form of intimidation and is yet another example of Dumbya's disregard for the liberties and freedoms of the citizens of this country. The irony is that his supporters claim he is defending the very same liberties he is actively eroding. I really wish Dumbya would stop "defending" my liberties. I think I would be much better off.
When all else fails, run.
Nowadays the government doesn't even need to threaten prosecution: they just have to threaten legislation!
"Listen buddy, do what we say, or we'll make it the law of the land that you have to do what we say!"
I doubt I am alone in saying that this disturbs me. I personally will follow the law when it is... actually the law.
Seriously though... Does this guy have any idea what he's asking? How many TB of storage big ISPs would need to keep this kind of data for even a modest period of time? Quick, buy stock in the big disk drive makers now...
--- Just another Code-Monkey
Just because Anne Coulter says something controversial doesn't make it true. Watch the "Point of Order" documentary to see, in his own words, how contemptuous he was of his own President. McCarthy was no patriot, and any self-respecting conservative would cringe at being associated with him.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
These people are just going to far...!
Oh, you finally noticed, that, eh?
Yes, the US Constitution is really quite shocking in that it would make the government hamstrung and inefficient -- if they spend their time worrying about this "Goddamn Piece of Paper", they'll never catch the Bad Guys in time!
Of course, that was the intent -- make it so freakin' clear as day that the government should not be efficient, should be thwarted in its natural desire to run roughshod over the citizenry.
But what percentage of the US population is even vaguely aware of the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights? How many even understand the difference between the fact that these rights are stated to make them clear to all, not to "grant" them?
The dismal answer, of course, is: not enough to make a damn bit of difference. Despite 35 years of the Libertarian Party trying to wake people up to the issue, the erosion of liberties in the US has continued apace. If things keep going as they are, the us will be a Fascist state (if it isn't already).
People of the United States! Realistically, you have two basic options!
The choice is yours!
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Humm... It might be time to look at setting up a PGP enabled search engine or is there one already out there?
Having a child, I definitely support measures to track and eliminate online activity relative child pornography. The problem is, how do you find this needle in the haystack that is online activity? I see this as another example of catching minnows with a tuna net; the ratio of relavant to non-relevant information gleaned in this process may arguably negate any value served in the exercise.
Why not work WITH the ISPs? Why not re-assign some of say, the overhyped Homeland Security folks to work with ISPs in developing a list of key word searches or websites/content of interest? I mean there are just TOO many BETTER ways to go about doing this if the true interest is catching and preventing children from being exploted via the web. In my opinion, the whole "trust us, we won't look at the data" doesn't fly with me. Let this go through the legislative process and see what comes of it.
"Don't prey on children and don't plan terrorist acts and you'll be fine." The danger with this is not what they want to do with the today Its will they want to do with it tomorrow? Times change, people change, people die and the future suffers our decisions. Who will over see the collection? Who gets access? Where will this data be stored? When will the data expire?
I personally will follow the law when it is... actually the law.
I won't.
There are too many laws that infringe on my liberty. And your liberty, too. I ignore those laws. If I get caught and end up in trouble, so be it. I am at least following my conscience.
It is time we started defending the soul of our country-- no matter what country you call home. We live in a time where the governments of the world see a power vacuum left by an apathetic populace, by a world of fewer enemies. The US has to manufacture its enemies these days, like some vast enemy-making assembly line: drugs, Iraq, liberals... it's like a great big marketting campaign to make us think we have enemies, other than those in charge.
Fuck 'em. I am a free man, no matter what they say. I may die in prison, with pictures of Pvt. Englund holding my leash while dogs fuck me in the ass, but I will be free.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Oh, this is such an old trick. There is no law. You can't oppose it's passage. You can't ask for a Presidential veto. You can't fight it in court. It might never have even passed given some elected representative's insistence on privacy. But the big scare here is, if you don't do this we'll have a law for sure, and you'll like that even less. Hey folks, I like this much less than I'd like a law that can be seen, touched, explained, and overturned.
There are things the government can't do, but gets away with anyway. Anyone remember how Congress managed to impose a national 55mph speed-limit on the states a few decades ago?
I'd love to switch to an ISP whose approach is: We shred all electronic records in 24 hours.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Edwards: George W. Bush is the "worst president of our lifetime".
The U.S. government is becoming involved in a culture of all war, all the time, and all surveillance, all the time.
