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Gonzales Wants ISP Data Retention To Curb Child Porn
$RANDOMLUSER writes, "The AP is reporting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Banking Committee today and called for Congress to require ISPs to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography. 'This is a problem that requires federal legislation,' Gonzales said. He called the government's lack of access to customer data the biggest obstacle to deterring child porn. 'We respect civil liberties but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information,' he said." Gonzales added that he agrees with a letter sent to Congress in June by 49 state attorneys general, requesting federal legislation to require ISPs to hold onto customer data longer.
I'm all for catching the distributors of child pornography. I hope they find all the freaks exploiting these children.
However, I know that they never stop there. If they have the information they won't use it for just investigating cases of child pornography. Furthermore, I don't trust their techniques of catching the predators.
Many years ago (1998, or 1999) there was a crackdown on the alt.binaries.erotica.* groups to catch distributors of child pornography. Instead, what they did is arrest hundreds of people victimized by the distributors. Sure, many of those hundreds were intentionally seeking pictures of children. But many others were falsely accused because they blindly downloaded "all new articles."
The way this happened was quite simple... Much like the spambots of today, these distributors taint many, many groups with their filth. It's a sort of scorched earth policy, perhaps. Regardless, I don't trust the government to know the difference between the incidental versus the intentional.
The primary reason being the weapon they would potentially wield against people that choose to speak out...
"Oh, look, in 2002 you downloaded DSC_1000.JPG from a newsgroup, and it was depicting an unclothed child... LOCK 'EM UP!"
Privacy protects the innocent too, you know...
My ZooLoo
"Child Porn"
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
..."we respect civil liberties, but..." you know the next part is going to be bad.
Its almost like "I'm not a racist, but..."
Especially abusing them for more political power.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Child porn is just an excuse. If protecting children was really the point, the proposed law would limit all subpoenas of data retained under this law to child porn cases. The law doesn't do that, ergo they are lying through their teeth.
everyone loves having all their Internet records made available to Commissar for spying on our personal lives, because we are all in loving with our Comrade Bush and his Politburo and know they would never lie to us!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Retaining records of web access is going to cost millions of dollars at the largest ISPs since these records over two years will amount to pedabytes of information. Many ISPs do not even have the records that Gonzales is looking for since gathering this kind of extensive information usually requires a transparent proxy of web traffic. I suppose that ISPs could save DNS records only but that's trivally easy to avoid by using other DNS servers and probably nowhere near enough big brother for Gonzales.
I'm appalled at the invasion of privacy. Practical side of this bad idea is very troublesome as well. Gonzales must think there is data retension fairy that will do all of this for him.
Who was the lone holdout state attorney general who didn't sign on to this executive branch power grab? I'd like to consider moving to that state.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
We all know that this is just a ploy so they can spy on you... "Please, think of the children!" seems to be the most abused reasoning for spying... it's just bs that anyone would buy this.
And their logic is always "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about". To which I say, "If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to spy on me?"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The growing threat of child porn? Is it really that big of a threat?
I've surfed the tubes and found some pretty perverse pr0n, but I have never run across any child porn. I have absolutely no clue how anyone could even go about finding the stuff. And yet, Gonzalez and the gov't claim it is a huge threat. A threat so great that we must intrude on the privacy rights of all law-abiding citizens. Do we have any real evidence to back up the claim that child porn is such an enormous threat that we must take extraordinary measures? No, we don't.
We have to take the government's word for it, because no one is allowed to independently research child porn. To do so would violate the law. I've heard that the amount of new child porn material has increased in the past few years. Conversely, I've also heard that all of the child porn that's out there is the same old material that has been circulating around for 20 years. But we have no way to know for sure. The government keeps a database of child porn for themselves, and prosecutes and harshly punishes anyone that so much mistakenly downloads an image in their browser cache.
This push by Gonzalez to mandate ISP data retention smells very fishy, especially considering that we, as citizens, have no way to verify that child porn is as serious a problem as he claims.
The worst about all this is, that it has never actually been shown that CP is bad. Or at least, that it is any worse than the adult version.
