Slashdot Mirror
FBI Renews Push for ISP Data Retention Laws
mytrip brings us a news.com story about the FBI's efforts to make records of users' activities available to law enforcement for a much longer time. Several members of Congress also lent their support to the idea that such data retention should be mandatory for a period of up to 2 years. Quoting:
"Based on the statements at Wednesday's hearing and previous calls for new laws in this area, the scope of a mandatory data retention law remains fuzzy. It could mean forcing companies to store data for two years about what Internet addresses are assigned to which customers (Comcast said in 2006 that it would be retaining those records for six months). Or it could be far more intrusive. It could mean keeping track of e-mail and instant messaging correspondents and what Web pages users visit. Some Democratic politicians have called for data retention laws to extend to domain name registries and Web hosting companies and even social networking sites."
Particularly the phone calls of our congressmen and presidents to lobbyists and such, top secret or not. As long as that provision is on the bill I'm fine with it because you know it will never ever ever get passed.
...and will the FBI be helping subsidize the cost of storage solutions for ISPs too?
They could finance the storage by selling the list of all the porn sites they'll be collecting.
If web page requests are added to logging I'll start running an idle process on my router that crawls the web. I might just do that anyway.
Good thing November is just a few months away!
...they are MY government.
At least I thought this is supposed to be 'my' government. If it were, then why can't I see everything they are doing? Why when documents are 'declassified' is 90% of the text blanked-out?
It's for my own good? Well, how can I refute that when I have no evidence, and no evidence can be obtained.
One of those double-binds, eh?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. "
Now , where was that? , I can't quite place it, maybe it was in a fairy tale my mom read me as a child?
Oh well, I know that I remember it from somewhere.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Some Democratic politicians have called for data retention laws to extend to domain name registries and Web hosting companies and even social networking sites.
I thought we had established the republicans as the evil enemy.
you mean the democrats are also evil?
data retention is for spying. spying is ALWAYS a crime against man and fundamentally evil. data retention will come back to bite you, make no mistake about it. this is worrying (but sadly not unexpected).
still, no matter how bad it gets, it could only be worse in australia or england (I'm NOT kidding about that, either).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The FBI's access to the materials will still be limited by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the constitution.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I'm against this not because of the privacy implications but because government shouldn't make it more expensive for a business to run by requiring them to keep information that is of no value to them past a certain period of time.
Keeping meticulous records was established with the Nazi's and carried on in that great tradition into East Germany. The cold war is barely over and already the lessons many noble people died for are being brushed under the carpet. I suspect that the real reason Western civilizations are turning their malice towards their own is simply because the dollars that used to go to our enemies now have to go somewhere. Inward. After all, you can't shrink the military-industrial complex - the beast won't let you do that.
Is the FBI going pay for it?
So the administration that can't keep its own email records in accordance with Federal Law wants to pass a NEW Federal Law mandating that all of OUR records be retained for 2 years?
Time to buy some stock in manufacturers of storage solutions.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
How about we start with the whitehouse? Remember all those missing emails?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all.
I'm adamantly opposed to any required data retention such as mail logs, web logs, etc. I'm less opposed to retention of DHCP lease records - I don't think that'd pose that significant of a burden on ISPs.
On the whole, I oppose government's attempt to mandate what a private business does with its data.
sloth jr
I wish somebody working at the ISPs should frequently accidentally leak IP and other info on the jerks requesting these laws out to the public. Give them a taste of their own damn medicine. Controlling soul sucking crap that they must be.
All your data is transfered unencrypted and, with Web 2.0 "revolution", on servers accessible to outsourced personal in jurisdictions with questionable privacy laws. I hope this is a wake up call for widespread adoption of IPSec/SSL and return to hosting content on your own machine, like it was meant to be at inception of Internet and World Wide Web. Opportunistic encryption solutions can exchange public keys with assumption of trust during the first communication between two given users. Law enforcement or black hats who start to listen in later will not get much once your circle of online friends is established.
...exit nodes and plausible deniability.
Fear the penguin.
Advertisement aimed at businessmen traveling to Europe:
Attention American Businessmen:
Are you concerned about your government making your ISP keep records of where your employees surf when they are at home? Are you worried your Vice President will get in the news because he's surfing porn at a site that later turns out to host terrorist blogs?
Fear not!
For $20/month each, your employees can enjoy the security of EuroProxy(TM). Based on Super Secure Layering technology, we provide untraceable unbreakable internet surfing to your employees.
