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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! --
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!
What a scary world we live in when I am frightened to even click on your link for fear of seeing pictures, which despite my total lack of sexual interest in, could still land me in prison, just for having viewed them on my computer.
Of course your link could be some sort of joke, a link to pictures of baby elephants or something, but I guess I'll never know.
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.
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
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."