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Bill Would Require ISPs, Wi-Fi Users To Keep Logs
suraj.sun notes CNet reporting on bills filed in the US House and Senate that would require all ISPs and operators of Wi-Fi hotspots — including home users — to maintain access logs for 2 years to aid in law enforcement. The bills were filed by Republicans, but the article notes that the idea of forcing data retention has been popular on both sides of the aisle over the years. "Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that... would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. ... Each [bill] contains the same language: 'A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user [i.e., DHCP].'"
Logging for 2 years? Who is going to pay for the storage costs, backups, etc.? I'm not going to foot the bill for it or get fined because my cheap Linksys router dies after six months of use and I lose my logs.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Home users are really gonna do this. Oh and they will all patch their machines too.
Yeah, because jail is fun.
they just *had* to get the children involved in this somehow.. the full title of the legislation is:
Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act
is too clueless to secure his wireless router, how the heck is he/she/it going to know how to maintain a 2 year log file of every access?
10.10.10.10 Assigned to 01:23:45:67:89:01 20090220135000
Going to be when the 1st bit is a setting made by me and the MAC address is easily Spoofable.
What next - everyone must register the MAC addresses of all their network kit and sanctions if you change it ?
More idiocy from people that dont understand how stuff works.
The Republicans want this "in the interest of national security" so they can stop the terr-rists.
The Democrats want this so they can save the children from all of that evil kiddie porn, and also so the **AA can better control the media you consume, kill P2P and net neutrality, and bill you for it appropriately.
They both want stuff like this so they can control the citizens better.
Where's the party who doesn't want any of this shit and thinks the government has much, much more important stuff on its plate right now?
What happens when some user with a haphazard setup suffers major data loss due to poor backup patterns? I doubt they'll be subject to jail time. Unless the (American) government provides a reliable way of storing this information for the required period.
Bored at work? Play Game!
My first thought was basically how the heck can people even comply with this if they wanted to. Not all wireless routers have means to export logs, and most lose their logs after a reboot, etc.
Even if you have the space and the will to archive the logs, it doesn't mean that the hardware will allow you to do so.
Anybody who values liberty should be willing to spend some time in jail, rather than submit to an unconstitutional tyrannical law.
I say "unconstitutional" because it is illegal for congress to order me, in my private home, to keep logs. Their authority ends at the interstate border. In regards to my private Wifi service, the only authority I have to obey is my home state legislature, since I operate completely and wholly within the state.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The first rule of a police state is that EVERYONE is breaking the law. You just pass laws that are impossible or unreasonable to follow and then when you want to come down on someone, you just hit them with a bunch of bullshit charges. So if federal law enforcement kicks down your door on some bogus child porn charge and doesn't find any child porn, they can save face, rather than just admit their mistake, by busting you on all the *other* stuff they found (your marijuana stash, your bootleg mp3's, and now the fact that you weren't keeping 2 years of archived data, and so on).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wish I had one of those handy forms, but it boils down to this:
Even if I kept logs, if they can hack my network, they can hack my logs. In fact, it would probably be easier than the initial hack.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Remember that post about geeks thinking they are lawyers?
Weird... because I'm pretty sure if you're browsing the web, you're communicating across state lines... even if you only view sites that keep the routes within state lines you're still subject.
For example, if I built a radio transmitter, but the signal doesn't reach out of my neighborhood, but I'm blocking other devices and maybe transmitting questionable material, I'm pretty sure the FCC (congress controlled) will be at my door when a few neighbors turn in complaints
It's not just ideology that the whole media loves Obama because he's promising them big bucks by a crack down on file sharing and piracy. Republicans are stupidly trying to curry Hollywoods favor but its just not going to happen. Republicans should instead take a stand for civil liberties while simultaneously extinguishing their enemies and just oppose any sort of DRM. But they are stupid.
This is my sig.
Anybody who values liberty should be willing to spend some time in jail, rather than submit to an unconstitutional tyrannical law.
Translation: the Land Of The Free is dead. You shouldn't even have these thoughts otherwise.
I say "unconstitutional" because it is illegal for congress to order me, in my private home, to keep logs. Their authority ends at the interstate border. In regards to my private Wifi service, the only authority I have to obey is my home state legislature, since I operate completely and wholly within the state.
Do you have an ISP? It won't matter once they get to them.
Communicating yet, but, does that actually constitute interstate commerce? I thought that was all the feds were supposed to be able to legislate?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I have written a number of articles explaining why data retention policies are terrible in words that the average user can understand. The biggest one, IMO, for the average person, is the amount of personal information that their ISP would have to keep on them, and how that would make their ISP an identity theft goldmine for criminals.
The first rule of a police state is that EVERYONE is breaking the law.
