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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.
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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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..."
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
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
The best thing you can do with your browser is to write your congressperson and paraphrase some of the more cogent arguments for privacy; many are and have been presented here on slashdot.
This website can be quite a trove of insight.
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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...!
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.
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.
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."
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.
No. "Big Brother" just ensures that everyone is a documented lawbreaker, and that documentation can be used to harrass, blackmail, or remove anyone who offends the ruling power.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
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?
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
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.
Republicans have also depleted the National Guard local militias who are trained and equipped to stand up to government forces. While training government forces to attack, kill and torture civilians in sub/urban as well as rural theaters.
Republicans would like nothing better than an armed American milita, easily suppressed by the Marines, to justify martial law and the roundups of liberals^Wsubversives.
The time when armed private Americans could stop government tyranny is long gone. Gun owners traded that protection for cheaper, easier commerce in hobby guns - a deal Republicans were happy to offer.
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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!
Actually, true conservatives, which the Republican party used to be made up of, do that...there's plenty of fuel in the argument that Bush and Co. aren't true conservatives, never were.
--trb
> No. "Big Brother" just ensures that everyone is a documented lawbreaker, and that documentation can be used to harrass, blackmail, or remove anyone who offends the ruling power.
This, to me, is the scarriest thing that a government can do. Pass laws and then say, "well it's OK, we're not going to use this against people". What? Don't pass laws if you're not going to prosecute every violator. Otherwise it sounds like you're saying, "this law shouldn't affect people that don't cause any controversy... we're only going to use it to take down people we don't like". Great, just great.
If every law were actually enforced, they would go away when people got fed up with them. Imagine every jaywalker going to jail -- jaywalking wouldn't be illegal for much longer after W (or someone else important, not one of us pleebs) had to spend time in a cell overnight.
Speaking of which, I think it's time to start filing lawsuits against the government for all these bullshit laws that are passed. I'm sure there are plenty of other laws that make these laws illegal.
My other car is first.
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
Why. If they're doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide.
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.
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