Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files

mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."

Comments

And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura?

[elrous0]

Republicans belong to big business and the wealthy. Democrats belong to trial lawyers and Hollywood. And BOTH of them want to spy on me, tell me what I can and can't do on the internet, and use the government to impose their interest groups' agendas on me by force. And between big business and Hollywood, they're both just *aching* to crack down on file sharing, DRM circumvention, or anything that doesn't make some studio money, prop up a lethagic music industry and their 80's-era Compact Discs, or protect an overextended movie industry and their overpriced "tentpole" movies.

Fuck them. Fuck them both.

Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura?

[Firehed]

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names.

Does that quote suggest to you that he's technical enough to even know what a MAC address is, let alone know that it's spoofed with five seconds worth of work in the command prompt? People have of course screwed with filenames just to see what happens (much more in Kazaa/Limewire than Bit-torrent), probably to test Rule 34, with interesting results; more importantly, it shows that filenames are completely meaningless if you're looking to actually reveal content. In any case, just ticking the "encryption required" box in your torrent client solves that problem - and you can bet your ass that any sort of unique serial number would be the much more industry-standard (and equally absurd) IP address. You know - take the RIAA approach.

Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura?

[MrMacman2u]

If you are implying that everyone is wealthy therefore everyone is Republican... I'd gladly claim to be a Republican if it automatically meant that $100 bills just start floating out of the sky and into my pocket.

No, I'm not a republican OR a democrat because I enjoy the process of THINKING too much to give it up.

Both parties of this bi-partisan country are corrupt, lazy, money grubbing, fear mongers and I refuse to vote for another piece of deadwood until there are people put up for election that are WORTH VOTING FOR and not one minute sooner.

Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura?

[TheSeventh]

The problem with this approach, is that you are sitting back and waiting for things to change. I don't like most things about how our government is run or the people who run it either, but I try to take a more pragmatic view of changing things.

This is also my disagreement with those supporting Ron Paul. Maybe he is the best candidate, and maybe everything would be better if he were elected, but he has literally no chance of becoming president, but a lot of his supporters talk of voting for him, instead of "throwing away your vote" on one of the 3 contenders.

So, voting for Ron Paul is not throwing away your vote, even though he can't win, and therefore, you still didn't vote for the winner of the election, and possibly helped one of the others get elected instead? I feel it necessary to vote for the lesser of 3 evils, at least so things can be BETTER than they are now. I would rather have my say in voting for someone who can win, than in voting for an ideal out of protest for the others.

It's sad, but these days more people need to vote AGAINST someone, than for someone. You don't want McCain to become president? Vote for the person running against him that can actually win. You don't like any of the three? Find the one you can deal with for the next four years and vote for that one.

Say my dream car was a really fast Ferrari, but I only had $5000 to spend and I don't have any current transportation. Should I put that money away and just wait until I had enough to buy it, (which may never happen), and not have any transportation? Or should I be more practical and find the best option available to me right now, so that I can drive to work, and get a better job that makes more money and maybe earn enough to buy the Ferrari?

It'd be great if I could have my ideal, but practicality limits reality.

WHAT!?!

[Ceiynt]

pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. Ok, so all my Metallica files will be relabled (Not Metallica_Not Illegal file_Ignore). That should keep the feds off me.

Tags

[Jaysyn]

I've never seen a better use for the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag in my life.

Biden's not Senator RIAA

[Reality Master 201]

He's the senator from MBNA and Citibank.

Totally different.

How 'bout some quid pro quo

[0xdeadbeef]

I propose we monitor all government communication for evidence of corruption.

Re:Remember, Kids

[Pig Hogger]

Think twice (and then three or four times for good measure) the next time someone tells you to vote Democrat in order to protect your rights.

Anybody who votes republican whilst not being a zillionaire is a sucker. Plain and simple. One who has swallowed the total lie that republicans are less tax-happy than the democrats. Democrats tax now, but republicans tax later by inflating deficits and the debt.

Don't believe me? Google for US federal deficit charts...

Re:Remember, Kids

[somersault]

How the fuck do you expect voting for one of two parties is going to represent the majority of your views? I live in the UK, and I'm fed up of random slashdotters flaming republican this, democrat that, can you please explain what the actual difference is? I've seen more than one person point out that there is none, and I wouldn't find that hard to believe. I think as far as democracy is concerned, people should be able to vote on invidual laws and such (if they consider that law important) rather than vote one party every few years and expect to have things go the way they're wanting them to. Does it really matter whether this guy is Republican or Democrat? I'm sure there are plenty of idiots in both parties..

Apologies for the slightly trollish nature of my post, but it's really pissing me off seeing this inane republican vs democrat stuff, it's like racism or something, except the fairly arbitrary divide being which set of self-important morons you vote for instead of place of birth/skin colour. Admittedly you do have a choice who to vote for, but in the end there are always gonna be problems no matter who you vote for, under the current system at least.

The payoff

[PoliTech]

Where's the payoff ... hmmmm let's see:

Biden pushed for passage of a bill known as the Combating Child Exploitation Act. It would authorize more than $1 billion over the next eight years to hire 250 new federal agents devoted to Internet crimes against children...

One billion dollars! (puts pinky to lower lip) I see the tip of an ice berg, but ok since ... "It's for the children"!

provide additional funding to regional computer forensics labs, and give out more federal grants to the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The House of Representatives passed a companion bill in October.

Ah! The rest of the iceberg! Now how will we pay for it?

No matter that it cannot possibly work, it is for the children you see. So naturally if it's not working, we'll simply need to provide a bit more funding in this year's budget, and the next, and the next...

Re:Remember, Kids

[Clovis42]

think as far as democracy is concerned, people should be able to vote on invidual laws and such

Well, the US, and most other "democracies" are representative democracies. Voting on individual laws is a terrible idea. Just look at Athens. Regardless of that though, citizens of the US (in some states) actually do get to vote on individual laws, through "Issues" polls, or on state consitutional amendments. That's how some states get ridiculous "anti-gay marriage" laws passed that a representative body would probably avoid.

The US is not, by law, a 2 party system; it has just developed that way. Democrats and Republicans do not always vote in one big block either. There are "blue dog" Democrats who will occasionally side with Republicans on some things, for example. Middle of the road representatives sometimes team up to challenge their parties. So, in the end, there actually is reasonable representaton.

The problem is that most Americans don't really understand how they are represented. Many don't vote, or only do so when their vote counts the least, the presidential election. The Senators represent smaller areas, and Representatives represent even smaller areas than those, and that's just the FEDERAL government. Most of the stuff that actually affects your life is decided by your State/County/Local/City representatives. Hardly anyone votes for them, or can keep track of them. Which makes those votes the most powerful you can cast.

So, to somehow be on topic, for this issue it doesn't matter at all if they are Republican or Democrat. Pretty much all the federal reps are "it's a series of tubes!" boneheads for technical issues.