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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.
Does that mean we will receive a stipend for storage in order to keep said logs for two years? If the government is going to require me to keep them, then they need to enable me with at least 3 terabytes of storage!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Most people don't know how to turn on WEP or WPA encryption on their wireless routers let along find how to turn on logging and setting a backup routine to keep years of data. Heck most people/governments/companies cant keep years of data on their own PC.
I wonder how many of these lawmakers are in compliance of this purposed law.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The unintended consequence of this is that every user on a system is going to get a fixed ipv6 ip and ipv4 traffic would be gradually phased out. Why bother with the administrative burden of issuing an IP address via dhcp and tracking it, when, you could have an ipv6 theoretically assigned to a customer for the life of a device.
This is my sig.
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
I discovered that if I log my wifi router to /dev/null, it works really fast and never seems to fill up, how excellent!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Rorschach's log, Feb 20th, 1985
8:50 AM:
Internet connection activated by the scum of this city. Repugnant person scouring 4chan. May be a furry. Must investigate.
9:27 AM:
Wifi user connected to Google Docs. Probably writing communist pamphlet. His web document is shouting to Google's server "save me." I pull internet connection and icmp back "no".
9:45 AM:
Somebody killed one of my servers tonight. Server logs say "slashdot". Might be planning something big.
etc...
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?
Wonder if this measure as proposed would apply to wifi networks restricted/encrypted and thus obviously not intended for public use (cracks or the like notwithstanding).
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.
my router crashed and I lost them all.. oopps
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.
Senator John Cornyn, in TFA: "While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,"
If your goal is to keep "innocent children" safe, don't let them go down to the playground where the axe murderers, pederasts, and drug addicts hang out.
Innocence imposes isolation. You want the kids to be educated, they lose their innocence.
Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse... or is this the end of the first amendment?
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
Yeah? Well I use the Republican email retention algorithm for my records, so errm, sorry about that.
They do this (or something very similar) in Italy. All internet access has to have a name attached to it, and a timestamp.
Anti terror legislation, apparently.
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
...the anti-TOR and other anonymous networks act.
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.
I remember the glory days of the Republican opposition to Bill Clinton where every federal law that imposed a requirement on local governments was termed an unfunded mandate. This is an unfunded mandate on all of us. Besides being just plan stupid.
Is this from the same guy that said the Internet was just a series of pipes? Heck, I don't think my shower keeps track of my water use, should it be doing that too?
Bankers turned out to incompetent crooks, the auto companies just plan fools, and too many Americans are out of work. But, what does congress worry about? Dumb asses.
You get the party that people vote for, in the US that is the democrats or republikans... or the other way around, hard to tell them apart as a pinko commie hippie from amsterdam.
The simple fact is that democracy is fundementally flawed. It is a popularity contest in which 50% of the voters are below average intelligence. So the US either gets the guy who says he is going to cut taxes or the charmer. Obama is the charmer, bush promised tax cuts, clinton was another charmer, the other bush also promised tax cuts, reagan did both.
It is not just the US, the netherlands we just can't seem to get rid of the CDA, christian democrats. Bak ellende,oops sorry balkende, about as useless as clinton but without the sincerity or charm. For the last decade the country has been at a stand still. One problem is immigrants. 10 years of studies and rapports and nothing actually being done. If you think immigrants are a problem then this is a collosal waste of time and money while nothing has been done about the problem itself and if you don't think immigrants are a problem then this is a collosal waste of time and money that should have been spent on real problems.
Yet you can't shift the responsible party CDA because they have very succesfully settled themselves in the center where they blame everyone to the left or right for the problems and take all the credit for the things that don't go completely wrong.
Same with the US, the presidents are center and blame either the left or the right for their problems and take credit for things that they didn't screw up. So they look good or at least better then any alternative and decade after decade democracy erodes until you nothing gets done anymore except silly plans that are shot down in a matter of weeks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just email the logs daily to your local congressman. They have an email retention policy don't they?
With laws like this, I might as well have more liberty in most regards in China. In China the government keeps the access logs of everything I do online for me, I can download all the pirated music, software and videos I want and I can get a cheap massage with "happy ending".
This is COPA all over again.. does not matter how you word a law, throw children in there and people start running around like headless chickens.
