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China Wants UN To Help Trace Sources On Internet
An anonymous reader brings us a CNet story, which begins:
"A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous. The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the 'IP Traceback' drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public. The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network."
Wouldn't the ISPs have to be in on this? And there are always still proxies...
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find my ip address
It's only a right insofar as you're not committing any crimes. While there are definitely troubling implications to being able to identify people on the Internet (especially considering who's involved here.. China and the NSA..), being able to track down and prosecute scammers, spammers, and other criminals is a worthwhile goal.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
when the americans and the chinese have the same goals
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If the tech community makes enough buzz about this, it's likely that we can put the pin back in this grenade. Nobody is going to want to support violating the sanctity of The Internet in an important U.S. election year!
There already exists a process for getting a name from an I.P. address, and that process thankfully requires court action / subpoena of ISP. Let's keep them in the loop, and make this tracing a relatively hard thing to get, with lots of human approvals needed.
Hopefully, this proposed short-circuiting of the judicial branch will just help the United Nations -- totally overstepping its proper bounds -- slide into further irrelevance. Even if the U.N. does serve a proper function in today's world, this certainly is way beyond its domain.
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Hey code monkey, learn electronics! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
1. this article is about other countries as well, in which (shockingly) your laws are meaningless
2. your own government doesn't stick to the rules anyway
for me i consider privacy a right, but anonymity is purely dependant on the situation. should scammers have the right to post shit anonymously? of course they don't, hence it's not a "right".
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
1. As usual, some non-American is getting on a high horse despite my post clearly stating its my local view. The US is part of the whole world and in the absense of Happy Unity Total World Government, everyone can feel free to post their local interpretation. No, the UN is not a world government. And most member nations are NOT democracies. And as afraid to complain as the citizens of some countries are (see article for a place called 'China'), Americans are happy to complain loudly enough to make up the difference.
2. Each branch interprets its role according to the rules its own way. One branch complaining another branch is not following the rules needs the third to mediate, not automatic condemnation, regardless of what the news anchors and comedy show hosts may imply.
Okay, so what about a country like China that makes it a crime to be a dissident? *
Make no mistake, this is a bad, bad thing.
[setenv rant=ON]
* For example, those two old ladies that were sent to "re-education camp" during the Olympics because they had the temerity to go through the official application process required to use the official protest area set aside by the Chinese government for the specific purpose of allowing peaceful, nondisruptive demonstrations. They only made that area available to satisfy international concerns, (ie, to give the IOC a fig leaf to hide behind on rights issues), and then used it as a trap to catch any of their own citizens that might be lulled into thinking it was safe to speak.
China does not give a dusty rat turd about rights (of their own citizens, or anyone else's), as clearly demonstrated by their willingness to disingenuously double back on their promise of allowing protests. They gambled that the rest of the world would stand by and let it happen, instead of rightfully shaming the Chinese government for their actions, and judging by the international response (practically nil), they were right.
[setenv rant=OFF]
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Steve Bellovin (granddaddy of IP firewalling) gives his (strongly negative) opinion here. He points out that it would be in seeming contradiction to the UN Charter.
It is a US-hosted site with a majority of its users being americans. Of course he brought up the system we have in the US.
What did you expect? A dissertation on rights in every single country, state and municipality in the world? If you don't expect him to enumerate EVERY SINGLE system of rights on the planet, then you acknowledge that he has to choose what to talk about. If he has to choose what to talk about, wouldn't it make sense that he talks about what he is most knowledgable in?
Now,
2. your own government doesn't stick to the rules anyway
I'll be the first to bash our government on our technology policy, but your quote, while factually accurate, is misleading. Yes, there is a big controversy over the government wiretapping without a warrant, but that doesn't change (what the article is talking about) the ability to be anonymous. We still have free internet cafes and other points we can get to the internet anonymously and post dissident material, which is a bedrock of our society. The court even struck down a state anti-spam law because it removed the right to anonymity.
for me i consider privacy a right, but anonymity is purely dependant on the situation. should scammers have the right to post shit anonymously? of course they don't, hence it's not a "right".
I don't know where you're from, but in a number of jurstictions (including, I would assume all democracies), the right to privacy _is_ a right. It is in the US, and it is in the UK/EU.
In fact, I think that the right to anonymity (in terms of speech) is a fundamental right in a free and open society.
-Bucky
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Free speech is a natural right. It is something anyone can do that can only be eliminated by state actions of the most oppressive and wasteful kinds. Nothing is more wasteful or oppressive than state efforts to identify and retaliate against people who say things the state does not like. Speech without anonymity is not free and states that make efforts to eliminate anonymity in speech are unAmerican.
Shame on the US for cooperating with China to eliminate free speech on the internet. Such a program would obviously violate the first amendment to the US Constition which bans all laws that infringe on freedom of speech and press.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Just look at your POTS phone service. Here the government has been able to add laws and taxes for over half a century. And they have: Full traceback, full surveillance access as well as: Access tax, federal excist tax, state tax, local tax, Universal service tax, 911 tax, LNP tax and TRS tax.
Expect the internet to be worse than this over time.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Only if you don't spend it. And if you cannot spend it, why bother?
Well, that bothers me, too. One should just remember that anonymous Swiss account were created to protect Jews from Nazi prosecution. But, still, the police has plenty of ways to investigate suspicious fortunes without intruding into bank accounts. Like, let's say, check the IRS returns for that guy with the Rolls Royce, Ferrari, and yacht who's building that big house over there. Any big transaction is bound to become public by other means than snooping into people's private lives.
Actually, I do have a right to privacy.
If you live in the US like I do, the only time I don't have rights is when it is explicitly stated so by the Constitution. Does the US Constitution say that I don't have a right to privacy? The answer is no.
On the converse, if the Constitution doesn't explicitly state I have said right, I STILL HAVE it. The Constitution does say that any right not listed is in the domain of the people, not the government. Therefore, I have the right, and just because you decide to give up yours doesn't mean I have to.
That doesn't mean the government can't change their mind and write it in ... but it hasn't happened yet.
If you are publicly doing something, you don't have any right not to be observed. You don't even have a right to prevent someone observing you from trying to determine your identity. Even if you take steps to hide your identity, you still don't have a right to prevent anyone from using whatever information they can observe.
But don't underestimate my second point - that you have a right not to be forced to assist your own surveillance. I'll add to that that you have a right not to have your property used without your consent, i.e., no breaking and entering, etc. Those two combined provide powerful protections for privacy, but the responsibility is still on you to protect yourself, and you have a right to take any of those measures you deem necessary.
Think about it, almost all surveillance techniques now require your participation in order to be effective. Red light cameras only work because you are required to have an identifying plate attached in a specific visible location on your car. Banking surveillance only works because you, and your bank, are required to provide identifying documents and transaction records when you open and use an account. This law would be the same thing, you, and your ISP, would be required to use a communications protocol that does you no good, but provides a way to trace your activity.
The only reason there is a need for a made up right to privacy is that the requirements to participate in surveillance are so ubiquitous that we forget they're even there, until the results get used in a way we don't like. But that misuse is not the problem, the problem is that the information is forced to be provided in the first place. Privacy rights, as discussed today, are just a bandage, they don't address the core problem.
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
Depends upon where you are. In the United States, everything is an intrinsic right, except those few that are reserved for the Federal Government. That government has been treading on our rights for some time now, and this is just the latest extension.
People make the mistake of assuming that the Constitution enumerates all the rights that we citizens have, and that the rest are privileges granted by the Government. The exact opposite is true, and we've been remiss in reminding our elected leaders of that fact.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No. The difference between these two types of anonymity is that the former actually protects you against a tyrant, while the latter only protects you against a nice, law-abiding, touchy-feely tyrant who'd never torture your name out of the journalist.
No, that is not okay, not if you're doing anything actually important with your anonymity. It wouldn't be okay even if the ISP's and everyone else involved could actually be trusted to obey the laws - which they can't, as the whole telcom wiretap issue and following retroactive immunity proves.
The problem is: what happens when the malicious scum is the accuser, rather than the accused ?
"Accountability" sure sounds nice, until you realize just who you're be accountable for.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
All China and the NSA has to do is host the nodes people connect to when becoming anonymous.
What I don't understand is why the UN, the NSA and China are working together. It does not seem to serve the strategic interests of any one of these groups because they all want to crack down on anonymous communication domestically while promoting it in foreign countries.
If Microsoft can get OOXML to become an ISO standard, I imagine that the US can pretty much get IETF to do whatever it wants.
Let's not forget that the current IETF chair is partially funded by the NSA, so they certainly have the power of the purse.
i could have the exact same argument with money that financials should be private.
And it should be private.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I see. Is this the official Chinese description of what happened? I'm willing to admit that I might be less than fully informed, but I'm reluctant to give credibility to what the Chinese government says. Two elderly women could face a year of "reeducation through labor" because they applied for permits to demonstrate during the Olympics, according to one of the would-be protesters.
The Chinese government speaks not just though its state-controlled press, but through its actions as well, and their actions speak louder to me than their words. Members of the press from abroad have been intimidated and had pictures of protests confiscated by the Chinese government.
- How many requests for permission to protest were made? My latest sources say about 77.
- Of those, how many were granted permission to protest during the Games?
- Of those, how many actually protested during the Games?
- Learning Chinese would be great, but is more than I can do right now. What reliable and trustworthy (ie, non-government related) sources of information are there for an English-speaker like myself?
It seems that Beijing has gone out of its way to squash free speech, intimidate critics, and to imprison dissidents. Are all these sources willfully libeling China?
To the original topic: If it were in my power to grant or withhold, I would never entrust China (or any government - even my own) with tools that would help it roll back the shield of anonymity that protects the natural right of people to speak freely.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.