Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Puts Police Link on Messenger
SirClicksalot writes "Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police. From the article: 'Microsoft will add a "report abuse" icon to Messenger that will link any users worried about their anonymous internet buddies directly to online police services. Set up earlier this year to provide a single point of contact for the public, law enforcers and the communications industry to report the targeting of children online, CEOP offers advice and information to parents and potential victims of abuse and works with police forces around the world to protect children.'"
Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police.
Oh yeah, I can't see this being abused at all. Especially by teenagers just screwing around.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This is a good idea, But... how many false alarms will there be? If every alarm has to be investigated, there will be a lot of wasted time.
Besides, we all know how kids like clicking everywhere.
Sure, this is a neat feature, and it can be very usefull. But I am concerned that it is open for abuse. I'm sure there are safeguards in place, but anyone could easily report someone as a prank or a younger could accidentally click the little button. It probably just means your IM logs get a quick glance, but still...
One of the most convenient ways of destroying someone's life forever is to hint that they're a pedd-o to the police. One of the least credible sources of information is through chat and blog and instant message internet services. This sounds like a great way to completely twist the whole of society tightly around the axle for years to come.
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Microsoft and everyone else has more important things to do than build 'predator features' into their software.
What happens when you press the button? Does it send a log to the police or can they view the messages being sent between two people from that point on?
Anybody else greatly reminded of the Warning feature on AIM? No, people aren't going to screw around with this at all, everybody will be fair and sensible and only use it when justified.
LilJen1992 says: ... UGHGHGHGH!!!!11
__OMG LIEK TEHER IS SUM RILLY CREPY CHAP TAH WANTS ME TO
Constable Nigel says:
__4 ril?
LilJen1992 says:
__Yeh he is so grss!!!1
Constable Nigel says:
__kk jess gimme his s/n
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Some people here have been saying "what about the abuse" well seeing as they will know who is reporting the abuse then if you are just pratting about then those same police who are looking for predators can also send a threating response for wasting police time (a punishable offence). Unlike making crank calls from a telephone box this is very traceable.
Good idea, and well done Microsoft.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I have three seperate accounts I use to log into MSN Messenger's services, via passport.
Only one of them contains any personal information about me. The other two, which are in use most often, are full of completely bogus information.
Hypothetically speaking, where exactly would any online 'police service' get in such a situation? I think this has the potential to be a good idea, but I'm curious to see how many resources are going to be thrown behind this, given how easy it is to enter completely false data from the word go.
I think someone has watched too many episodes of the Simpsons and thought the Springfield Online Police Report was a good idea.
Bless The Simpsons
... is that it's the poor police who'll be feeling abused.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Well thank goodness for that.
At last someone is thinking of the children.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Sure, but who knows what information they'll glean from people that have been falsely e-cused? Through the course of the investigation, who knows what they could dig up for charges.
Do you have encyclopedic knowledge of all laws in all jursidictions and the details of all precedent-setting cases under every one?
Are you certain you have nothing to hide?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
We already have ways of reporting pedophiles. You can pick up the phone, you can write a letter, or you can walk into a police station. It doesn't need to be made any easier. Why don't people do this? Because their confidence in the police is low. They think the police either won't act for lack of evidence(in which case it can be a waste of time or worse the police might acuse them of making the situation up), or the police may over-react to information given and you could ruin someone's life based on a vague suspicion.
What you need to do is increase confidence in the police by making sure they always respond appropriately to legitimate complaints. Adding a "report a pedo" form is just plain silly.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So now you can rat out anyone you feel like, even when they do nothing wrong just beacuse you are an ass.
Bring down the man on them.. Good way to scare away users.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How about a button that alerts the IRS? or the SEC when someone on a stock chat room brags about something not quite legal? or the private investigator that's checking up on the housewife who seems to be having a bit too much fun online...
...you click on the button, then John Cleese appears in a London bobby's uniform. "Wot's all this, then?"
(not to be confused with the Young Ones version where Neil appears in a London bobby's uniform saying "Woah, like chill out, man.")
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This will be heavily abused by kids just messing with each other. Yeah, no one would ever click this button as a joke on their friend. Without some sort of punishment for abuse of the system by the submitter this will work the same as blanket phone wiretaps - simply increase the size of the haystack in which one is searching for a needle.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Remember, the majority of these reports will probably be coming from teen and pre-teens.