As tedious as it is, Atlas Shrugged has something to teach us. Don't bother to read the book though, all you need to know is in the following quote:
Sometimes I feel like a bot whose only real purpose is to paste this quote. But as it is a leading force in American society that people seem to have mostly forgotten, I believe it bears some heavy repetition.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How exactly do they expect people to keep access logs?
I can draw up a budget, and system to do the job but someone has to pay for it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Well, there is that pesky ol' Second Amendment. But don't worry, they are working on that as well...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I say "unconstitutional" because it is illegal for congress to order me, in my private home, to keep logs. Their authority ends at the interstate border.
While my first thought was also to bemoan the death of the interstate commerce clause, the truth is, everything you do is considered interstate commerce under our screwed-up constitutional jurisprudence. If you grown wheat on your own farm, make bread with it in your own home on said farm, and use it slop your own pigs on said farm, you have engaged in interstate commerce. So says the Supreme Court to uphold the New Deal (which is what your grandparents called a stimulus package). It was beyond a stretch. It was downright dishonest. But it's the law of the land. If this law gets passed, don't look for it to get overturned on constitutional grounds, not even by the Roberts court. You'd get Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and maybe Roberts, but Kennedy would vote with the liberal bloc.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
What, now you have to be lawyer for the government not to spy on you? I thought the Fourth Amendment covered all citizens.
Most of the Founders of this country printed their pamphlets anonymously. And not because of the war (it was over), but because it gave them the opportunity to share their actual thoughts without getting lynched by other politicians. For example Thomas Jefferson shared his ideal of "freedom of religion" anonymously, because he feared the backlash from the then-powerful State Church.
Anonymity protects free speech. Anonymity is the enemy of power-hungry men, and the friend of the People's liberty.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The Whitehouse can't even find their own frickin emails. They want every Dick and Jane to keep 2 year logs? Bush didn't go to jail, but Jane probably will.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Without liberty, you may not have a life or a future, dude.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I agree. The router that we have does not have the capability of keeping logs, as far as I know. Even if it does, it does not make it easy, and I have no intention of figuring out how to make it keep logs. In any event, I am sure that there are some routers that are completely incapable of keeping logs, and those would have to be replaced in order to comply with the law. Who will pay for this? Last time I checked, the government can't suddenly force everybody to pay money for something. IANAL, of course, so what do I know?
Regardless of whether geeks=lawyers or not, the simple fact is that most home wifi boxes aren't equipped to keep logs on this kind of scale.
The Homeland Security agent can demand until he turns black in the face, but demanding isn't getting. Simple answer: No. Tough shit.
Pretty soon we will see fake traffic log generators, awesome.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
If most normal users can't be even bothered to setup WiFi WPA correctly what's the hope of logging 2 years worth or data? And where exactly are you going to log the 2 years worth of data?? What happens if a power surge blows up your device? If it's logged over the Internet then there's going to be bottleneck somewhere which will flood your supposedly stressed out network. Personally I think this requirement is a joke and I hope the folks who vote on this will realize this won't work. Protect the children? You know if you're going to be this anal how about just banning the Internet for kids until they're old enough? Myself I didn't use the Internet until University simply because it didn't exist yet. Maybe it'll teach kids that there's other more reliable sources than the Internet. (Like books?)
Yes, don't generate fake logs.
Instead, you dedicate an old junk-box computer whose job is nothing more than to use a random MAC, connect to the AP, grab an IP, and disconnect, over and over, forever. There's nothing illegal about that.
When the feds ask, you will now have a compressed log of several TB to hand them. Good luck!
Frustration isn't a crime.
Only as long as you let them legislate whatever they want. That's the basis of the whole system. Do you hate what the government is doing? Really? Do you hate it enough to do something about it? Or are you just gonna sit at your computer and complain about it on /.?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Four types of responses. The fourth is the type that analyzes the types of responses. This post being in that category.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
The Libertarian party supports some principles that, broadly speaking, Americans believe in. More or less, these are classical liberal principles, in the mold of Thomas Jefferson. However, few people support their particular hardline interpretation, which tends to emphasize the anarcho-capitalist aspects, play down Jeffersonian elements that don't fit into that (e.g. Jefferson's view that governments should restrict the power of large corporations), and make few exceptions for any reason. Abolishing free public education, for example, is not a popular position. Neither is privatizing the road system. Some for of social safety nets are also popular---people don't want them abused (e.g. the stereotypical "welfare queens"), but neither do they want them to be totally absent. People also want regulation of private enterprise when its activities can cause negative externalities, such as systemic risks to economies (like banks, where further deregulation, the Libertarian position, is currently extremely unpopular). I could go on for a while.
