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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.
"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.
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'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.
If I got this right, it appears the attorney generals who didn't sign were in Guam, Indiana, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Northern Marianas, Palua, and Virginia. Okay - you say some of those aren't states? Well, neither are American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands, yet those were included in the list of alleged "49 state attorney generals" who signed the letter. Source: http://www.atg.wa.gov/releases/2006/Documents/DRLe tter.pdf
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.
stumbled on a bunch of nekkid kids wearing boxing gloves.
So? Are you saying you're against fighting child porn?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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
For a fun exercise, try sending an HTML e-mail to the US Congress with an image of child pornography embedded. Bonus points if you're not a US citizen.
By simply having checked their mail that day, every member of congress will have violated the law about recieving and posessing. Under the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that subjects all of congress to a MANDATORY minimum sentence of 15 years.
That, at least, would do a great deal of good for the country.
The ______ Agenda
Or hey, how about you just get a court order to search the suspect's computers? Kiddy porn is far too hard to come by for those guys to just delete it after three wank sessions, and chances are you'll even find photos and magazines stashed away somewhere at his place. Same logic applies to the distributors btw; you can't distribute what you don't have.
So there's really no reason to ask for longer data retention for the reasons quoted. That's just a cover story; I wonder what the real story is though...
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?