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DoJ Mulls Tracking Picture Uploads
Dominus Suus passed us a link to a C|Net article about a disturbing threat to privacy from the Justice Department. According to the article, a private meeting was held Wednesday between Justice officials and telecom industry representatives. With individuals from companies such as AOL and Comcast looking on, the officials continued overtures to increase data retention by ISPs on American citizens. This week, they were specifically looking to have records kept of photo uploads. In this way, and 'in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate,' an easy trail from A to Z will be available. The article provides a good deal of background on the Bush Administration's history with data retention, with ties to events even older than the Bush presidency. "The Justice Department's request for information about compliance costs echoes a decade-ago debate over wiretapping digital telephones, which led to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. To reduce opposition by telephone companies, Congress set aside $500 million for reimbursement and the legislation easily cleared both chambers by voice votes. Once Internet providers come up with specific figures, privacy advocates worry, Congress will offer to write a generous check to cover all compliance costs and the process will repeat itself."
No problem man, they've got it covered. See, we'll outsource the service and hosting to India and borrow the money from China.
It's all good.
The Bush administration is the most corrupt administration the U.S. has ever had. Here is my summary of the corruption: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
I find it scary how little U.S. citizens know about the activities of their government. Part of the reason is that the Bush administration uses the same method of abuse Microsoft uses. Both exploit the fact that it is difficult for people to defend against many, many abuses, each small in themselves. Both, in my opinion, use sophisticated public relations methods to sell their lies.
I hope you will write your own summary of U.S. government corruption and send it to your elected representatives.
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Is U.S. government violence a good in the world, or does violence just cause more violence?
www.eff.org
The real goal of the whole thing is to some day maybe 5 years down the road be able to track uploads of sound amd video. That way they can bust people who upload viacom videos to youtube or put some movie out there. Of course they use childporn photos to set it up but how long till its tracking video too just in case. Sure it's not technically feasible now but it will be...
Why stop at uploads? Let's track downloads too! And not just images - lets do web traffic, news, mail, chat. Let's record ALL on line activity. That's the most comprehensive solution. That way no criminals can possibly get away with anything. Unless they use encryption... Or other peoples insecure wireless AP's... Or TOR... OR - you get the idea. Well, OK criminals will probably still be able to get away with a lot, but the average American will be under tight surveillance and we can make damn sure that *they* don't do anything their not supposed to. That's probably good enough, right?
YouTube is for people who have a camera but lack talent. And where exactly does that leave slashdot? A place for people with a keyboard but no original thoughts?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
My thoughts exactly:P
And just who is going to pay for the ungodly amount of storage this would require?
Why us of course.
And the next step is keeping track of what pictures you download. At that point it will be easier for each ISP to just cache the entire internet. Then finally the term "the internets" will be accurate.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I know, 4 days old, but still rather relevant,from eff.org (http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_02.php#0051 40):
"Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice today, demanding records about secret new court orders that supposedly authorize the government's highly controversial electronic surveillance program that intercepts and analyzes millions of Americans' communications.
When press reports forced the White House to acknowledge the program in December of 2005, the administration claimed that the massive program could be conducted without warrants or judicial authorization of any kind. However, in January of this year, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had authorized collection of some communications and that the surveillance program would now operate under its approval. EFF's suit comes after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records concerning the purported changes in the program (...)"
Seriously.. I echo the former post; join the EFF. Changes are ONLY going to take place through efficient lobbying (but then it also works really well, Halliburton has proved that beyond doubt..)
A few thousands, or even tens of thousands, of motivated criminals (outside of the ones who "own" the country, of course) are of no real threat to the established order - they will almost always prey on the populace.
A few million, or tens of millions, of motivated citizens are absolutely a threat to rule by the few - which is why anything that allows the populace to realize their predicament and then organize to change it must absolutely be stopped.
There's free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in range. Americans are free in the latter sense.
You are going to pay for it
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Its the government.. WE get to pay.. its called taxes, remember?
Cost is no object when its not your money.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One peculiarity of US law is its way of breaking down different forms of communications, a system that is based on archaic technologies.
IANAL, but this is pretty much my understanding of the situation.
Privacy of electronic communications is protected mainly by the Electronic Communication Act of 1986, which consists of three parts:
Title 1, Wiretap Act: protections communicaiton that have some kind of audio component (paradigm: phone calls)
Title 2, Stored Communications Act: protects electronic communiations while they are in transit or in temporary storage (paradigm: email held in spools, e.g. the old arpanet mail which often sent email through UUCP over 300 baud phone links to reach computers that weren't directly connected)
Title 3, Pen Register Act: prevents placing devices on phone lines to record phone numbers.