Most people don't realize that former presidents have access to CIA and NSA data. So, if voters in the U.S. elect a president who has family and friends and business associates heavily invested in oil and weapons companies, that president will be able to use the data to spy on competitors. It's not so crude as that; it's much more sneaky, but that's the result.
The main purpose of the Iraq war was to arrange that the Iraq oil profits would go to Americans. Other purposes: 1) Saddam Hussein of Iraq was upsetting the planned artificial scarcity of oil, and oil companies wanted oil prices to go up. (Yes, there is real scarcity, too.) 2) The oil was being sold by Saddam Hussein for euros. If other countries began selling their oil for euros, the dollar, weakened by unprecedented debt, could crash. Instead, the value is going down slowly, making everything more expensive for people in the United States. The weakening of the dollar is equivalent to stealing the value of people's savings. 3) The U.S. government gives perhaps $5 billion each year to Israel; the money is used to kill Arabs. Saddam Hussein had made threatening statements about that, and Paul Wolfowitz arranged that the U.S. would pay for Israel's security, serving his culture against the best interests of his country. (They call it "doctrine" to give it a kind of religious importance.)
There's nothing "conservative" about Republicans. Some Republicans are responsible leaders, but others have formed a kind of crime syndicate to sell the U.S. government to whomever can use influence to make money. See U.S. Federal Deficit by Political Party.
U.S. Vice-president Cheney, whose friends and family and business associates are invested in oil and weapons, had a secret meeting with oil executives. A few months later, the price of gas rose enormously. Coincidence?
--
Taxpayer Karma: If you give money to kill people, expect your own quality of life to diminish.
Job done!
The Lovejoy Gambit. Haven't seen that one defined before. Is it as official as Godwin's Law?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
One of the largest ISPs in the world, in just one of their routers in one of their geographical locations ( NYC ) does approximately 40 - 50 Gbps worth of traffic, that's total traffic. If you want to do just HTTP, you're looking at aggregate of 10Gbps. This is just in one location, this doesn't include things like the DC/Atlanta/Miama/DFW/Houston/SF/Seattle/Denver/Chi cago/Cleveland areas, not to mention all of their smaller level tiers in their own AS.
How is it even close to feasible to retain all/any data for any length of time?
This means you're filling up nearly a petabit worth of data every 6 hours, or a petabyte every 2 days. This is just in one location. That's just insane, especially if you want to hold on to that data for any considerable length of time. You're going to be looking at exabits of data in a short amount of time.
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
Democrats are not socialist. They are left of the Republicans overall, but still by and large a party of right on global (non-US) scale.
The government seems to think it has a problem here. The phone company has had to track each call made, because of the nature of the system and the nature of their billing. The telegraph before it had the same kind of accounting. No other communications in the history of the world has had this kind of surveillance. Now that the government is used to the convenience of using phone records against criminals (and honest citizens too, lately), they see this brand new medium called the intarweb and wonder why they can't track it too.
Funny how they *don't* also wonder why they can't reliably track down snail mail to its sender, and aren't threatening the USPS and UPS with legislation to do so or else. And this is despite the fact that you can send bombs, funny white powders, and other biohazards through the mail to terrorize the population. That's really not something you can do with e-mail.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The above joke, of course, was taken from the Daily Show.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Folks should do google/yahoo/whatever searches for pink fuzzy bunny terrorists or pink lace and chiffon dress terrorists.... That should make things interesting for them when they sift through the collected data...
Of course, I can only imagine what would actually turn up on those searches. I don't even want to ponder it.. *shudders in fear*
We have the power to make all of this fucking bullshit stop now. We must just exercise our rights while we still have them.
I wonder how U.S. will rank in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index after this.. We already rank in the bottom of developed countries, at 44th.
Contrary to what some supporters claim, there are only several places where such degree of Internet survaillance is enforced, most notably China. And interestingly, China is relatively transparent - their employees speak rather openly about their jobs and Chinese government definitely doesn't lie to their citizens - again, a scary, stark contrast to how things are handled here "we don't spy" --> "ok, we spy but not so much" --> "ok, all your information belongs to us, but it's for your best!" --> "hey, we were finally thinking to work on our budget deficit, could we outsource our $3 billion survaillance backups to ISPs?". In U.S., we pour who knows how many billions of dollars in NSA and other entities that are heavily protected from any scrunity and can be above any laws without white house or press ever hearing anything (just how long they have succesfully operated black sites in Egypt and elsewhere before anyone heard about their existence? and what the white house did when we heard? "i guess they are not big problems, uh?"). In European Union, UK succesfully lobbed for legislation that requires companies to store dialed numbers, etc. That has been done in U.S. for the past 30 years or so, and not merely just dialed numbers, but the content as well. For comparison, except for perhaps UK, there is not a single country in European Union which engages in any kind of content survaillence (in France, courts can intervene in Nazi movements if someone blames, but they have never considered survaillance). And no, they don't have big problems with "terrorism" or "child predators". Are we Americans so much more evil that we need all this "protection"?
