Slashdot Mirror
UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data
nk497 writes "In the UK, ISPs are charging a child protection agency for access to IP user details they need for their investigations into online-related abuse. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has paid out over £170,000 since 2006 on IP data requests related to child abuse cases, and expects to pay another £100,000 this year — enough to fund another two investigators. The CEOP's CEO said that any ISP which can't afford to give the police such help 'simply can't afford to do business.'" Surely it must cost the ISPs money to comply with such requests, no matter how official the quest.
Cant the UK govt legally steal it via some regulation that allows it?
Our govt is immune from copyright and patent infringement, and only listen to "entertain".
They requested data on at least 3,000 people from the ISPs (at £60 per request). But assuming most ISPs don't charge them then the real number is likely significantly higher perhaps even over 10,000 requests... That's a lot of requests.
As far as the charges go... I like them. It forces the police to at least look at how many people they're requesting data on so they just can't put out a drag net to see what they catch.
Plus it does cost ISPs money.
Absolutely, having these charges will hopefully reduce the amount of spurious fishing trips. Let's face it, if it didn't cost them, we all know how that would end.
Mind you, when I read about this yesterday on theregister, it said that ~10000 requests had resulted in ~300 arrests, but no data was available on how many of those arrests had resulted in convictions. So we don't really know the quality of those requests as it is.
Oh no... it's the future.
Unless CEOP's CEO works for free on this worthy cause then why does he think other people should ?
The answer, which won't happen while the Civil Service is run by Civil Servants, and while the government is run by politicians, is either to roll back the SIs and rely on properly thought out laws, or to require that any SI must first identify all funding issues required and explain how they are to be addressed.
My favourite idiotic SI is the one passed a few years ago, under which it is now illegal for, say, a professor of electrical engineering to rewire his or her own kitchen or bathroom, while the same job can be done by an unqualified trainee who merely works for a registered electrical contractor. That's typical of Civil Service thinking: don't look at the job to be done, look at the paperwork.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"when did it become private enterprise's problem to pay for law enforcement?" That happened when private enterprise realised it needed help from the state to protect its ill-gotten gains.
For what it's worth, I work for a small UK ISP, and we have never charged them for this data.
I can't speak for other ISPs, but it really isn't a difficult thing for us to pull up the required data.
I don't know which ISPs are charging, but I don't believe it's justified.
The reason this attitude is considered acceptable in ISPs and not for other fields of work (do you think BT hand over phone records without charging?) is because ISPs in this country are giving way into the idea that they are responsible for what their users are doing. It's kind of become accepted that ISPs could look inside every packet and decide whether it's bad stuff.
They shot themselves in the foot when they introduced all that packet filtering for torrents and so on, and when they started thinking about introducing Phorm. Aha, says the public, so you could tell what's going on all the time, so if you let your customers do bad things, you could have done something about it.
The minute the ISPs gave up their common carrier status (i.e. like the post office saying- we just transport the mail. We don't open all the letters to find out if it is illegal- e.g. a blackmail demand), they invited every Tom Dick and Harry who doesn't like what is going on on the internet to bwahh at their door.
And keep names private until convicted.
I have to agree... in a more calm manner.
Since when has it become Ok to sell (or give away) our data, that we have a contract on, that says that they will not give that data away?
Sure, if it's really the police, that police has the same policy of privacy (which they have, at least on paper), and the police has a search warrant or some other court order... then there's fair reason that it must be investigated.
But everything else is not only a breach a contract (requiring compensation for damages), but -- if it really is the police -- also an illegally acting police. (Which should result in the boss of those cops going to jail, because breaking the law is worse when you're a cop... that's the price of having special rights.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Because the tabloids use child abuse as a big stick to further their own political aims, whipping the unwashed (and mostly dumb) masses into a frenzy with a big "think of the children" stick.
Of course, this is a really easy one, because anyone who tries to logically argue that there has been no actual increase in child abuse or child kidnap in the last 30 years can be pointed at and branded as "doesn't care about children being abused" or onside with paedophiles. I thoroughly recommend getting hold of the satirical "Brass Eye" special on paedophilia which addresses this exact hysteria and caused outrage in the tabloids for trivialising this "serious issue". Most notable was the Daily Star who had a full page decrying the show and writer Chris Morris while the page opposite had a picture of a then 15 year old Charlotte Church in a bikini with the headline "She's a big girl now".
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
As an aside, what makes you think the law actually stops an unqualified person, who is not even likely to know the law exists?
This is a general issue with laws that make something an offence which most people would not understand or know about. Viruses and Trojans on the Internet are more likely to make criminals of non-IT-literate people. As the network of enforcers widens, more and more stupid, incompetent and malicious people join their ranks. These people then use their arbitrary power to upset other people for pleasure. They won't succeed against real criminals because they know enough to hide their traces (like cowboy electricians knowing where to buy old stocks of installation gear from before the cutoff date so the householder can claim it's an old installation...)
When you sell your house, it gets surveyed.
And no, it's NOT the EU. This kind of silliness is something our legislators can manage without any outside help.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Even better, force the newspapers and other media to dedicate the same amount of coverage to proclaiming the individual's innocence in case of a dropped or innocent verdict as they do spend on blackening said person before the trial. Meaning if it's on the first page for 3 consecutive days said newspaper have to dedicate the frontpage to proclaiming his innocence for 3 consecutive days.
The government is not at fault for investigating him, the media is at fault for judging him in the court of public opinion before they know wether said person is guilty or not.
Any Employer who fires somone on such basis should also be forced to rehire the individual if the individual so desires as well as paying a hefty fine.
Unfortunately, some people believe doing something noble should be free, unless of course their the ones doing it.
When the police investigate or arrest someone, for child abuse, do they mark it different on their timecard so they get paid in hugs instead of money?
Does Jim Gamble, the CEO of CEOP do this for no pay?
Should doctors not get paid?
Should attorneys that handle adoptions not get paid?
Doing the right thing may be it's own reward but it doesn't keep a roof over your head or put food on your table.
This is completely ass backwards.
Some history. Back in the 1980s, when Guliani's people and the FBI were investigating the New York Mafia, they had lots of wiretaps. New York Telephone billed them for each one as a dedicated line. The phone bill was over $1 million per year. On one occasion, the FBI didn't pay the bill, and the automated billing system then billed the person being wiretapped.
Back then, wiretapping wasn't built into the US phone system. It took manual wiring in the central office to patch in. So it wasn't done casually; there was paperwork and billing, and the wiring involved had to go into the cable database. The FBI lobbied for the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, which required carriers to build remote wiretapping capability into phone switches.
The FBI had also, on a few occasions, used the ALIT (Automatic Line Insulation Testing) system for wiretapping. This was a hardware setup in central offices which could connect to any line and checked for opens, shorts, resistance to ground, and such. Normally, it connected to idle lines for about a quarter-second, ran some tests, and disconnected. It could be used to listen in, though, which got the FBI the idea for dial-up wiretapping. Each switch had only two or three single-line ALIT units, (early versions had two racks of HP test equipment connected via HP-IB) and a wiretap tied up all that gear for long periods, interfering with its normal wire testing job, so telcos hated it when the FBI wanted to use it.
That, plus Bush I, got us built-in wiretapping.