Now if someone started a political party with positions more similar to those of the editorial line of The Economist newsmagazine, I could see voting for them. That is, support free-market economies with regulation and/or costing of negative externalities (pollution, systemic risks, etc.), a moderate social safety net, and liberal positions on social and civil liberties issues.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Good question. I'm fairly certain the original intent of the Constitution was Not to invade private homes. They had interstate commerce in the 1780s (letters, pamphlets) but never intended that Congress should require Thom or George or Ben or James to keep a log of every letter they ever mailed.
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry
ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect
the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning
may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the
probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democrats
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The cops can get a no-knock warrant in seconds, based on any made-up bogus reasons they feel like, and they will kick in your door at 3:00AM, shoot your dog immediately, tear the hell out of your house while holding a machinegun to your head against the floor, and if they find nothing, all they say is oops, sorry, and you have no recourse.
Welcome to 21st century Amerika.
Only as long as you let them legislate whatever they want. That's the basis of the whole system. Do you hate what the government is doing? Really? Do you hate it enough to do something about it? Or are you just gonna sit at your computer and complain about it on /.?
I'd do something about it sooner, but there's a waiting period on purchasing firearms! A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny!
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
The worst thing about this in the real world is that I just don't think that the bad intentions that your quote implies are actually there for the most part. Most of these legislators are just seeking solutions to the problems that exist in society at the command of their constituents (voters and special interests).
These constituents are the people who get upset about having a national biometric database for identification purposes, but demand nationalized health care.
Sure, we don't have a National Database(tm) in some government building, but they do have to have to have access to all of your medical records in order to deal with your claims. In the end, the result is the same: the government has your biometric data, but they can't even really be efficient about it, because of your rights. That situation won't stop the abuses, but it will impede the system it is there to support.
To put it more briefly, many of the very things that we protest about in terms of individual freedoms being lost are things that we'll be more than happy to trade for the government running some service for us or protecting us from every possible threat.
You know, people constantly point to corporations running the local store, the local police and various other services as a corrupt practice. But what about when the government runs everything... because we demanded that they do by demanding more and more laws and programs? They have a monopoly on force, and you get everything from them. That would be bad enough if the government was actually responsive to the citizenry, but we all know that the government is run by the people who can stick their faces in front of the legislators and executives enough.
So, I have very little patience with people who get upset with the government for getting in their faces about stuff like this, but at the same time demand their safety nets and stimulus packages. The consistent message that we are sending the government these days is "fix our problems for us".
The only solution to the issue is not more laws, but fewer and clearer laws. Fewer programs and less expecting of people like Congress and the President to "create jobs" or "protect our children". The government should not become an omnipresent service organization.
/.ers have too narrow a viewpoint. We actually envision doing this. Instead, let's publicize to the entire "normal" non-technical world how the government expects everyone to keep two years' logs of all of their communications, like all of your phone call records, so they can be inspected at any time. After all, cordless phones on standard frequencies are totally unsecured, and someone might have made a call to a terrorist on your phone line, so maybe you should record your phone line too. THAT is something that the average person can understand as (1) a burden to maintain, (2) an invasion of privacy, and (3) a change from presumed innocence to presumed guilt. That last one is the most dangerous. It used to be authorities had to prove I was doing something wrong; this bill seems to say that I have to continually maintain and update my records to prove that I was not doing something wrong, and it is assumed that if I can't produce those records then I'm hiding something and am guilty. Very, very dangerous.
Right. And this group of 'guys' with various and sundry firearms is going to do exactly what? Enfilade the police? Create a defensive perimeter? Do you think that some $random_gun_toting_mob is going to be able to do anything other than general rape and pillage?
.50 caliber guns. It's organization, organization, planning and execution. You're better off hoarding old cell phones or CB radios and learning how to make explosives. The kid in the basement with a mesh network OLPC and some crypto is going to me more useful than a half drunk, firearm toting, out of shape guy.
There is quite a bit more to warfare, even guerrilla warfare, then having
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
>Last time I checked, the government can't suddenly force everybody to pay money for something.
*cough* Taxes *cough*
The worst thing about this in the real world is that I just don't think that the bad intentions that your quote implies are actually there for the most part. Most of these legislators are just seeking solutions to the problems that exist in society at the command of their constituents (voters and special interests).
Well, let's look at the number one cause of bullshit imprisonment, the so-called War On Drugs. We went through this issue as a nation already, with the prohibition of alcohol. The only constitutional amendment ever passed whose stated purpose was to limit the freedoms of the citizenry, the prohibition of alcohol served only to provide fortune and indeed fame (and not infamy, either) to organized crime. The same thing is happening today with, basically, the list of controlled substances. In fact, you could essentially use Schedule A as a list of what drugs you could potentially make money on in the USA. Even the CIA World Factbook will tell you (after a lengthy delay in which I visit Mycroft and make a search plugin - am I lazy yet?) in no uncertain terms that the US is:
So you can see how well that whole "War on Drugs" thing is working.