Children's safety is the parents responsibility, not those people who provide services (deliberatly or accidentally.. aka unsecured access points)
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
You are fried! You have to use dhcp.
From TFA:
"but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses"
The article seems to infer this is primarily applicable to IP lease data. Doesn't make it any less annoying.
Can anyone explain how this applies to home users? Just password protect your router to not share your wireless and you should be fine... go read the bill. If you disagree with that approach, please correct my thinking: I assert data is not like the water company. Data is not ubiquitous, uniform or equally valuable. To summarize my point, If you have to keep your receipts for 10 years for the IRS, 2 years doesn't seem that bad to an average joe.
In a state were bills like that are passed jail is the best place you can be. Aside from the occasional rape and shanking at least you've got your privacy and the rules aren't as stringent as outside.
... home of the brave ... land of the fr... wait ... no I think you need to change the lyrics.
Oh America
I've been keeping access logs of my wifi routers for years. Turns out Mickey Mouse has been the only computer to ever access the router, and he has only visited disney.com. Weird.
--- He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. ---
if they want to close down their political opponents and enslave the nation, why not just use the quick and proven method of marching their brownshirts down the streets at 2 am?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Not that I am for this bill in any way shape or form, I just had a theory on how they might do this.
We have servers at our work that perform off-site backups. They do this because a client is installed on the server, and it sends the data to the off-site data center.
Whose to say the government won't require a firmware update, or maybe some kind of "US Government seal of approval" on all wireless routers sold in America that have an updated firmware, or client that sends the logs to an off-site location for backup?
Also if the router goes off-line and is unable to perform the backups, no harm done because if you can't get on the internet, then they are not interested in logs of local activity, only software or digital violations....
Just a thought though....
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
At issue is the ability to be anonymous on the internet which is necessary for freedom of speech. This is nothing less than an attack on the first amendment and it should be classified as unconstitutional.
Anonymity is not necessary for free speech. You should be accountable to your fellow man for what you say. Words are actionable things.
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.
Obama Gives a brand new understanding of what he means by supporting Open Source.
You thought it was software.
He was thinking of knowing everything anyone was & is doing on the net.
And you believed him.
Now what?
Why the hell does this get introduced as a "Youth" safety act? For the last eight years everything has been justified with abstracted terrorism threat and shit like that and now this isn't fly anymore? Why do they introduce that crap to catch pedophiles but never thought of that when it was about terrorism? Oh wait, they did but no one believes their stupid fucking lies about the threat anymore and so they need to pull something new from their hat. If there are no attacks you can argue against anti-terror but "Think of the children" has no bearing.
So now I have to figure out how to get my wireless router to track all MAC addresses that connect to it, and maintain that record for 2 years? How am I supposed to do that? I doubt my router (and most others') have the necessary programming or resources to do this, so I'm assuming that we'll all have to run out and buy brand new routers that have logging capabilities.
Seriously, who comes up with this shit?
I have a bad feeling about this...
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.
Caveat: I'm a staunch conservative. Thoughts: Is it acceptable if my logging and retention is at the same level of reliability as the Bush administration? If I secure my WiFi, can I assume that there is no service provided and therefor no retention or logging needed, or is this in fact a requirement to self-monitor and self-incriminate should something 'happen'? If I do choose to monitor and keep logs (which I do, 365 days worth on my IPCop box), should I now assume that the Fed stakes their claim to rights to my historical logs? I have an answer to all of this: Kiss my butt. Everyone, conservative, liberal, moderate, whatever, needs to collectively stand up and tell the government not only to kiss off, but go home. Replace every last one of these morons from Obama and Bush's administrations and everyone in between. Clean house. I WILL NOT under any circumstances provide my log files. Period. Feel free to jail me.
We already have that.. its called facebook and livejournal :P
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
What privacy? You mean never knowing if you're being watched behind that 2-way mirror facing your cell block? You mean having your little tub of belongings searched at any time of the day and for any reason? You mean sharing a cell with 1 or more "buddies" that you can only get away from when you shower... if you're lucky?
Even if you were being sarcastic, jail is never the best place you can be.
You're nothing; like me.
"... anybody who values liberty should be willing to spend some time in jail...."