Our servers are located in North Elbonia which has among the strictest privacy laws on the planet.
Call Now!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah... life will be good as soon as our benevolent government can track and dictate everything we do. After all... it's for our own good.
NOT!
Seriously though, as soon as any government determines that every movement needs to be tracked in a virtual world, how quickly will that translate to the real world?
Including the Bill of Rights as part of the Constitution was controversial at the time as some feared that it may come to be interpreted that the list would come to be seen as the only rights a Citizen possesed. The exact opposite is what was originally intended, the Federal government only has a small set of rights while Citizens are assumed to have unnumerated rights with the Bill of Rights as only listing a few. Under the Constitution it is not only their responsibility but even more importantly their duty to provide a conclusive and pressing need to curtail the Rights of the People of the United States of America when it comes to renegotiating the Rights and Freedoms of said Citizens. The anonymity of the original Federalist Papers strikes a chord here - this government sees people who are working for change as "homegrown terrorists". How ironic is the historical comparison to British rule over the Americas and those who oppose the status-quo with the Federal government today.
Shh.
The potential for abuse here is huge. Mueller is trying to distract politicians and the pitchfork-wielding public with scenarios where John E. Pedophile is able to be apprehended because the FBI can see he visited Underage-illegal-pornography.org thanks to the wonders of data retention. But imagine how much information about our lives can be gathered from our ISP records... private medical information, marital problems, embarrassing yet legal sexual predilections, books we read, videos we rent, political groups we favor, and on and on. The government will be able to obtain a vast amount of private and personal information after they gain access to years of our ISP records. And with 4th Amendment loopholes like national security letters in existence, there's no guarantee that this information will only be accessed upon suspicion of serious criminal activity.
The end just doesn't justify the means. The FBI seems to be doing a fine job in stopping the production of child pornography with the data retention policies that are in place. Are there any child pornography websites on the internet anymore? Are child pornographers really "pushing" their product on random internet users? Of course, no one knows the answers to these questions, and it is impossible to independently verify the government's claims without putting yourself in jeopardy of facing severe criminal charges, but it seems doubtful that child pornography is such a rampant problem that it requires opening up a pandora's box of privacy concerns.
Law enforcement is about discovering criminal perpetrators and increasingly (horrors in certain violation of civil rights and dilution of the law) in preventing certain criminal activities. For this they certainly needs _some_ records to do detective work after a complaint. But crimes are generally discovered quickly, and police are well aware that detective work has to be fairly prompt or it is likely to be ineffective. So no reason for long retention.
After Rockall was given independence from the United Kigngdom, you will probably find it has the best record on democracy of any western nation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Interfering with a terrorist investigation? Guantánamo Bay has nice weather.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...we demo this system, but for snailmail? As our Congress-critters are so eager to make this happen, let's start with them. Each "representative" would be personally responsible for keeping ALL copies of incoming AND outgoing mail for their entire term. Those found in violation would be stripped of their office, flogged with 3-day-dead trout, and made to work in the mailroom for a period of not less than 6 months... sitting next to the guy with the flatulence problem.
No, it won't happen, but it gets a little irritating to think that they believe that email is sufficiently different than "normal" mail to warrant treatment that they'd not put up/deal with themselves.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Either the gov wants to track a few people or they want to track everyone. Giving this kind of power when not in wartime is irresponsible. I could see a judge letting them check on certain profiles but EVERYONE???
Funny in that they CAN'T STOP FUCKING MURDERS & OTHER CRIMES IN THEIR OWN PISSHOLE CITY : WASHINGTON D.C.
Here's a little advice for all you ISPs out there: The records were accidentally erased and the backup tapes were accidentally destroyed.
If it's good enough for Cheney it's got to be good enough for you.
I'm really beginning to hate my government!
(Now you make sure to keep this statement on record for at least two years there Cowboy Neal).
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
It might sound trite, but as long as the FBI behaves like a child, it should be treated like a child. Right now it seems like if we give them a baseball bat for little league then the next morning all the mailboxes along the street are smashed. If we lend 'em the car keys so they can go to youth prayer sessions, two hours later we're getting a phone call about how they wrapped the car around a telephone pole as they tried driving to the liquor store after getting thrown out of the local bar. And what's particularly galling is that they come back afterwards and ask if they can have a new Porsche because the old car doesn't go fast enough.