And no, their economies don't suffer because they lack a national industrial policy integrated with goverment intelligence. Do we really need to protect Halliburton and other 'nice companies' from free markets?
This new bill is just a precautionary development in case mainstream companies such as Google would introduce heavily encrypted versions. They know that the public will yell if encryption weakening or data mining software is implemented on user side (i.e. a deal with microsoft), but hardly anyone yells if anything is done on server side (as it seems, a mandatory data access/transfer to survaillance officials). If you want to provide encrypted freedom to your users, locate your servers in countries like Netherlands.
>said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography
That's not material in an evidence locker as part of an investigation. That's not even bait in a questionable sting operation. He wasn't using those slides to investigate or prosecute a predator, or someone who keeps predators in business. Absolutely he wasn't helping the children who appeared in the slides, in fact he hurt them further by exposing their images to yet more strangers.
Can any of the lawyers here point out a legal theory under which Gonzalez is anything but a felon?
The threat is that, if they don't comply, legislation will follow.
That's for all you people who have doubts about the slippery slope "theory". That is how it works, right? And to all those who want to stamp out our essential freedoms..."You go, girl!" Kill 'em all. We don't care. At least not enough of us to make a difference. So, feel free to go nuts, and I'll just hope for better luck in my next life. This one is approaching the point of no return. There is no convincing people anymore. They all have to see for themselves the consequences of their inaction. So you all fight it out amongst yourselves, and I'll watch the carnage on the tee-vee. Y'all have fun now, hea?
What?
J. Edgar Hoover continued spying on people with all the manpower he could spare. But I doubt that he dreamed of ordering private companies to do his spying for him.
Hope you don't live in Europe. We stole the idea from them.
The recently passed European act mandates companies to save dialed numbers, etc. For comparison, we have done that in the U.S. for the past 30 years. So expect this kind of bill to be introduced by the European Union in 2040.
Except for UK - it tends to stand with us as a leading country in surveillance.
It would be even better if the editors just prefix the article with "NYT" so that I know it's coming from the New York Times in advance. That way, I know not to waste my time reading an article from a newspaper with a reputation of fabrications. Thanks.
I doubt that the encryption overhead is really all that significant. For a site like Slashdot, discussions about performance have always been about the backend database, not the frontend web servers, which is where the encryption would be handled.
What I really want is opportunistic VPN on all connections. If two systems support the protocol, then all communications (web, irc, ftp, VoIP, etc.) are encrypted. This could be accomplished by adding a text record with a public key into DNS much like how SPF is handled. If such a system became widely-deployed, then monitoring at the ISP level would only be of use for traffic analysis (and use of services provided by the ISP, such as @isp.com email).
If it's a real anti-terrorism issue, Homeland Security should be taking the lead, but they look like such bozos since Katrina they'd be laughed at.
So the thing to do, if you have some connection with an ISP, is to get your trade association's lobbyist on the job. Some ongoing lobbyist attention should be able to keep this from being slipped into some unrelated bill, and no way would this win on a standalone floor vote.
Meanwhile, the ISP industry should refuse to discuss the issue with the Justice Department on the grounds that the Justice Department lacks legislative authority to address the matter.
The farseeing article says
>The executives spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they did not want to offend the Justice Department.
Even people with enough money for lawyers, even people who likely have dominant personalities, live in fear of speaking on the record.
Yay, another excuse for ISP's to raise their prices.
Already being done.
sed "s/communist/terrorist"/g 1950s > 2000s
But it is not a WAR ON TERROR it is a war on the citezens of the United States of America and your all so fucking stupid you cant even wrap your tiny little minds around whats really going on here. The ball is rolling and its getting bigger every second. Yeah every day there are several stories just like this one. Any one of these attempts at seizing power away from the people is enough reason to be worried. The people in power be it DEMS or the GOP dont care how it looks. They are in a hurry to steal it all away before you STUPID MOTHER FUCKERS wake up from your urban dreamscape and realize what happend. Its already too late. YOU FUCKING LOST.
So let me get this straight, he starts the meeting by showing a group of people (presummably men) illegal, dirty pictures? In his defense, they're probably just examples of what he's looking for, but can't get the Google query quite right.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Is anyone surprised? Of course the US government would not let the EU beat it to a crappy law! [proud] Just remember, Americans, that we got fucked first on this one! [/proud] Yes, that's right, this time you're following us, hehe! When it comes to ridiculous, hard to implement, privacy-violating, and generally all-around evil laws, it's usually the other way around. [proud] But not this time! [/proud]
http://apple.slashdot.org/
http://ask.slashdot.org/
http://books.slashdot.org/
http://developers.slashdot.org/
http://games.slashdot.org/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/
http://interviews.slashdot.org/
http://it.slashdot.org/
http://www.google.com/
http://linux.slashdot.org/
http://politics.slashdot.org/
http://science.slashdot.org/
http://yro.slashdot.org/
Damn, I'm a geek.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
All the ISP's have to do is to send an email to each of their subscribers pointing out that:
1. Congress is considering wiretapping their Internet surfing.
2. Each user is going to have to pay more in order to allow this wiretapping.
The latter is especially important, as people really don't like their rates to go up. And of course, include the phone number and mail address that people can call or write to complain about this.
Somehow, I think Congress will (at the least) think twice about this proposal.
The ISP's have a VAST potential for lobbying Congress on this issue. No other industry can reach so directly to the general population in order to make their voice heard.
I do hope they use it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
The supreme irony of this would be funny if it weren't so bothersome.
They are discussing invading/removing people's privacy... but only on the condition that they, themselves, remain anonymous.
Wha...?
The rights of the constution only apply to Americans. That should go without saying. It's not the supreme law of the world, just the law of America. So if we capture a foriegn fighter, they aren't protected by the constution. Now normally, if they are a member of a foriegn military, they are protected by the Geneva Convention. We signed the treaty, and the constution declares that treaties shall also be the high law of the land.
Ok, all that's straight enough, but what of random people who attack the US, but yet claim no affilation to any country? Well that's a legal limbo area. We don't have anything saying they get any protections. One thing the GC is quite explicit about is that you have to be marked as a member of the military you serve under, as in have a uniform, have your vehicles marked and so on. You can't pretend to be a civilian as cover, and then claim no military ties, but get the protections.
Now please note, I'm not saying I at all agree with what they are doing, I'm saying it's not really a constutional issue. The issue comes up only on the US citizens being held. They are entitled to constutional prtections.
I used to do contract work for a small ISP. There was almost no logging at all in that shop. mail/ftp/dns/radius logs were rolled every week and only the totals were kept for the mrtg graphs. The only "web log" was the access log from apache, that is to say the only web usage log the ISP had was a log of hits to its own website. There was no web proxy or other way to log web usage. Sometimes the router was configured to keep a short term log of connections, but this was only for debugging and performance tuning, the logs were rolled every five minutes or so due to sheer volume. Raw disk usage and bandwidth usage were really the only figures that concerned anyone at that ISP. A few times we had to track down users who were clogging the mail server, but that was about it.
No shit, considering that the Dems today are more conservative than the GOP was thirty years ago.
They want to change the rules for ISP's to colect and store the data... if that wouldn't work, then just make each website retain the records.
you go to jail, for whatever reason. I'm not sure I would do business with a company where the governmint is asking the companies of the information superhighway to keep information that could be used against me in a courtroom. The US is simply out of control yet once again, giving me another reason to leave and move into some remote part of the world.
WHY exactly does the Attorney General of the United States spend so much time looking at child porn? And why isn't he getting arrested when he clearly admits to it? I fail to see a single situation in which the AG needs to directly see images of child pornography in order to accomplish his job.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
You know, other businesses are not required to retain data on customers. Seems like if you are going to force Comcast to do it, you probably ought to force Walmart as well...
// This is not a sig.
I find it interesting that (according to YAhoo) that the ACLU didn't attend the meeting that discussed this, even though they were invited. They were either (A) invited using a 1x1 sticky note on a door, or (B) fighting something else that day. Seems like they would have been all over this one!
the last few years.