So you can get butt raped, oh, and have a permanent criminal record that will stain your credibility with every employer you will ever try to deal with for the rest of your life, all for the sake of defending an ideal that you going to prison isn't going to make a whit of difference for because lawmakers aren't about to change the laws just because a few pussy little nerds (who, by the way, are the only people that are remotely likely to care about this) might spend some time in jail for "civil disobedience".
My liberty means plenty to me. My life, and my future, means more.
Get some perspective, dude.
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?"
If you do not contact your representatives and do not vote against them next term if they vote for this, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If you want me to keep two years of logs on my private WPA-encrypted wireless network that I occasionally let my girlfriend and friend use, then you had better damn well pay for the cost of the hardware and software to enable this, as well as support if anything goes wrong.
Of course, this will mean that they'll have to pay for said equipment and then the costs will balloon into the trillions.
More than likely though, this will be one of those laws that nobody plans to really enforce, but can nail you with if they decide to go on a fishing expedition.
This space left intentionally blank.
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.
In any given year since I started using high speed internet, my IP address has changed as many as 3 times... and most other people I know who are technical enough to understand the concept say they've never had their IP address change that often even though they utilize the same broadband provider I do. Given that, it would seem to me that for most cases, the storage requirements for this are probably quite feasible.
Not that I think the bill is a good idea by any stretch of the imagination, only that I really can't foresee any technological barriers to implementing it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What, now you have to be lawyer for the government not to spy on you? I thought the Fourth Amendment covered all citizens.
they self destructed. The problem is that the news media takes great joy in showing us the pot smoking side of the party and the anti-war wing looked straight out of the sixties.
That and much of what they propose is totally against the entitlement state we have now the press has to go find the kooks and make America believe that Libertarian stands for "white selfish racist pig"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Weird... because I'm pretty sure if you're browsing the web, you're communicating across state lines"
Communicating yet, but, does that actually constitute interstate commerce? I thought that was all the feds were supposed to be able to legislate?
If anyone buys anything over the internet from your hotspot it becomes interstate commerce.
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
I'll support this as soon as they pass legislation requiring all legislators to record and video all conversations they have - 24 hours a day - in order to make sure they don't do any backroom dealing not in the public's best interest.
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!
I don't provide my wireless to anyone.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Any bill introduced with a cutesy acronym should be grounds for immediate impeachment. For that matter, the same rule should be applied to weapons systems. I give a pass to open source projects since they actually produce something of value for the rest of us.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
On a slightly related note, I received a copy of Comcast's Privacy Policy last night in the mail. In short, it indicates they use (probably store) information about how you use their network, including websites visited. That seems barely legal, but a growing trend. I could just set up a proxy at work and begin routing all my web traffic there over SSL, I suppose!
It doesn't take a law degree to understand the People's Constitution. It's written in plain-english. Congress can regulate interstate commerce, Not intrastate, therefore they can not tell me what to do with my Wifi service.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Every week just send the government your logs via email to your government rep. Let government store them.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Sure they can have my logs, its going to show them 192.168.x.x and 10.0.10.x (depending on my various subnets), and I am just a home user.
so MAC address X connected to my network, and I supplied IP Address 192.168.x.y ... Yeah, thats going to help law enforcement catch whomever sat in their car near my house for 3 hours while I was at work and them surfing child porn..
Obviously, they way my network is setup, this will never happen (I have my wireless only bridging my wired to wireless network, dhcp from an openbsd box, routing and gateway from an openbsd box, and the fact that the firewall rules prevent any wireless device from going anywhere till they connect to the openvpn which uses pke for authentication... No one uses my network without me letting them...)
But, that was not the point, every wireless AP out there uses RFC1918 address space, and that will be useless to law enforcement.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I could actually see this as possible, but, what if nothing is ever purchased? Then, there is no interstate commerce.
Of course, I realize they can doublespeak this to somehow BE interestate commerce (after all, they did somehow manage to rule the growing pot and other things for personal consumption somehow could be construed as interstate commerce).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Perhaps the children at MIT could help us out like they did with "Create a Published Paper" - but on second thought perhaps we should listen to Thomas Jefferson who said...
"A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. (1787) "
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Pretty soon we will see fake traffic log generators, awesome.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
I think maybe you need to get some perspective, Dude.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Anybody got a server we could start a website on?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If I murder another human being in my home (whether I invited them in or they broke in and threatened my family) you can bet the law is gonna get involved somehow...