In the US, there are differences in how we handle crimes committed by adults and those same crimes committed by juveniles.
Can't wait for the first messenger worm to start reporting everyone on your buddies list as sexual predators.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
just in case this term has not made it across the pond yet, grooming in that context means preparing someone for an adult relationship - eg; convincing them that they want to try something which they otherwise would not have.
Warhammer forums
What if you've got an MSN account that you only access through libraries and other public places? Tracing the IP of the "false reporter" would only tell the police which cafe you've been to. And if it's a really busy one, and you paid in cash...
Certainly a waste of resources just to end up a dead end...
Or what about "report pedo" messages getting spammed in from zombie PCs?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
The people who are really being abused probably aren't going to report it. If they are happy to just push a button to make it stop, why don't they just sign out or block the person?
Aren't the worst cases of abuse when the target is manipulated by the abuser, so they will willing go along with it? Isn't that they -only- way someone on the interent could physically get in contact with the target for abuse? I don't see how this will stop that or even help prevent that at all.
I think that this is a horrible idea that can only serve to weaken online privacy (what little there is left), security (these days being secure to me means being protected from harassment or worse from the police state as much as being protected from normal criminals).
I think that everyone who has said that this will be abused by idiots and kids is right, for the most part - but my real problem is that this is a first step to eroding anonymity (or semi-anonymity) online, because once that button has been there for a little while, then the authorities can say - "Well, we now need every IP to be verifiably tied to an ID because online police buttons might be pushed and we can't go throught trying to figure out who all of these sceennames are."
Oh yeah, I can't see this being abused at all. Especially by teenagers just screwing around.
No we can't trust the teenagers to do this properly. The will screw around with it, either out of ignorance, or just for kicks. Protecting the children is too important to be left up to them, so expect to see new software that scans incoming and outgoing streams for certain words, then makes the online report itself.
Initially, such software will be optional.
[/sarcasm]
Given the potential for abuse, this doesn't seem like it would be that effective. What if instead: Clicking "Report Pedophile" would put that specific screenname on a watch list. Then, when that screenname enters the "14 year olds just having fun" chatroom, the watch list would signal a warning and MSN could pay *extra special* attention to that chat session, either by having someone in real life enter the chatroom, or by using software to spot specific "pedo trends." This would have the benefits of notifying someone in charge about a potential pedophile, but if your friends put you on it as a joke, you wouldn't be rammed by the cops.
Surely any real predator would, in light of this, access their IM services via an anonymous VPN service, thus rendering the whole thing pointless. The only thing that this would get used for, as many stated earlier, is wasting police time.
Nice idea, though..
Can you be prosecuted for clicking that icon without good cause?
That's a scary thought. I certainly wouldn't use any software in which accidentally clicking the wrong button calls the police!
Is it just me, or do we have faith in our community to undermine this feature quickly enough that it's never taken seriously?
Hey if the cops show up, don't be alarmed. Fido accidentally jumped on the keyboard.
I will forever be a student.
those same police who are looking for predators can also send a threating response for wasting police time
What if your computer is pwned? Will the police send a threat to my worm? Or will they sue me for having a worm, which is something I don't want anyway? And what about hijacked accounts and spoofed IP addresses?
Please understand that defending any MS decision to do anything other than shut-down (which is their software's hallmark) is dangerous because you are wasting geek time. Thank you for your cooperation.
What a madly easy to reach weapon of mass destruction in the hands of vengeful, disappointed, or unloved teens......
As if people chat with Microsoft Messenger. It might as well have a BIG, RED, SHINY, HISTORY ERASER BUTTON.
What kind of abuse of this new feature even comes close to outweighing the benefits of being able to connect reported abuse to certain IP addresses individually, and probably more usefully statistically?
Sure there is potential for people to be wrongfully reported, and sure this makes it easier to do, nevertheless; more data is always better than less data when tracking down criminals.
I doubt every report would be investigated, but if there were a few reports from different users pointing to one person, that would be a data point that would not have been known previously.
If you (or I) are wrongfully reported, wouldn't the hassle of answering a few questions about your life (if it ever even came to that) far outweigh the benefits of increasing the protection of children, and even adults?
