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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..."
Interesting bit of Newspeak there...
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.
The Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
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.
- 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.
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?
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.
Only those who distrust the Party need to have Privacy, comrade!
Are you questioning the God Emperor?
-- 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!"
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.
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?
future? We curb civil liberties by doing all this stupid shit to "think of the children," but we fail to think of the childrens futures where they will live in a restricted society. Why don't we start thinking of the childrens adult lives and how fucked they will be living in a fascist society.
Abu Gonzales has been pushing ISP data retention since at least early this year, and he's invoked all the usual boogeymen to get it passed: terrorism and kiddie porn.
He's tried:
-meeting privately with the major ISPs to ask them for voluntary compliance
-getting Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner to introduce a bill that went nowhere.
-somehow persuading Qwest to endorse legislation
I don't mean to pimp Cnet. Search any tech news site for "ISP data retention" and you'll see the history of this.
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"?
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.
I don't see how tracking everything on the internet fights childporn. If every owner of a camera had to register their camera to use it, or if anyone who hooks it up to the computer after taking pictures could be tracked, you could figure out exactly where the pictures came form.
However, if it's just about searching all ISP's in the world, I just don't think that it's believeable that it would be for child porn. Child porn comes from cameras, not the internet itself, so whoever is putting these pictures on the internet, these are the individuals who should be tracked and arrested. If you just search ISPs, how does this do any good? Every picture taken by a specific camera should have indentity information inside it. No one should be able to annonymously take a picture and post it on the internet, stop child pornography at the source, otherwise it's not going to do much good. Data retention might tell you who has looked at child porn, or even who originally uploaded it in some cases, but this does not lead anywhere unless you can get to the asshole who actually commited the crime of creating the child pornography.
So this law would be like trying to go after file sharers individually, in the end it gets no where because unless you know where the files came from you are chasing 1s and 0s. So I think the best idea is, all pictures taken by a digital camera and uploaded onto a computer, should REQUIRE indentity information, it should be encoded into the images themselves, if we have to we can make camera owners register their cameras, otherwise what good does this law do?
I think, I'd rather Gonzales just come out and say we need to have surveillance on the internet and that for national security reasons, all ISPs must have retention. I don't think the child porn is believeable enough, yes it's emotional enough but unless they can show people how this law protects children, it just does not connect.
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
The reason it's BS is because it does not really do anything to catch the uploaders. I mean, the best way to catch the uploaders is to work with Microsoft, and make it so every camera has indentity information. It's really simply, if Microsoft can make it difficult to download mp3s on their OS, and do this gunuine advantage, you are telling me they can't rig the camera phones and digital cameras to the exact computer that the first pictures were uploaded to?
We all know, that these cameras should be used responsibly, and not to abuse kids, so how exactly do we stop the abuse of kids if we record everything on the internet but nothing about the camera?
I'm pretty sure, that every picture on the internet has some sorta tracking information, it should have tracking information, if it does not then I'd be surprised. If each camera puts personal information about the computer you are on, when you upload pictures to windows, whenever you distribute it, it should know exactly which computer it originated from, the time and date it was taken, maybe even name and email type information along with computer ID, this way you can simply track any picture back to the founder. This would do more to solve the kiddie porn problem than anything else. It should also be illegal to distribute it, so no websites or trading it back and forth. If you get the ISP's involved, what for? Data retention, would likely contain everything you did, every site you visited etc, and have nothing to do with child porn. Sure it might help if thousands of people are going to a child porn website, or are in some sorta criminal distribution ring, otherwise I don't see how it will do any good. If it's a newsgroup, it should be obvious who uploaded it regardless of if they tried to do it annonymously or not.
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
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...
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?
A note I sent to Mike Hatch, who's currently running for Govenor of Minnesota (where I live), and was one of the very few who didn't sign this letter. There are some edited slashdot comments in there, as some posters sum things up better than I. You can send comments to attorney.general@state.mn.us
Dear Attorney General Hatch,
I'd like to thank you for not adding your name to this letter:
(From AP) "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.
"This is a problem that requires federal legislation," Gonzales told the Senate Banking Committee. "We need information. Information helps us makes cases."
"We respect civil liberties but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information," he said. " "
Child porn is just an excuse. If protecting children was really the point, the letter proposing legislation would limit all subpoenas of data retained under this law to child porn cases. This proposition doesn't do that, so Mr. Gonzales obviously wants to 'legitimize' the domestic spying program, gain unlimited access to private info with no oversight, and should be condemned for his co-opting a 'hot button' issue to garner support for a lie.
I appreciate the rather singular gesture you have made by not signing this letter, and showing Minnesotans and Americans that privacy and the fourth amendment are as important to you as they are to us.
Abusing children is a horrible crime, abusing them for more political power is worse.
Thanks, and good luck in November; you will have my vote.
I'm completely against legislation like this, but in the interest of having a full discussion, I'll explain why they want this legislation.
They don't intend to use this against people that they already suspect. Instead, they will identify sites containing illegal images/information and then subpoena the major ISPs for lists of users that have accessed any of those sites. This becomes their probable cause and then they resume normal investigation techniques to solidify their cases.
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'',$x;
Marketing is a honest task.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
There's a distinct difference between pornography , erotic art , and just plain 'ol photography.
A picture of a naked 14-year-old boy or girl, just standing there in a neutral kind of way, not sexually suggestive at all, is completely legal as an artistic shot. My parents have photos of me as a baby, all nekkid with my little baby wee-wee and everything (curses!!) but I highly doubt they could even be considered remotely illegal.
Now, that same 14-yr-old doing something suggestive or posing in a not-for-kids manner would definitely be considered porn and thusly illegal. I'm not sure what the rules are regarding erotica and minors.
There are many professional photographers who aren't kiddie-pornographers, who take nude photos of their subjects whether they're of legal age or not.. This could also include medical imaging, as well as anything else it could include which I can't remember right now.
I wonder how long before someone uses CGI to make artificial kiddie-pr0n.. "but she's not underage, Your Honor! Right here in the code, her age is commented: Nine hundred." Loopholes, glorious loopholes. Just FYI, IANACP.
--A
[BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY]: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVI
How do you type with boxing gloves on?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You would think so, but I bet that in a lot of cases, they'd just treat your possession of the contraband as prima facie evidence of a crime.
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It's like drug possession -- if the cops toss your car and find a kilo of China White or a handgun with the serial number scratched off in the glove compartment, your insistence that it's not yours may not keep you out of trouble. Just having it, in a place that was under your control, is the crime. A demonstration of intent is not necessary. In effect, it means that the burden of proof is shifted to the defendant to explain themselves, and if they cannot provide a justification for the evidence, they're guilty.
Frankly I think "prima facie" laws in general are a travesty of justice; we ought to abolish the whole philosophy and get back to a more intent-focused jurisprudence. But of course if you tried to do that, you'd be keelhauled for being supportive of crime and criminals, because in the short term it would make the work of the police harder.
In general, a lot of "possession" laws (drug possession, weapon possession, pornography, "burglar's tools") are intentionally written this way so that a demonstration of intent is unnecessary, and many laws include the phrase "prima facie" verbatim. (See this Montana weapon law, for example.)
More information you might want to read:
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p078.htm (deals with torts, specifically in employment law, but discussed the general concept)
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=1
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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."