Yes. The local police department will get involved. Were you trying to make a point?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
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?)
Just like drinking ages are set by the States too. And all of them are 21. It is mere coincidence that the Feds threatened to withhold highway funds unless they got their way.
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.
because here's my response to them... "No"
What a nice opportunity to increase sales for manufacturers of a brand new lines of wifi hotspots with an embedded storage device, or with a connection to web services that store logs in the cloud :-) And also an opportunity to get a huge amount of money off the pockets of US citizens...
Much like driving requires a license, it is no stretch to foresee forcing IPv6 upon everyone and requiring that everyone wanting to connect their computers to the internet purchase an address. That address or range of addresses becomes the license to use the internet, and as such, becomes the diminished reasonable expectation of privacy allowing surveillance. Personally, I am dead set against giving big brother any more power. We are already near Orwellian 1984. This might be why a crushing recession or depression is a good thing. It might stem the tide of loss of individual freedoms as the citizenry loose confidence in their government and government is less likely to function efficiently. All these stimulus bills that force tracking and have other law enforcement assisting technologies should never pass.
Oops. The hard drive with all my logs is broken, here are the pieces. [hands over a bag of shrapnel].
I guess it was a bad idea to remove it from the PC with a chainsaw.
Sorry.
while it may be written in plain english, it is hardly applied on the plain-word meaning on a regular basis. in fact, lately, if its being applied on a plain-words level, it is usually Scalia using the plain words to limit, rather than protect a given freedom or liberty. Particularly on this topic, you really dont want to advocate plain-words, given that the 4th amendment describes not a "right to privacy" but specific places in which the government cannot search without due process. The Supreme Court decision that does explicitly recognize a right to privacy speaks not of 'plain words' but of 'penumbras' from other constitutional provisions. Furthermore, if you're operating a purely intrastate netowork, that's one thing, but the rest of us use internets that transcend state and national boundaries...
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
Yes I'm aware.
I'm also aware that my "peaceful" Amish neighbors grow wheat, bake bread, and never report to Congress any of their activities. They also refuse to pay income tax, medicare, or social security, and have been refusing since the New Deal years. They believe in freedom and very politely, but very firmly, tell the Washington politicians to screw themselves.
I follow my Amish neighbors example: I'm not keeping logs. I'm not reporting how much wheat I grew, or bread I baked, or anything else. The Constitution does Not give congress, or the president, or the supreme asses the authority to regulate intrastate commerce.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yeah, the buggies the Amish use don't have headlights. The govt makes them put reflectors on their buggies, that the Amish hate.
I can assure you, if this goes into effect (And just to be clear, I hate this idea), you won't get away with "My equipment is not capable of meeting your requirements"
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
The Gov't can probably require wi-fi people to keep logs when they use the people's radio frequencies. It seems like fair regulation of a public resource. I'd like to see some discussion about that, though. Dont' flame me for that, though; it's just an aside.
The real problem with with making the process workable is the 5th Amendment (the privilege against self-incrimination). A person can refuse to turn over any physical object if the act of turning that object over would tend to incriminate that person. A way to get around this would be a 'periodic log disclosure' that, simply speaking, would be the price of using the wi-fi network.
The problem with that is that there is no way Congressmen/Congresswomen would want their wireless logs and their lobbyist's wireless logs out in the public domain. You can be certain of that. Trust congressional self-interest to keep a bill such as this from ever seeing the light of day.
This indicates a publicity stunt to me. The Congressmen proposing this are just seeking publicity. They know this will never get passed. They really don't want it, either. This is just a political game that one party plays to try to say that the other party is 'soft on crime.'
Those are my Mannheim Steamroller Halloween CD.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Here's what I wrote to my House Rep, feel free to borrow it if you feel to lazy to write something original to yours.
I recently read a very concerning article about the proposed bill H.R.1076 and it's senate counterpart S.436. Among other things, this bill would require all operators of wireless Internet access points (including home users) to log routing data for no less than two years.
This creates, in my opinion, a major potential for abuse as this information will doubtless be subpoenaed for more than just child pornography investigations. Furthermore, I don't believe that the average home WiFi user has the knowledge and skills necessary to comply with the bill; it is not a trivial matter to set up and manage such a logging system.
As well as expressing my own concern, I would also very much like to hear your stance on this and similar bills. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank You
I maybe should have put something in there about the law not succeeding in it's aims; unless the penalty for not logging is as great or greater than the penalty for child porn there is no reason for child pornographers to comply.
For the knowledgeable home user, just turn DHCP off and assign static addresses. It appears by the wording of the article that they are interested in "the standard method" i.e. DHCP. So using static addresses should exempt you from the log requirement.
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
I disagree. It has been well-known since the start that liberty is not free. Thomas Jefferson said the people must, from time to time, revolt and shed blood. (Or spend time in jail.) People must be willing to stand-up for their freedom, not just buckle under, and if that means spending a little time in jail because you refuse to comply with an unconstitutional law, so be it.
And to answer your other question, I don't keep logs and never will.
Fuck them.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Once the manufacturers get into the action and build devices that send all their logs to the appropriate agency. Then those will be mandated for everyone who can't keep their logs themselves. And the rest will be red-flagged.
I have to obey is my home state legislature, since I operate completely and wholly within the state.
Will you configure your access point to block any packets that might cross state lines? The giant loop hole in our constitution, The Commerce Clause, has successfully been used in far more tenuous circumstances to justify laws that encroach on state's rights.
Apparently Pelosi has been passing out the home grown across the aisles too. So I guess every wireless device's MAC address will have to be registered as you purchase it? Oops, there's that darn MAC spoofing thing going on. So if something "illegal" is downloaded via wireless and none of my devices match the MAC address in the log I'm absolved, right? I'm glad our government has the time to waste on things like this. What country can I move to where the government is efficient even if it is corrupt? This corrupt and ignorant stuff just isn't working for me anymore.
If you have to maintain logs for two years, but generally need to fresh reinstall at least once a year (in my experience) then it should be illegal to use windows?
The internet is clearly "interstate". People pay money for it. Accordingly, it falls within the purview of interstate commerce as it has come to be defined.
Off the top of my head, I can only recall one recent case wherein the Supreme Court struck down a law that was allegedly based upon interstate commerce. It had to do with a federal law imposing penalties or stiffer penalties or something like that for the possession of a firearm in a school zone. Congress and the DOJ claimed the Feds authority for the bill arose from the commerce clause. The Supreme Court struck that one down. US v. Rodriguez I think.
Contrariwise, the most outrageous extension of the commerce clause that was upheld by the Supreme Court was back during the depression and one of the great legacies left by the FDR administration. Crop controls were placed upon farmers through a federal bill limiting the amount of grain that a farmer could grow. A farmer in Illinois, if I recall correctly, grew more than he was permitted, but he didn't sell it or anything. He just grew the grain for his own use on his own farm.
The Supreme Court at the time opined that because the farmer grew more than he was permitted, he would buy less from the general market decreasing the interstate demand for grain. Accordingly, his actions on his own private land for his own private needs and uses affected interstate commerce and the law was enforceable.
The point is: the use of the internet is clearly within the purview of the interstate commerce clause and is subject to regulation by the federal government. While I don't like this idea in the least, technical limitations aside, I would prefer it if the individual users maintained the logs instead of the ISPs. That way, the Feds have to get a warrant to get your logs instead of just asking your ISP nicely.
constitutional, legal and morally right have deviated to a considerable extent over the past 200 years. What may be morally right and constitutional is often if not most of the time illegal. see war on drugs, war on terror, economic stimulus package, and 99% of the bills passed by congress.
1) Does the proposed bill provide that all manufacturers who have sold networking equipment in the last 10 years in the US be required to provide free, mandatory firmware updates to enable this sort of logging for home users? What about companies that are no longer in business, so the end-users are unable to get a patch to enable this functionality?
I don't think your typical 'home gateway' router or 'home wireless router' currently on the market actually has any logging capability built in. So, that means that you would need a firmware update to add such functionality. Not to mention that most of them don't have any significant amount of non-volatile memory to save the logs to, which means that users would have to regularly backup the logs to their PC hard drive, then clear the routers built-in memory.