I think what you and many here may be looking for is Anonym.OS http://kaos.to/cms/content/view/14/32/
.ISO and giving it a spin. It's amusing to open Firefox to "whatsmyip.com" and see your IP address change to another region of the world every few minutes. Also, the dire-sounding warning from Yahoo Chat "Notification: We are currently recording IP addresses of all Yahoo! Chat us :D
It's an OpenBSD 3.8-based LiveCD (read: no installing, nothing left on a hard-drive to search, usable from any net-connected PC with a CDROM drive that can be booted from).
It includes pre-configured TOR onion-routing, STRONG encryption that OpenBSD is (in)famous for, and is very simple to use..even for those with little computer/*nix knowledge. Everything is pre-configured for maximum security and anonymity.
Plus, it appears to be developed and hosted outside the U.S., so restricting it's availability or use would be very hard to accomplish for the U.S. government.
Also, being OpenBSD-based, it will run on minimal hardware resources. It includes the Fluxbox desktop, with Thunderbird e-mail client, Firefox webbrowser, and Gaim multiprotocol IM/chat client.
Even having nothing to hide, this is a handy liveCD to have in the toolbox. I highly recommend downloading an
ers" becomes quite humorous.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
My side hurts, now.
Sounds like they are trying to drive companies like Google and Yahoo out of the US.
Should be a real boon to foreign anonymizer services...
tor.eff.org
i do this all the time. just click the 'retention' tickbox in the backup software.
if it ain't broke, break it.
No surprise here, folks.
I grew up in Europe, and I remember all the communist droids running around after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc screaming "But the Soviet Union wasn't a _real_ communist system, don't knock my precioussss Communism".
Real conservatives who tolerated W before but now cry "he's not one of us, honest!" therefore sound eerily familiar.
McCain epsecially comes to mind, after sucking up to W in the 04 RNC, and the recent Lynchburg Falwell love-in.
So, if you put an image up of bush burning the flag to make a statement representing how you think he is handling the country, your ISP will turn you into the feds right after that flag burning ammendment gets passed this year.
As everybody knows cops who want to give you a traffic ticket can always come up with something. They can you up with so much crap you would not even consider-- if they want to and if they can watch you.
Exactly when did we go from innocent until proven guilty, to guilty with the chance of some light innocence in the afternoon.
Our government is treating us like everyone is a criminal.
The argument "but if you have nothing to hide" is a joke. I shouldn't be treated the same as the terrorists.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
Seems like they should quit trying to circumvent the constitution, and do away with it already. Whether they are subtle or obvious, the american people will not notice.
For a good example, and a self-test to see where you lie on the plane, have a look here
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I know this is going to be offensive to you but there is a reason why so few people are liberterians. LIberteriansims doesn't work. It has never worked. LIberterians ignore the entire history of mankind and pretend that something that has never worked before will work some day.
In the past few thousand years people have formed tribes, cities, communes, countries, states, of every possible form imaginable and not one liberterian society has survived long enough to make a mark.
It's not going to work in Montana (or whereever you guys want to set up) either. People in those states love their handouts from the govt for farming, ranching, logging, etc. People in those states are against abortion, against legalized drugs, against legalized prostitution. They will not appreciate you coming in and overriding their wishes. It will not be a happy joyous place.
Honestly. GIve it up. It's a pipe dream. It has never worked, it will never work.
evil is as evil does
The Lovejoy Gambit. Haven't seen that one defined before. Is it as official as Godwin's Law?
well, a quick google search for it returns no hits, but i do think that tht tactic deserves a name and this one sounds pretty good.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
... but Liebrtarians do!
Libertas in infinitum
Have you read Patriot Act I and II?
If he has, he'd be a few steps ahead of the legislators who actually voted for it.
I wonder how many heard about what Ralph Nader did when congress was "debating" the Patriot Act. He pledged to give to any charity a congress critter nominates, I'm thinking it was either $10,000 or $100,000, if they took and passed a test on just what was in the act. Not one of them took him up on it. And with the exception of someone from Wisconson, I don't recall his name, and Rep Ron Paul (R) of Texas they all voted for the Patriot Act.
FalconShould there be a Law?
BTW- is it actually legal for them to send US citizens to as prisoners to Guantanamo? I thought 'enemy combatants' were strictly non-citizens from outside the US - anyone nabbed within the US got a trial like Moussaoui did.