Let the FBI go a year without abusing their existing powers before they even get to ask for anything new. (Child equivalent: "No dessert until you clean your room.") Or use a more immediate reward/punishment system - if anyone abuses any privilege, the agent responsible is disciplined and the situation rectified (evidence tossed, etc). Otherwise the whole agency loses that privilege for a week the first time, a month the second time, then six months, then a year, etc. (Child equivalent: "If whoever threw that spitball doesn't fess up, the entire class is getting detention.")
I mean, seriously, it seems like my two-year old nephew has a better understanding of rights and responsibilities than the FBI does.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
I see today is that most people just.don't.plain.care. Most of the people I've talked don't really care that they have no privacy. They say "So? They'll get a list of porn sites and tech sites?" I know anecdotal evidence doesn't prove much, but I fear that most people just don't care enough.
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
of the Torturer can be recovered.
PatRIOTically,
Kilgore Trout
After all, we know congress and the presidency are both crammed with child molesters and other predators. Will someone please think of the children and Xray those bastards daily?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You don't have to run logs. If you do not you have nothing to save.
Simple Server Tricks.
Does this apply to the executive branch?
Wow. well said. Damn well said. You oughta sell posters with that. Mind if I do? :)
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
All we need is the fbi dicking around with the internet and then they can do whatever they want. Next thing you know they'll start internet censorshit. Ok there a lot of predators on the internet, but hey...the internet isn't where all of the crime takes place.
"Funny in that they CAN'T STOP FUCKING MURDERS & OTHER CRIMES IN THEIR OWN PISSHOLE CITY : WASHINGTON D.C."
I agree!
The lame brain government messes every thing up and makes me sick.
...and it turns out the White House's emails go missing (gasp! never happened before!). Who gets in trouble? Certainly not anyone in power. The heads of a handful of IT grunts (i.e. you and I) will roll.
Call the Librarians. They've been able to stop the last couple of bills that would have required libraries to retain circulation records. If private ISP's get socked with data retention laws, the libraries aren't far behind.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
The logs as of the other week on a 15,000 user forum averaged 3.5 gig every 3 or 4 days.
so that's a fresh 600gig HD for the 2 year mandate, for just one web site.
New, recently proposed legislation now requires every person to store everything they say or hear for two years. This is for your protection and must be accessible to the FBI and local law enforcement. Advocates for the new law cite the number of lives that could have been saved if this was available to fight terrorists in 1776.
In other news, President Bush was elected to a fifth term despite only having 1% of the popular vote and a 0% approval rating. When asked how this didn't violate the 22nd amendment to the constitution, the President's reply was, "the what?"
CRAP!
Who the hell is an ISP anyway. I have an address block. I got it from IANA back in the dark ages. I have open wireless. Pigs are tolerated, hogs get killed. I don't know who uses the frakin thing. It's like passing a joint. These governmental BOZOs assume I've got "customers" and "revenue". F$CK 'em in the REGX!
Why is it that I think VPN just became the new digital equivalent of the tin foil hat?
HDGary secures my bank
an ISP "Bill of Rights"...Yeah, that's the ticket.
What?
ISPs keep records and criminals simply use spoofed MAC address and piggyback on someone else's connection. Ultimately, from the point of view of the FBI, this is really just a law so that they can threaten ISPs with failing to keep "adequate" records, and then coerce them into "volunteering" to do things of questionable legality on their behalf. For the politicians, these laws are designed for the sole purpose of getting lobbying dollars out of telcos and ISPs who aren't coughing up enough $$$ for the 2008 re-election campaigns. Ultimately, this law will go away when ISPs cough up a combined total of $50-250k in campaign funds to the sponsoring parties.
Or how about actually enforcing this on Bush and Cheney?
After all their own IT department says they "lost" the emails and can't be retrieved.
So, if you want Bush to veto this law, add a line which states it applies to Bush and Cheney,and you will see it vetoed faster than hillary says "woo hoo!"
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
It is talking about ISPs. I am pretty sure that the white house and many companies and even individuals run their own SMTP server. So no ISP, no need to keep those records for 2 years. Companies also have their own servers.
So again this is just to attack the rights of Joe Smoe, while the people who bought governement can still do whatever they want.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Oh yeah, and when we have mutant congresscritters with 2 heads making twice as many stupid laws that's going to be an improvement how?
Or at least they had better be, because that's going to cost my company a LOT of money.
See "1984".
Will someone please think of the children and Xray those bastards daily?
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs