Slashdot Mirror
Tool To Allow ISPs To Scan Every File You Transmit
timdogg writes "Brilliant Digital Entertainment, an Australian software company, has grabbed the attention of the NY attorney general's office with a tool they have designed that can scan every file that passes between an ISP and its customers. The tool can 'check every file passing through an Internet provider's network — every image, every movie, every document attached to an e-mail or found in a Web search — to see if it matches a list of illegal images.' As with the removal of the alt.binary newgroups, this is being promoted under the guise of preventing child porn. The privacy implications of this tool are staggering."
This will cause huge latency issues and cost beaucoup bandwidth. ISPs would be shooting themselves in the foot if they did this with all traffic. OTOH, I could see laws requiring such tools for P2P traffic -- in fact that may well be inevitable, with the **AA's "ruling class" status these days.
Caveat Utilitor
"The tool can 'check every file passing through an Internet provider's network -- every image, every movie, every document attached to an e-mail or found in a Web search -- to see if it matches a list of illegal images.' "
How exactly is this going to be accomplished? The equipment cost must be staggering and would consume allot of power. Way to conserve electricity, I thought we were trying to reduce the amount of power the Internet consumes. Does also this remove the common carrier status of ISP's?
I hope this never comes to fruition.
Wasn't that the Aussie spyware company attached to Sharman Networks/KaZaA?
Before it got raided, I mean?
I call shenanigans.
Can it decrypt SSL/SSH in real time?
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
... what is going to prevent this proverbial snowball from building into a full-blown avalanche? I guess it has already become one to some extent... I can't recall a time in history when the WORLDS rights and privacy were as stripped and neglected as it is now, and then everyone suddenly got their right to privacy and freedom back. Despite its amazing capabilities, technology sure has put us into an interesting position when in the hands of people like "Brilliant Digital Entertainment" ... yeah, real brilliant. Crackheads.
Ok, on really simple protocols, like HTTP or FTP, maybe - but most, if not all, p2p traffic is safe, i think. This is of course because of the chunky nature of transmission - you can't really tell what part of the file went through your pipe just by looking at it, and since parts are sent at random, you cannot rebuild the file with your chunks without guiding information, be it a torrent file, a list of parts for emule, or whatever else there is. And you need the whole file to get your hash-check. That's one. Two: encryption totally kills the effort, as the ISP can in no way examine your file without interfering with your transfer, and SSL exists solely to protect you from this.
Even if my line of thinking is really misguided here, this would require lots and lots of processing power - i mean, on a routing line with a hundred users on one end, it's thousands of hash-checks to be made for every stupid rebuilt file - both processes of course painfully CPU-eating, unless you want false-positives, since you didn't bother to use a proper hashing algorithm.
All in all, this looks to me like a terrible waste of money.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
shhh.. don't tell the government..
Time to make a utility that puts a file into an encrypted 7Zip archive, with the password stored in some reversable encryption method (encrypt the password with all zeroes as a key 1 million to 2 million times), so it would take x CPU seconds on some hardware to decrypt it.
This would allow files to still go across the net without requiring passwords or keys, but prevent utilities like this from just passively obtaining traffic, just due to the CPU cycles involved.
Of course, just stuffing a password in the comments field works too, but with a decent text parser, it can be extracted.
Its just more of the same cat and mouse game. The real crooks will not be affected while Joe ISP User will lose his privacy even more.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Australian copyright law "[...]Brilliant Digital Entertainment in Australia were raided for copyright violations[...]" in 2004.
It looks like someone switched sides but taking a closer look they only seem to be in charge of the adware that came with Kazzaa, so I guess they were always evil.
This is fantastic, since the amount of money required by an ISP to implement this will sink them. This will filter all "idiot" ISPs, who think they are rulers of the internet.
is to have ISPs scan all downloading files to make sure they do not contain malware or viruses so we don't have so many botnet zombies around the web from idiots opening britneysex.exe
Can it decrypt SSL/SSH in real time?
According to the article they use man-in-the-middle attacks. This is probably quite easy if the server is using self-signed certs.
The problem with all the hysteria around child pornography is that it's too easy to frame someone. A little research, five minutes alone with your computer, and an anonymous phone call are all someone needs to ruin your life and reputation.
Let me be perfectly clear: Even if you're completely innocent, this is a serious threat to you. If someone decides to frame you, you won't be able to prove your innocence, and it won't matter even if you can. That's unacceptable. Yes, child porn is bad, but a society where anyone can anonymously destroy anyone else is much, much worse.
You know what? In a dozen years of actively surfing porn, I've never encountered kiddie porn in the wild. This great big threat to all mankind so severe that we all need to put woolly pullovers over all our electronic gear and filter all telecommunications is simply and plainly crap. It's a ruse.
There are some people who want to control everyone else. They want to control what you see, what you hear, and as much as is humanly possible, what you think. They want to monitor us all (but not themselves, of course) and make us all cookie-cutter little clones who all think the same harmless little thoughts and are all scared of their authority.
F * U * C * K them.
Anyone telling you this sort of "protection" is necessary is deluded or a liar. Either way, such people should be ignored or in extreme cases, put somewhere they cannot bring harm to others.
"...Internet service providers could easily be seen by the public as "overreaching," making it harder to get public support for efforts of law enforcement. What's needed, said the group's executive director, Grier Weeks, is for cops to investigate the leads they already have..."
and
"The Department of Justice and all 50 attorneys general are sitting on a mountain of evidence leading straight to the doors of child pornography traffickers," Weeks said. "We could rescue hundreds of thousands of child sexual assault victims tomorrow in America, without raising any constitutional issues whatsoever. But government simply won't spend the money to protect these children. Instead of arrests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the child exploitation industry now faces Internet pop-ups from the Friendly Bus Investigators. That was always the fundamental difference between the Biden bill and the McCain bill. Biden wanted to fund cops to rescue children. McCain wanted to outsource the job."
This my friends is about the money! The U.S. Government and Brilliant Digital (ironic business name!) both know this won't work. Brilliant Digital see this as a market to exploit and make millions of dollars. The U.S. Government get a "cheap" way of "dealing" with child pornography and a perception from the general public as "something being done".
I'm sure the Government know about Brilliant Digital's dubious past but the percieved "benefits" are too good to miss.
It's a win-win for both parties!
I have children myself and I find developments like this horrifying.
Someone does not become a paedophile by looking at images on the internet, it's deeper and more complex then this - blocking content will not cure the problem or reduce related crimes in any way.
The last quoted paragraph sends chills down my spine and really makes me angry.
Children can be rescued if the funding is available but a company like Brilliant Digital will recieve the funding instead and the problem is never solved - people are made richer instead.
I really mean Think of the children