I hope the cops there aggressively arrest and prosecute any minors who are masquerading as adults online, and fine their parents for allowing "abusive behavior".
Either that or they can just stop it with the big brother action and realise that parents need to take care of their kids more effectively. the internet is NOT an electronic babysitter.
Anyone who would be intelligent enough to report a sexual predator wouldn't meet the sexual rpedator in real life or give out personal information to begin with. The only people who are "preyed upon" are the imbeciles who are somehow convinced to have sex with a stranger over the internet. Moreover, with this kind of button, there will be SO MANY false reports/prank reports/anything reports that it will just be a huge, enormous waste of police resources, money, and time.
"Abuse of "Report Abuse" Leads to Feature Removal"
Unless the "Report Abuse" also submits details as the submitter as well (Username and IP/hostname in particular). Still, I can see trolls mass-reporting people to the police because they visit a forum the trolls hate because they were banned quite fairly... as an example.
I hope there's a confirmation dialog box and not just a single click. I mean, who hasn't made honest accidental clicks?
And assuming that this does involve a few steps, do the police investigate you if you stop at any point? Like when quickly hanging up on 911, they still have to check if the call wasn't interrupted by an attacker.
The article doesn't address specifics and I don't use Messenger.
Lastly, which authority? UK, Brazil, Germany, somewhere else? The article does mention the anonymity issue, but doesn't address this related problem. Microsoft may have a good guess using the contact info and IP addresses, but the
This is not my sig.
On the positive side, it is good to know that I can contact the police in case of an emergency. On the other hand, what if this service is NOT available in my area? What if I get a 404 message when a creepy axe murder/peophile breaks into my house?
What do I do?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
So the police will get 50 complaints an hour about how Jimmy Russell is calling timmy Hall a retard or the like.
In the meanwhile, perverts will continue to get away from it because no one realizes what they are doing is "abuse".
Personally my plan is thus.
1. Create worm.
2. Send worm out to get messengers to send reports about "creepy old guy who says he has lots of money named Billy gates"
3. Get article on Slashdot
4. Laugh because police have already ignored the report abuse button during the 12 hours it took for step 1.
Does this remind anyone else of the flame wars on AIM a few years ago. My frosh year at college, and everyone was out to crank up our buddies "warning level", ridiculous
In Soviet Russia.. err wait...
You missed out:
5. ???
6 PROFIT!
Another reason people don't file police reports for this sort of thing are all the technical barriers that must be overcome: the complainant has to provide contextual information, at least including the time the incident occurred and who was involved. The police would then traditionally have to obtain warrants, contact AOL or MSN or whoever and pull IP logs, then do the same with the respective ISPs to get names and addresses. And if there is no reliable log of the conversation then the accused can deny the conversation ever took place.
With this service, I would expect MSN to forward aliases, a full chat log with accurate timestamps, the IP addresses of the involved parties, profile information, and anything else MSN may have on record. This eliminates the need for diligence on the part of the complainant and a good bit of footwork for the police handling the issue. And so long as the interface is designed properly, I think the chance of accidental or fake reports to be quite low (not considering worms that may target the feature).
All in all I think this is a fairly decent feature to add to a commercial chat client. If nothing else, it will likely be better than what we have now--ie. nothing.
You have to garner 3 reports from other accounts before you are considered a potential suspect. On the first hit, nothing happens. On subsequent hits, the previous reporter is notified and given an opportunity to retract or enforce the original report. At this time, the reportee also gets notified that they've got two strikes. On the the third hit, all 4 accounts involved are given one role of a 1d20 dice. If the sum of the 3 reporting accounts is at least twice as high as the reportee's role, the case gets sent to the police. In the event that any of the reporting accounts is involved in more than two cases rolles simultaneously, that account will be automatically sent to the police as a potential false alarmer. Now, these rolls (case rolls) will occur at predetermined times, set by the national television broadcasters subscribing to a service. Broadcast subscribers will each have an equal vote in determining the time slot. All OTA and cable broadcasters will have the opportunity to subscribe to the feed showing the rolls of all groups. Subscription fees are paid to MS. This fee will be taxed by the government at the rate of 60 cents to the dollar. Back to the action. The broadcasters will cast votes by submitting their top executives to a no-holds-barred, all vs. all, cage match. This will be broadcast by satellite providers (didn't think I was gonna leave them out, didya?) for free. At the end of the match, the winning executive will then battle a MS executive over whether or not the tax is passed back to the broadcasters to pay.
Oh wait, this will never work. According to the laws of thermodynamics, you can never create more energy than what is consumed, and therefore, if an MS executive is involved in a case roll, and loses, the whole system collapses. damn.
I can feel big brother breathing on my neck right behind me. fair enough everyone is looking out for 'the children' this is much more than that - if you arent always 100% politically correct, or your msn name has something suggestive in your name, you have the potential to be screwed over. soon enough ill be getting in trouble for wanting to 'tap that' on my msn name. but im quite happy to take my oh so bad language to court ;)
Here's a link to the BBC article, which I believe provides a bit more information:
BBC ArticleI wonder how much good it will do.
I have seen the way people get pissy and overreact.
Will I get reported for saying "hey babe whats up?"?
Everyone that knows me knows I say that to everyone.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
And that's a crime?
Wow.
I hope no-one wants to use speech-to-text in WLM. They could get reported for plotting murder with their aunt.
Yep, I bet we'll have a 'Report as Terrorist' icon soon too. And we know how lax the definition of 'terrorism' is in the Terrorism Act here in the UK.
don't pretend as if you all would not like it
having 'sexual predator' written next to your nick
and that claimed by the community itself...
ofcourse you would have to use msn to get that feature... too bad...
They stick like shit. They're honestly the worst policed, and worst handled crime out there. Societies reaction to them only compounds the issue.
Given the stigma attached to them in just about any society going, they should be handled like a black ops. There should be an immediate gag order on the proceedings from the time of the complaint until a verdict is reached unlesss an extreme need can be proven for otherwise.
I lost count but I was keeping track of all the false rape and other claims being made from the beginning of the year. www.dailyrotten.com is great for that. All the stories where "Woman cries rape..oh wait..video evidence provided shows she was shooting a porn film" kind of stories, and other stuff.
I've now required that any woman I'm to have sex with have a form filled out in triplicate, with 4 witnesses and then notorized. I usually require this being taped by a neutral third party. Usually I just arrange to have sex at the police station with at least 2 officers watching so that all is legit.
Back to the black ops. Any reporter found releasing information about an arrest or trial about a sex crime before its concluded should be shot as an example. If the claim is found to be outright false, the complainant should be subject to no less than 5 years in jail. If its not guilty, everyone gets a cookie and goes home.
The amount of stories I've read about teenagers who've accused a teacher of a sex crime then x amount of years later turned around and said "Oh.. we uh..made it up" is ridiculous. This tool serves no purpose other than to further this type of behaviour.
I'll use this to get back on my ex-girlfriend....
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
If my boss doesn't give me that raise I wanted, I can report him as a pedophile... But then again, if I don't put in enough overtime, he can report me.
I guess the key is to indiscriminantly accuse everyone of being a pedophile before they accuse you. Shoot first and ask questions later! It is like a sleazy, pathetic version of the old west!
Funny how different jurisdictions set their priorities.
When I was approached by an insurance scam artist, I wanted to alert the authorities, for the benefit of the people who are stupid enough to fall for their "if you pay us $200, you'll make more money back but we won't tell you how or if it works until you pay us" scheme.
Unfortunately, a search of the Ottawa Police website for "fraud" returned no results.
Clearly, the police have no interest in this and other forms of white-collar crime.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Who cares about kids? Why are they so freakin special? If you want a button, have it be a button to notify the police of illegal activity, period. Crimes are being committed against all sorts of people. Kids are nothing special.
It's the damn parents that are responsible for their kids. Don't have time to watch them? Don't have kids!
eTrade SUCKS
Allrighty, Being from Belgium where the worlds most (in?)famous pedophile stuff takes place (anyone remember Dutroux? the guys that abducted, raped, killed and then made the bodies disappear) I feel we need to take a step back and look at this hole thing at once before zooming in the issue of "the button"...