The main issues stated are:
1) It hurts children to make it.
2) It causes people to want the real thing.
The first is obviously not what they are after, since:
1a) They go after the consumer with full force, when this helps little. (It only helps the content creator only if he sells it.)
1b) They go after voyeuristic photos and "model" shoots. The amount of actual CP where the child is hurt has never been shown to be significant.
The second reason, has never been proven either:
2a) The is an equal and opposite force that people would release tension through this, instead of going after the "real" thing.
2b) Pedophilia is defined as a mental disorder, so "normal" viewers will shouldn't be affected by it anyway. Only someone who already wants it, and doesn't know it, would be affected. This is most likely not a significant amount of people.
As such, i believe the real reason is not any of those given above. But until it is delineated, and the laws address it by protected people from harm (that is, make sure there is an actual (potential) victim as opposed to regulating behavior) there should be no barring of CP different from the Adult version. And, as for invading privacy, that's is going to take a lot more doing than this vagueness.
Have you read my journal today?
They want retention so they can continue to expand the domestic spying program. Simple as that.
Child porn is just the catch phrase they can use to ram it through congress.
I can see the campaign ad -- "Congressman X voted against protections from child porn!"
They're hardly even trying to come up with believable lies any more. They think they can just throw around the "protect the children" meme and we'll all just line up like good Christian Soldiers.
There are a few boogiemen that never seem to fail those that would take our freedoms. Terrorists, Kiddie Porn, Welfare Moms, Liberals and Bill Clinton are some of the most reliable. A few decades ago it was "Satan Worshippers" "Communists" and "Castro" that were the standbys.
Anybody else sick of this BS?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why stop with ISPs and child porn?
I think all communications with attorney generals, congress persons, cabinet members, etc should all be retained, reviewed, and utilized when corruption is evident. That'll keep our children safe!
1. create a list of sites that they find are exploiting children
2. put together servers and software that can monitor ISP lines
3. provide servers and software to ISPs at no cost
4. ISPs only report on those that are going to those sites.
5. haul in the asses of those who are guilty of visiting said sites
OR
1. create a list of sites that they find are exploiting children
2. take down those sites
3. everyone is happy
Yes, I know there are a lot of those sites that are 'offshore' but I can assure you, it isn't from experience.
The worst about all this is, that it has never actually been shown that CP is bad. Or at least, that it is any worse than the adult version.
t m .
This is particularly the case in the UK, where now, even fake sexual images of child are illegal. Yes, it's illegal to make images of women look younger, even if you have no intent to distribute these images: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/4776123.s
Basically, liking women with small breasts, shaved pussy and school uniforms is a crime in the UK, and considered equivalent to raping babies, irrespective of any harm actually done. This undermines any attempt to actually combat genuine crimes of child abuse.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr= lang_en&safe=off&q=kiddie+porn it works...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
So, how many cases of child porn were there (in Gonzales estimation) that couldn't be prosecuted because it took two years to get a warrent?
I mean are we talking tens? hundreds? thousands? more?
-- Should you believe authority without question?
How about you stop pulling the "terrorism" card and "child porn" card, and tell us why, in no uncertain terms, you need to keep prying into our lives. What evidence do you have that proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that such additional monitoring will help stamp out child pornography? What justification do you really have for your stance? I'm talking hard numbers ... how many cases have been successfully prosecuted (i.e., resulting in prison terms) for child pornography as a direct result of ISP data retention? Wiretapping (in spite of the billions spent upon it) has not justified the cost in terms of viable prosecutions, and I see no reason to think this will prove otherwise. And I'm very serious, Mr. Gonzales, partly because your current rationale makes little to no sense whatsoever, and mostly because I just don't believe you. If you want to do this to us, for God's sake prove it to us, make us understand why we need to give up still more of our precious Constitution. I would fully expect that the nation's ATTORNEY GENERAL would be capable of presenting such a case to the American public using honest facts, not trigger-words, emotional ploys and outright fiction.
... certain rights were temporarily rescinded during World War II and were re-established afterwards. Maybe. I've not seen sufficient evidence, as presented by my official representatives in government or their appointees (are you listening, Mr. Gonzales?) that convinces me of this.
... so be it. That's why we have appropriations committees. But wholesale monitoring of the entire Internet-using population?
A bit disappointing, really.
Maybe we do need to give up some civil liberties, given the current state of affairs with international terrorism
Furthermore, I absolutely do not accept "child pornography" as good and sufficient cause to invoke yet another massive spy campaign against the American public. If the FBI needs more funds to go after these bastards
I think not.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Of course everything concerning child porn tends to err on the side of vigorous prosecution, but then it's a pretty horrific crime, so that's understandable. "
Just because something is horrific doesn't mean we should throw out all rational thought. I mean I have people in my life who were affected by molestation when they were children, and I would love to throttle the ones who did it, BUT i would rather we as a society think about this rationally and err on the side of caution rather than execute people on the spot for happening to look at child porn.
The parent makes some good points which seem to be dismissed out of hand (and not modded very high due to it's nature) because we are dealing with children here...
Isn't this the whole thing we are rallying against? Broad sweeping generalizations and laws enacted "because of the children"?
I understand that terrosist, child molesters and other monsters should be put away but to make every American Citizen suffer under these rules for no reason is un-constitutional. The Amendment IV is supposed to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures without warrant. This is just like Nazi Germany that all Jews, Blacks, and others not of the "superior race" where child molesters and they were the worst vermin on earth and prosecuting them to death was justifable. I don't want terrorist, child molesters and other monsters run amok but this is not the reason to go break the constitution we have been given as American Citizens.
Pedophilia is not something what was invented when the internet came out. It existed before it (ask the greeks!) and will continue to exist as long as there are humans alive. Prosecuting child porn helps little to none. The real child molesters get off by abusing kids and, consequently, making porn of it. Stopping distribution will not stop the criminals. If anything, will make them to remain quiet about what they do, making them harder to find. And IMHO, putting in jail a pedophile who never harmed anyone (instead of the real offender), because he downloaded some pics off the internet, seems quite unfair to me. As everyone else, I see this as a scheme to gather more information of people. Yes, they will probably catch two or three poor bastards who got some pics, just to justify the hundreds of thousands of people they collected personal information on. But what strikes me the most is the passiveness which with the nowaday american takes these kind of news. They forfeited a lot of individual and privacy rights so far. And as new stuff such as this comes out, all they do is whine and let them get away with it. Would this have happened 200 years ago, Bush's head would be hanging on a stick in front of the White House. Americans got fat, lazy, weak and/or afraid.
Wow, you just ignored his entire argument! And since you did so, I'll restate it:
In other words, if they want to stop child porn they ought to:
It's the production that (theoretically) causes harm, therefore it's the production that ought to be illegal.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
>Rather than dwell on the ethics of forcing children to have sex for the purpose of producing pornography...
... in fact, this is a clear example of a legal fiction.
Most teen/child porn is just naked teens/children, not hardcore. Much of the rest is manual or oral rather than penetrative. One can guess this from the distribution of types of mainstream porn (including late teen porn), even without having seen any CP.
>Under current law, sexual activity with minors is, ipso facto, non-consensual and therefore illegal.
"ipso facto" does not mean what you think
An 18 year old Black in the lowest sixth of Black scores has mental ability similar to an average 11.5 year-old, or a 7.5 year-old Jewish kid in the top sixth of Jewish scores. The dim and ignorant but 18 can consent - the brilliant and knowlegeable but 12 cannot.
So to keep the pretense of meaning to the legal concept of "consent", one would have to fall back on the "emotional maturity" argument - but that does not really fly, either, in those instances when the consent is not naive but based on calm reflection or positive experience.
>..the reasoning behind going after the consumers as well as the producers, is that demand creates supply, and cutting off the demand for child pornography will lower the incentives to produce it (whether or not money is directly involved).
It is wrong to think that even if all production of teen/child porn were stopped, that it would reduce teen or child sex. There is too much out there already on millions of hard drives to in any real way reduce the supply of porn by ending production. The proportion of "illicit" sex acts or even relationships that are ever recorded at all, let alone distributed must be tiny, so no significant sex reduction from that point of view, either.