Every politician complicit in this farce shares responsibility for government-sponsored slavery (in the form of privatized, for-profit prisons, which have been overstuffed with nonviolent drug "offenders") as well as the general degradation of the people. And many of them have gotten enormous kickbacks directly from those who profit most from the current state of affairs; not just the companies running the prisons, but overwhelming sums of money from "big pharma" which depends on this bought-and-paid-for legislation to keep the masses purchasing their drugs. Meanwhile, if I'm reading the results right (?) it appears that prescription drugs killed almost as many people as recreational even in the reported data for 2005 (latest year of available results.) Mis-prescription of drugs is thought by some to be the single largest killer in America today. You could argue back and forth about whether these people would have lived as long as they did without prescription medications, but their use is not an either-or; there are cases where naturopathic medicine (e.g. non-synthetics) is the best available option. The modern medical establishment and their hired tools (found in large numbers on both sides of the aisle) would have you believe that this is never the case, and the resulting political policy is very much to the detriment of all American citizens.
This is the long and explanatory way of saying that I believe that you are wrong; that even if they would not put it as Ayn Rand did, every one of these mainstream completely-beholden-to-corporate-masters politicians is very much a willing part of this type of oppression.
The only solution to the issue is not more laws, but fewer and clearer laws.
And more to the point, laws which serve the people. For example, the purpose of copy
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
White House != Congress
This is proposed by Congress (Legislative branch), not the White House (Executive branch). Where are all the emails written/received from Congress critters? The only ones I've heard of in recent years are those associated with Republicans being slimes with interns, or like Sarah Palin's hacked account.
I get your point, but I really think you have things backwards. Sure, you don't want to spend your life tilting at windmills, unless that's what turns your crank of course. But if you are not willing to take a stand against the encroachment on your liberties - even under threat of incarceration - you may find yourself no longer able to enjoy your finite time on this planet regardless.
As for your statement "there's not the remotest indication that anybody spending any time in jail over this would make any difference to lawmakers," it could have the effect of shining a light on the injustice you are suffering, resulting in pressure on the "lawmakers" to change. Nelson Mandela managed to make a huge impact on the state of liberty in his country during the 27 years he spent in jail. That's perhaps not the best analogy, but the point is speaking out while you still can is the only way you can directly influence whether or not you are permitted to speak out in the future.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I remember a time when content ripping and P2P downloading required an "expert". Not anymore.
I don't remember a time when either of those were mandated by law.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
White House != Congress
This is proposed by Congress (Legislative branch), not the White House (Executive branch)...
Sorry for getting the Greed and Corruption branches mixed up there. My apologies.
>Last time I checked, the government can't suddenly force everybody to pay money for something.
Like digital TV converter boxes?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. In the CNet report, they only mention DHCP. Obviously, if they only legislate DHCP everyone will go to static addresses until those logs have to be kept too.
But how can they enforce this? Will they require people to routinely submit logs so they can keep tabs on you? Will they require everyone with WiFi to register their routers like it was a gun so that law enforcement will be able to know who might need to be rounded up? Will it be a crime to change your MAC address or spoof it?
I think this is going to end up just being another waste of time. I even wonder if Congress would know how to write a law that would include the proper text to cover something as technical as logs. Will they have to be supplied pre-filtered or in original format? What if they are so verbose that 2 years worth can't be burned to a CD or DVD? Will they supply the media to copy the logs off? And what if you have a data loss? If your logs get wiped out in a disk failure, what kind of penalty will go with that? Will we be required to RAID our log storage to protect the data? What about offsite backups? Will we have to backup logs to some government server?
How about if you are doing remote logging and accidentally block tcp 514 so you have a hole in your data? What if your logging daemon dies and nothing gets logged until you discover/reboot/restart?
I think this is impractical. I think it will be able to be circumvented. I think it will just be another way to do what the Chinese have been doing to their people - monitor them.
Might be a good time to start up a network installation business to install wired connections in homes and businesses. I think people would much rather hardwire than put up with this bull about WiFi logs. Any builders would probably want to run Ethernet everywhere as a matter of course in new construction.
And if they only specify WiFi, look for optical to start taking off.
This is what happens when people who think the "Internets" is a bunch of tubes start wanting to control technology that they don't understand.
I am sorry but before being allowed to pass or even suggest legislature folks in government should be required to pass a basic technology proficiency test.