Anyway, Belgiums (and mostlikely the whole world) most known pedophile is Dutroux. He abducted, raped, imprisoned for months and then killed his victims. Most of this was going on AFTER the internet got full of chatsites, MSN/ICQ/... and other communication technologies. As far as any reasearch can prove he never even went online, let alone use it actively.
That proves that pedophiles and the internet have no relationship. Not all pedophiles use the internet, (most pedophiles are "older" people most of whom haven't got the foggiest clue of what the interenet is, let alone how to poperly abuse it) so IMO tht means that during the present generation (of course as generations progress and the "elder" people on average know more about PC/net the use of tracking them gets more important)isn't to productive.
Then let's go to the zoomed bit and talk about the actual "button of doom"..
First, I agree, that buton is just SCREAMING to all underaged kids to "see what it does" or to use when they are really pissed at for example their parents who forced them to eat brocoli? Or if they've been to grandmas, because she sent them to bed at 20.00 insted of letting them see.. I dunno, American gladiators? Kids never seem to look or think beyond the next 2 seconds of their life.
Secondly, I'm all in favor of catching pedophiles, just in case I ever decide I just might want kids, but I do see in all countries in Europe (and I've been almost all over, from Portugal to Finland) seem to be seriously overracting to any and all CLAIMS of pedophily.
It's still a Europewide (or even worldwide) overreaction that has been going on for 5-10 years. To give a good example of how much overreaction, here's a quick recap of something that happened in Belgium.
A retired coupple (the husband so old he reached impotence) was charged by their neighbours (apparently mommy was jealous that her kids enjoyed going over to the neighbours after school till he parents got home) of pedophily. The coupple was immediately arrestd nd put into arrest. It took 6 MONTHS in jail to prove that A, the old man was impotent, B, the neighbours were lieing and most importantly C, the kids themselves continiously claimed nothing had happened, but it took 6 months apparently to read and understand that the kids (supposed victims)had always said the old coupple never did anything.
So in cunclusion, all I can relly see happening is either the police ignoring the entire button report because there are to many and after a while they realise virtually any underaged kid with a tempertantrum is reporting their family OR they come up with some INSANELY draconic punishment system for abuse. Which will of course NOT be implemented towards underage kids. Ergo, the entire idea is useless. There are allready MANY ways to accuse someone of pedophily. There's no need for more, especially not when kids can so easily abuse it, and that most pedophiles probably know less about PC's and the internet then youraverage 14 year old.
One of the new faculty members here at the University of Washington has discovered a way to "fingerprint" remote machines based on their clock skew, which is leaked out to the world via the TCP timestamp option. NATing routers don't mask this, so you can potentially differentiate multiple machines using the same IP. This was reported on Slashdot over a year ago, and here's the actual paper.
So, you're not as anonymous as you'd think.
In Britain (or England and Wales at any rate as Scotland has a seperate legal code) there is an offence of wasting police time which carries a maximum penalty of 6 months in prison or a hefty fine. I'm not sure how easy it would be to prove though. Surely anyone who abuses this system can just say "They seemed suspicious to me". How could you distinguish between abuse and an honest mistake?
JonBenet Ramsey - she was groomed.
There probably isn't as much room for abuse of this system as many people think and has been previously mentioned. It is most likely that clicking the button won't send the email address of the "predator", rather it will take the victim to a police website/form which would require a full name, phone number, etc, which would then be used to verify the report in person before any actual investigation is launched. This is really just so Microsoft can say to worried parents that their service is safer than others, "no pedos here, not like YIM, et all."
as we have seen with the RIAA suits, What about joe 14-year old trying to convince jane 12-year old to have sex with him(as most 14-16 year old boys are apt to do), jane reports joe, police come to the house where joes ip address is in use, joes dad answers door, "yes that is my computer", Police: "come with us you Pedo"........
So in other words, if you're a sexual predator of young children, avoid using MSN chat for your illigitamate purposes.
I would hate to be falsely accused and have to go through an investigation. Hopefully if this gets implemented they'll take some precatutionary measures to prevent this.
..."Help! I think my bank details have been stolen due to another IE security hole" button?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The idea was if someone was abusing/bothering you you could "warn them" which would cause a warning level to show for them on everyone's buddylist(who had them on it). Also, if you got a warn level high enough you got booted from AIM for a certain period of time. Each press of the button incremented the warn level more, eventually you had to stop.