Besides that, I don't think the Constitution allows for the government to *require* me, as a private citizen not engaging in commercial activity, to keep records, does it? Whatever happened to freedom? I mean, the Constitution does allow for the government to seize my records (with a warrant) *if I have any records*, but I see nothing in the Constitution that provides for the government to be allowed to *force* citizens to create or retain records (the situation might be different for businesses, because Congress is granted "Interstate Commerce" regulation authority, but what I do at home, when I'm not making any profit on the activity, does not seem to fall under that Authority)?
You can generate it with a fake logger...
I would deliver 5 TB of logs in floppy disks :P
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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.
Well, i need subsidy from the ARRA funds to the tune of $353,000 this year, a tax break on the paper i buy, and a bailout for coming two years since i won't be able to work maintaining these records.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
P.S.
"But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party
I think the time has come for the State Legislatures to stand-up, unite in convention, and define once and for all what the interstate commerce clause means. I suspect they will be near-unanimous in their conviction that the clause does NOT mean the U.S. can regulate how much corn I grow on my farm, or how many years worth of logs I must keep by my bed. Such matters belong in the purview of the local men in the legislature. (Or better yet, in the hands of the People, in their private homes.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Weird... because I'm pretty sure if you're browsing the web, you're communicating across state lines"
Communicating yet, but, does that actually constitute interstate commerce? I thought that was all the feds were supposed to be able to legislate?
I think this applies here.
http://www.veiled-chameleon.com/weblog/archives/000166.html
[Clarence Thomas] said that the women's marijuana was never bought or sold, never crossed state lines and had no "demonstrable" effect on the national market for marijuana: "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything," including "quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers." Thus "the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Ok, so everyone thinks that this is going to be a big deal. How many of you have actually read Title 18 section 2703 (you should also read chapters 119 and 121 in their entirety as the include definitions)?
from Title 18, Chapter 121, Section 2711:
(2) the term "remote computing service" means the provision to the public of computer storage or processing services by means of an electronic communications system;
now, I don't know about you, but my WiFi router is not for the PUBLIC. Of course IANAL, but it appears that I do not operate a "remote computing service" nor am I a provider of an "electronic communication service". I provide no service to anyone outside of my family.
So, I fail to see the trouble here. They want ISPs, and WiFi hotspots (ie: Restaurants, Coffee Shops, etc.) to retain records. Note how it does not say you must OBTAIN information from your customers, just retain what information you have.
One other thing that I have not seen mentioned yet. MAC addresses are not guaranteed to be unique, only unique on a particular LAN. There is no guarantee that no two wireless devices that ever connect to your WiFi will not have the same MAC address. This coupled with the fact that there is no way to track a MAC address to a particular person....
Really, why do we even bother.
--
It is obvious to everyone that a bill requiring even home wi-fi users to keep logs for 2 years would never get passed, or at the very least, would not be enforceable. The politicians aren't so stupid that they don't realize this. They make the bill so over-encompassing so that they can later "compromise" and make everyone happy. Oh, the compromised bill will still require the ISPs to log all of our information, and it may even require router makers to automatically keep logs that can later be read by law enforcement. But I am betting the compromised bill will no longer require private wi-fi users to keep their logs for 2 years. Since this will make the average home user happy (hey, they no longer have to worry about their own connection), the bill will easily pass. Try to look beyond the most obvious flaws in the bill, and see it for what it really is: a way for the government to spy on its citizens with the full cooperation of the ISPs.
What, the Amish use WiFi now ??
* goes check if his hotspot has reflectors
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
CALEA - Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act - already exists requiring the provider of the 'last link' to give data feed access to the feds upon a request. The way it reads the last link is responsible, not the ISP. This means almost every WIFI hot spot out there is already breaking the law. Every small open hotspot, even at your own house if it's open to the public, is required to use their funky format and allow access. Forget that it's not actually technically doable without very fancy equipment. Forget that even Meraki gear, partly owned by do no evil Google, can't handle it. It doesn't matter, it's the law.
Oh don't forget it's a 10,000 A DAY fine for non compliance and you are not allowed to pull the feed once they request it. You also can't talk about it.
My WAP doesn't have the ability to produce a log of use at all (and it was purchased new last summer) and there's no newer FW update to support logs....so....who will be buying me a new WAP? The GOP, I presume? Or the Government? Someone other than me, because I should not have to suffer financially because they're on a power trip.