You mean like Jose Padilla, the "Dirty Bomber"? As a US citizen, he was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Then he was declared an "enemy combatant" and moved to a military brigg. After being held for years, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally charged him with "with providing - and conspiring to provide - material support to terrorists, and conspiring to murder individuals who are overseas". This is a totally different charge than what he was originally arrested for. The only reason he was charged was because they arrested and were holding him unconstitutionally.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Tapped embassy communications? You mean they tapped communications involving people located in the United States? That's civil liberties travesty, isn't it? Oh wait, that actually worked? Oh, you were tapping the communications of people who were communicating with known bad guys (in this case Soviets). Huh. From reading Slashdot, I thought that kind of thing was wrong. Or is it only wrong when the Bush Administration does it? I'm confused.
Nobody is spying on you! The authorities would need a court order to get the data from your ISP.
I mean Libertarians.
Libertas in infinitum
"Have you read Patriot Act I and II? If you have, you'd know that the new definition of a 'domestic terrorism' is "any action that endangers human life that is a violation of any Federal or State law". You'd also know that anyone who fits this ridiculously broad definition of 'terrorism' can now be considred an 'enemy combatant' and stripped of their U.S. citizenship and rights. Under current legislation, a person could be legally held indefinitely without trial for something as innocuous as speeding."
Exactly! Many seem perplexed as to what is behind the obsessive interest the current "government" has with the communications and other private affairs of American citizens. The target is not pedophiles, Islamic terrorist groups or any real criminal activity at all. What this is all about is getting as much data as possible on domestic malcontents. These include some pretty radical but "well heeled" militia groups that operate far enough within the law to prevent court sanctioned monitoring.
What the "Patriot Act I and II" and these other anti-liberty ploys provide is a means to circumvent the public face of the judicial system. Of course there is also the advantage that via the same methods they could also quiet other domestic malcontents, including those unafraid to speak their mind, like you and I. These attempts to identify malcontents are bound to stir up the more radical, and usually well armed factions. I cannot not help to think that the current bunch of nitwits is trying to "stir the stink" and prove themselves "saviors" when they start to roundups following an event they brought on by these methods.
The big picture is rather chilling. This nation has had problems from the start like the slavery and segregation of blacks, genocide and apartheid of native peoples, bondage and serfdom of asian, irish and other later immigrants, and the more recent abuse of illegals. It has serious problems with wealth distribution and it is getting worse all the time. It has a judicial system that operates in relation to the $$ one has to spend on bribes, oops sorry "on qualified representation". The methods we have used over the years to elect representatives has always been far from perfect, but seems to be on the brink of collapse lately. The horrendous laws that have been passed in recent years, combined with the total lack of respect for that "god-damned piece of paper" by a bunch of nitwits, well I see a storm on the horizon or is it a bad moon risin'. Best of luck, see ya in camp malcontent.
Matthew
" - and most terrorists could easly commit crimes using low tech means (like, oh say, boxcutters, maybe?"
Actually most persons of normal physical conditioning and strength can be taught in a short period of time how to kill or maim rather effectively with only their hands, feet and the victims body mass. Then there are items like ball point pens, glass bottles, aluminum cans, shoelaces, house keys, plastic ID badges, personal care products and household chemicals. Almost anything can be used as an offensive weapon in a specific circumstance. It is all about intent and knowledge, resources are nearly inexhaustible and opportunity can be created.
Matthew
The History channel in a recent program related how during the American Civil War, civil
liberties were abrograted by suspension of the right of writ of Habeus Corpus. The courts also allowed military tribunals to court martial American civilians on capital military charges.
In this way, a Colonel Sweet in charge of a prisoner of war garrison/prison near the University
of Chicago asked for and recieved authority from the then Secretary of War William Stanton to declare all of Chicago under martial law. He then proceeded to arrest over a hundred people on various and capital charges (capital means in the military courts martial they shoot you or hang you). Military trials were then held on these people; the trials concluded over six months after the war was over and the martial law jurisdiction had been lifted. As a result, over three people were actually executed for writing letters to the editor of the local papers that were critical of
the government, and more particularly critical of Col Sweet. Col Sweet was rewarded for his cruelty to the citizens of Chicago, and for the murder, torture, and starvation of over four thousand Confederate prisoners of war by Secretary of War Stanton's granting Col Sweet with a promotion to General. Such are the things to be expected now if the Supreme Court grants again the authority to militarily try civilians. Ways will be found to make the Constitution a dead letter if this is allowed to happen. Historically, the Supreme Court eventually ruled that the Civil War military tribunals were illegal, among other things. Small comfort to the victims of Col/General
Sweet and his prison that the inmates dubbed: "Eighty Acres of Hell!"!
Would a random surfing plugin for firefox work to render records useless?