When I was in middle school it was funny to gang up on a friend and warn him to the point where he was banned. Basically we had warn wars where we would see who could boot the other first. Of if you got mad at them and wanted revenge it was good fo rthat too.
I read this and just wondered if there would be similar "abuse wars", only this time the police are involved. How many 12 year olds are going to get mad a friend and hit the button or do it just to mess with them?
I'm not a parent but I've got two neices and a nephew who've been on the Internet for about ten years now (yeah, no jokes about "Isn't it time they went to bed then?") and who rely on their geek uncle to regularly clean/reinstall their PCs. Yep, I've never seen kids accumulate so many damned computer viruses on their PCs but I've been through browser histories, download directories and caches on their machines on several occasions and never seen anything that leads me to conclude they've ever been to "naughty" web sites or ever chatted online to anyone other than other kids. They're pretty much left to their own devices when it comes to Internet use with no parents looking over their shoulders. I'd have to conclude they're pretty sensible.
However, with the youngest nephew and niece just into their teen years, their parents are concerned if they go round to the local convenience store on their own because of the gangs of other kids who are invariably hanging around outside, threatening other kids and even some adults.
My view, therefore, is that this idea that there are gangs of cyberstalking paedophiles on the Internet is utter nonsense. It is a creation designed to instill fear in the general populace such that eventually the populace will expect governments to enforce Internet censorship and monitoring which is ultimately what those in control want.
During my childhood years, I had parents that taught me how to behave in the company of others and who'd give me a belt around the backside if I behaved wrongly to other kids or adults. I can also remember seeing local policemen walking the streets and police cars occasionally just driving around the area.
I wasn't stopped from going anywhere I liked, didn't have a mobile phone but got told what time I had to be home by. I can remember two occasions where me and some friends had to stand up to some kids who were out for a fight, otherwise we'd ignore abusive kids and just walk away.
So perhaps it's worthwhile thinking about the relevance of this Microsoft button - because it absolves the government of having to tell the truth to you, absolves all law enforcement officials of protecting you as a law-abiding citizen and absolves you of your responsibilities as a parent.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So I guess it's to my advantage that, without an MSN Instant Messenger account, I can't be falsely reported, even by a brute-forcing worm.
By the way, what happens if you report someone outside the jurisdiction of Britain?
This is not going to send the cops to your door. What it will do is REPORT on suspected activity. The authorities will have to investigate or be left wide open and liable for massive lawsuits (along with MS) if they didn't investigate. This will mainly flag users for the police to monitor and take a look at and see if there is reason to do a more through investigation such as getting the records of user activity. Most likely this will send a section of the chat log for basic review and if it looks bad they will get a court order for the full logs.
Except that emails aren't traceable. At all. Especially the throwaway ones on things like dodgeit.com. You should be concerned about the abuse.
In the vast majority of cases, emails are eminently traceable, even when some attempt has been made to obscure their origin.
Mail servers keep logs of the IP's that connect to them (both of the client, and other SMTP servers), and ISP's know who the IP's are allocated to, even if they are dynamically assigned, usually through Radius logs (and in the UK, keep such information on record is mandatory for ISP's, as it is for telecoms operators - and their is legislation on track to come into force in the next year or so that will explicitly make keeping the equivolent of 'call records' for email (e.g. sender, recipient, date+time madatory).
Requests for information about users is pretty common and usually it's very easy to trace them from emails they have sent (even when they think they 'anonymized' them by sending through a relay service, by adding forged headers to by using an internet cafe, but tracing the individual that sent it its really not that difficult in most cases - though the effort put in is usually proportional to the seriousness of the alleged offence).
Well said. It's the perfect excuse for governments to gain more monitoring ability over the internet and citizens in general. Very few disagree with new regulations designed to "protect the children" (certainly very few politicians), especially when they are given names such as, "Deleting Online Predators Act" and "Child Protection and Safety Act".
The US Department of Homeland Security has worked with Microsoft to create a button in MSN Messenger that reports your neighbor's suspicious behavior. A top official with Homeland Security has suggested placing your webcam in a window facing your neighbor so that video surveillance can be transmitted at the same time.