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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.

12 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. "Harmonize" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Interesting bit of Newspeak there...

  2. It Takes A Village to raise a Prisoner by Tackhead · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From TFA: "We need information. Information helps us makes cases."
    - Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.

    Number 6: Where am I?
    Number 2: In the Village.
    Number 6: What do you want?
    Number 2: We want information.
    Number 6: Whose side are you on?
    Number 2: That would be telling.
    We want information... information... information.
    Number 6: You won't get it.
    Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.

    Come to think of it...

    Number Six: Everybody votes for a dictator.

    ...and also...

    Chessmaster: "You must be new here. In time, most of us join the enemy - against ourselves."

    I guess it takes a village to raise a Prisoner as well as a Child.

    The thing I miss most about the Republican wing of the Party is the wing that asked questions like "What would the Democrat wing of the Party do with these powers?"

    I just wonder how long the Democrat wing of the Party that's currently asking these sorts of questions will last when they're handed power in 2008?

  3. Protection tools? by twitter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are there any tools that can be used to mask real browsing habits by randomly sampling and following links from sites like Google News or Wikipedia? It would be nice to have something like that going 24/7 so that your actual traffic would be drowned in a sea of noise. It would also considerably raise the cost of the invasion, required by law or not. I don't like my ISP looking over my shoulder to begin with. That big brother wants to share the view is disturbing but not much different from the existing corporate invasion.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  4. Re:Privacy for the Incidental by mdwh2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or what about porn that involves some 17 year old?

    Strange but true: In the UK, it's legal to shag a 17 year old, but now as soon as you take a photo, you're guilty of making and possessing child porn (the 2003 Sexual Offences Act bizarrely raised the age for appearing in photos from 16 to 18, despite the age of consent remaining at 16 where it as always been).

  5. New law by Shawn+is+an+Asshole · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If a law is going to be passed on data retention, it should be passed in the opposite direction. Data retention past 30 days (ie, a billing cycle) should be illegal. Search engine results that link any personally identifying information should be illegal (this includes you, Google). Etc. Punishment should be $1000 per log entry older than 30 days.

    --
    "It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
  6. Re:Privacy for the Incidental by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd gladly agree to this, prividng I can access to Gonzales' online records. Frankly, I think in the area of privacy, if a member of government isn't willing to disclose his own, then he shouldn't be allowed to ask for it from anyone else.

    After all, it's not as if Gonzales has anything to hide, right?

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  7. *What* child porn? by mangu · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I hope they find all the freaks exploiting these children.


    I agree. I'm all for catching the scumbags who exploit children.


    However, there's a question that keeps nagging me every time I see mentions of this so-called "child porn" in the internet. What's exactly that "child porn" people keep mentioning? I get hundreds of unwanted emails every day. I have lost count of all the pornography I have seen in the internet. Yet I never saw one single picture of a child engaged in sex!


    Well, I have seen plenty of images that some people call "child porn", but those are merely pictures of young women who could be of any age between 15 and 30 with shaved pubic hair and small breasts. Anorexic women who have their pictures taken when they are 25 years old do not count as "child porn" in my book.


    Here's one simple rather provoking concept: what if the true perverts are smart enough to avoid putting the images of their acts on the internet? How many videos of bank robberies and drug sales get published in the internet? What makes you feel that paedophiles would be more stupid than other criminals?


    I think the police would be more successful in catching perverts if they tried to investigate the typical acts of perverts instead of insisting on that rather sickly curiosity about the acts of honest internet citizens...

  8. Is file sharing good or bad for content creators? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Your point #1 is in fact what "they" are after, 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).

    Wait just a second. By downloading it without paying for it, aren't you ... stealing it. You know, robbing the 'artists' that produce this 'intellectual property.' I mean, that's what Alberto Gonzales has been touring America to tell school children on behalf of the MPAA. Downloading without paying for it... that destroys the supply side, and ultimately destroy the art form itself. Now you're telling me that downloading child porn creates supply... So which is it? When it's a Hollywood movie, it's insuring the death of the industry. Yet when it's footage of a fifteen year old being naughty on her webcam, it's creating supply to purchase... How can that be?

  9. Re:Privacy for the Incidental by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Give me 15 seconds access on your work or home computer and I can get you fired and likely put into prison for years with no evidence it was anyone but you.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  10. Re:Child Porn My Behind by jafac · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not the only one who believes that it's creepy as hell to NAME a bill.
    They usually have numbers. They should be referred to only by their number. Slapping a name on a bill is a dishonest labelling for the purpose of marketing.

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  11. Re:want to find it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Heh.

    I have viewed child porn - not only that, but repeatedly and semi-deliberately: I'm sure they could lock me up if they felt like it for what I've seen, and therefore had on my computer.

    Of course, the reason I saw it was because I was looking at an experiment in a major news site where they were trialling wikis as a method of responding to editorials. It was linked here on Slashdot, the trolls descended, and one particularly persistent one decided that his vandalism of choice was to post nude pictures of children. I tried to help clean it up, but eventually got sufficiently revolted that I just left - the admins had gone to sleep for the night, and I wasn't going to win this battle.

    Thus, I saw child pornography from viewing a mainstream news site. Clearly, with sufficient power and sufficiently stringent laws they'll be able to get anyone they feel like - it really wouldn't be hard to anonymously plant things, if nothing else.

    Wonderful world, eh?

  12. Re:Privacy for the Incidental by AGMW · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Something very similar happened in the UK a year or so back. Some new legislation was tabled that would mean it would be an offence to not provide the decryption key to data if it was suspected that the encrypted data contained evidence of a crime, and you were asked for the key. People told the Home Secretary that you might not know the key, etc, but the law was still going ahead.

    Someone committed a crime, verified by a lawyer, and the evidence was encrypted and emailed to the Home Secretary. He now was in possesion of evidence of a crime that was encrypted and he didn't know the decryption key.

    Unfortunately, he wasn't arrested and put in prison!

    It seems it's one rule for politicians and another for the rest of us!

    --
    Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
    handmadehands.co.uk