>Of course everything concerning child porn tends to err on the side of vigorous prosecution, but then it's a pretty horrific crime, so that's understandable.
No, your thinking is all fuzzy - child porn is not a "horrific crime". Some sexual acts may be horrific crimes, but taking or looking at pictures does not add to that. And, as I pointed out most of this is mere nudity rather than sex of any kind, and much of even the arguably non-consentual portion of the sex is manual or oral.
>But do people really have a right to consume something that is illegal to produce?
Digital porn is not consumed. Like all other information porn is a "non-rivalrous good". Translated, you ask: "do people really have a right to look at pictures it is not legal to take because they record acts which are themselves declared illegal based upon a legal fiction invented to suppress forms of speech regarding biological-drive-determined thoughts which the majority find offensive?"
You've exactly hit it on the head. Virtually no law regarding data collection has any limit to the uses with for data ostensibly captured for one alleged reason can be used or with whom it can be "shared".
We end up with electronic bridge passes which timestamp your every crossing, down to the second. Next thing you know, without announcement, theyre tracking individual passes for "enhanced traffic control' purposes -- i.e. they track how long individual cars take to go from point A to point B, so they can flash the result on digital signs saying, "Time from this point to Hell's Airport: 18 minutes."
Meanwhile they also slipstream into the system a "feature" allowing any fucking random cop to have YOUR individual car tracked through the city and out into the boonies as far as he wants.
The only real solution is to require that the originally-stated purpose for the data is the sole purpose for which it can be used -- no fucking inventive mission creep allowed without further use-specific enabling legislation. Furthermore, there should be severe and mandatory penalties (with public disclosure) for any mis-use.
Of course they'll have icing problems at Hell's Airport before the rat-fucking government allows any such limitations on their imperial power.
There are plenty of good reasons why it's very important for citizens to be able to anonymously take and distribute photographs. Not of naked children, of course, but (for example) police officers inappropriately beating someone, or anything else where someone with authority is abusing their position. We must be guaranteed the right to free and anonymous speech and press (and I submit that photography fits in there), because if it can't be anonymous it isn't truly free.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
There's a distinct difference between pornography , erotic art , and just plain 'ol photography.
A picture of a naked 14-year-old boy or girl, just standing there in a neutral kind of way, not sexually suggestive at all, is completely legal as an artistic shot. My parents have photos of me as a baby, all nekkid with my little baby wee-wee and everything (curses!!) but I highly doubt they could even be considered remotely illegal.
Now, that same 14-yr-old doing something suggestive or posing in a not-for-kids manner would definitely be considered porn and thusly illegal. I'm not sure what the rules are regarding erotica and minors.
There are many professional photographers who aren't kiddie-pornographers, who take nude photos of their subjects whether they're of legal age or not.. This could also include medical imaging, as well as anything else it could include which I can't remember right now.
I wonder how long before someone uses CGI to make artificial kiddie-pr0n.. "but she's not underage, Your Honor! Right here in the code, her age is commented: Nine hundred." Loopholes, glorious loopholes. Just FYI, IANACP.
--A
[BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY]: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVI
I tend to wonder; could a person refuse to divulge an encryption key on Fifth Amendment grounds?
It seems like this has to have happened before, so there's probably precedent on it somewhere. If you know that by revealing the key, you're going to be incriminating yourself, it seems like you might have grounds for refusal. That would keep you from being charged with contempt. That would also probably allow your spouse(s) to refuse to incriminate you, as well.
I could also see how a court could rule that an encryption key or password isn't "protected speech" though, in the same way that they've curtailed the First Amendment. IMO, I would think that the encryption key is a pretty big piece of evidence in itself, since it's the only way to show that the plaintext came from the ciphertext; thus disclosing a password or key really is testifying against oneself. Not that logic really plays any great role in modern jurisprudence, as far as I can tell.
I've seen discussions about this on sci.crypt and other places, but never a definitive answer.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."