Each title of ECPA was written with electronic communication technology as it stood ca 1985, which means that by 1990 it was clearly obsolete. But there is no such thing as an obsolete law, or at least obsolete laws continue to operate in unexpted ways. In this case, the provisions of ECPA have been extended by process of analogy to many situations that weren't even considered in 1985. Many curious questions arise. For example, it would appear that the government cannot rifle through email spool directories without a warrant. But what about when it is delivered to your in box? Many people use their in boxes as filing systems. It would be one thing if it was stored on your computer, but what if it is stored at an ISP?
Or this: the government can't put a pen register on your phone lines -- basically a mechanical device that records the electrical singals on your phone line and makes a paper tape of the numbers you call. Constitutionally they are not prevented from doing so because you are disclosing the phone numbers to a third party -- the phone company. So what about email logs? They are covered by the same constitutional doctrine, but don't appear to be covered by ECPA, which envisions installing a device to reocord transient signals.
Or this: what if there were an image format that included audio commentary? Would this trigger the Wiretap act? Is this why the AG is talking about picture uploads and not movie uploads? Note once again the capriciousness of US law.
As a non-lawyer, I don't really follow all the ins and outs of the developments in information privacy law, because it's not really worth my time. There's no way a nonspecialist can keep track of the twists and turns of case law. The bottom line is this: unlike the EU, we do not have a fundamental, legally protected right to information and communication privacy in the US. The strategy of US lawmakers has been to avoid the recognition of any new rights, but to curb specific abuses when they reach the outrage level.
The result is the capriciousness we have seen. A non-lawyer can't really know what is rights are vis a vis the government, because it depends on a rather haphazard patchwork of statues, viewed through the series of lenses that are judicial analogizing.
The courts have to operate this way, because people who feel outraged by violations of what common sense tells them is a right of privacy keep bringing lawsuits trying to employ a broken down system of statues that implicitly assume those rights, but don't explicitly secure them.
We have reached the point in the US where an ordinary person really can't know what his rights are. Special interests, and officials of a statist bent, have found so many ways to violate the spirit of individual and community liberty embodied in the Constitution, while avoiding technical illegalities. Constitutional law has been stretched to its limits to cover rights clearly implied by the Constitution (e.g. substantive due process), but this process leaves protection of individual and group rights thin and patchy.
I believe is time for a new declaration of human rights in the US along the lines of
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
ITYM fascist.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Unfortunately the Supreme Court isn't going to help us.
We live in an authoritarian capito-fascistic state. You can choose to ignore it, you can tell yourself that it doesn't affect you personally (yet); but that won't change the fact. We have government that reinterprets laws and standards to mean what they decide they need to mean to fit their agenda at the mmoment (which usually, in all moments, is CONTROL), it's a system of institutionalized corruption.
Electing someone from the either large party isn't going to help us - I mean, there are a few exceptions in both major parties, but none of the big names really.
I think that the people are going to have to find a way to organize and save our constitution. The system will not save itself because it is compromised. It could be hacked or manipulated and forced to work for us should large groups of people be willing to stand up for their rights - but unfortunately that's not going to happen by voting or by any of the rigged or tilted mechanisms in place.
What people who say things like "I don't mind, I'm not doing anything illegal" fail to realize is that it doesn't matter - because once the entire system of surviellance and control is in place, once you have no privacy or anonimity it is too late - because then the definition of what is legal and what is illegal can be changed.
It's not like they ever give your rights or your expectations of personal liberty back once they have been taken away - even when these things are promised (like sunset provisions) at the time such legislation is proposed.
Aside from that, what if you were at one time in drug rehab - or are a member of a group like AA and all of these records are stored forever and then down the line the whole world can find out all of your private personal stuff.
The slippery slope is no more - we're almost in freefall.
When you get down to it, if I have to name the nation's most Corrupt Administration off the top of my head, I'd say Andrew Jackson. Good old "To the victor belong the spoils" Jackson. Good old "Trail of tears" Jackson. Mr. "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" Jackson. Good old "man-of-the-people" Jackson. Good old man-of-the-people Bush is at least trying to work something positive in Iraq (though one can easily question its effectiveness) - what was Jackson doing with the Indian Removal business? That's far more criminal than the Iraq war ever was or will be. And if you wanted me to name the President that did the most to restrict civil liberties during his term in office, that's easy. Abraham Lincoln, yo. Writ of habeus what now? That's right. And the Great Emancipator walked all over freedom of speech and such, too.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.