Why should they put the burden on home users when they can't even friggin secure their WiFi access?!?!? The wireless routers should have WPA enabled by default forcing people to read the damn manual.
I can see manufacturer's marketing now "This router complies with the 'you lost your rights to privacy law' and keep out hackers too!
Unreal.
Instead of name-calling (regardless of how right you may be), it's more constructive to engage with these people reasonably.
Writing the guy hate mail may feel good, but appealing to his judgement would probably work a lot better.
His statement that anonymous Internet use that it "has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children" is essentially correct. However, it is also important for him to understand that his bill fails to make the Internet less anonymous, and would put a tremendous administrative burden on small businesses and private citizens.
Frankly, somebody should have already told him this by now. Understanding the nuts and bolts of new law is what congressional staffers are for.
Which leads me to suspect the motivations behind the bill. Who would gain from such a stupid law? Why the phone companies (both land and mobile), of course. The more barriers to entry they can establish for wi-fi hotspots, the more providers can control the data market. I suspect if we follow the money, it will turn out that they lobbied Sen. Cornyn pretty hard (and cherry-picked his office as one that would be sympathetic to their pitch.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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!
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And even if he can manage to somehow do it, what are you going to do, introduce these logs as evidence in a criminal court?
Introduce logs stored on a computer belonging to the kind of people who execute any malware you ask them to? As evidence, these logs have no integrity and are worthless.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Do you have an ISP? It won't matter once they get to them.
this could be the VERY thing to force ALL data to be encrypted.
ALL of it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Nice DoS target.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Ehh, you talkin about that 'damn piece of paper'? That hasn't mattered much for a while now, I'm sure somewhere behind this is a lot of big business -- track downloaders, sharer's, etc... What big business wants, big business gets.
Conventions are scary things these days if they are composed of elected representatives rather than State appointees. Do you believe that the representatives running in your area really understand the problem and really have your best interests in mind. The larger this nation gets, the larger the sphere of power afforded to every representative gets. It's not like in the early days where a Convention was composed of representatives from 13 fairly small states with moderate populations. Today a convention would look more like the House of Representatives, and would likely be nothing more than an analog of it.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Neither to condemn nor defend those who use the stuff, but said legislation, Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act, smacks to me of the same methods and means as the Marijuana Tax Act.
Further, the "act" from the same "key" legislators having thus far failed to equate the dangers and responsibilties of navigating the information "superhighway" with real roads, real cars, and real dangerous drivers;
The simplest solution (Achem's Razor) would be to take the internet away from kids until they're old enough to drive.
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
Yeah, the buggies the Amish use don't have headlights. The govt makes them put reflectors on their buggies, that the Amish hate.
WTF? This has nothing to do with it. Are you suggesting that the reflectors that those buggies are required to have can contain 2 years worth of logs? Furthermore, this is for the safety of motorists and the Amish (not to mention the horses.) Unless there is some kind of compensation for the storage/backup/restore of these logs, I don't see how this holds water. I should not be "required" to do anything with my network. BTW, as previously stated, what if I run static IPs? What then?
For example, hairbrushes can be shipped across State lines; so, regardless of whether they are shipped across State lines or not, Congress can give themselves authority for anything relating to hairbrushes, possibly including how they get used.
Not quite. I only know from personal example. When the FDA does site audits, one of the first things they will ask for are bills of ladening for outgoing product, because this proves their authority over the company by showing that they engage in interstate commerce. So determining that actual interstate commerce is occurring is still important.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I bet most of congress doesn't know what a router even is
"~identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user [i.e., DHCP].'~"
Use static IP's, turn off DHCP and don't log.
What, you going to rebel against the government? That's called suicide-by-cop. It's always interesting that folks point to guns as protection against tyranny. Guess what? If you're going to try to use a gun against the government, the government will use many more against you. If you truly want to change anything in this country, the political process is the best (very very far from perfect) way to do it. You are far more likely to succeed at changing the way the government works by political processes.
Your chances aren't particularly good, but they ARE non-zero. Your chances of starting a successful revolution against the United States government with privately owned firearms are zero. Folks fetishizing weapons like this is obnoxious. Stop glorifying violence in your own mind and get with the 21st century.
You hit on the phrase that's the extra-oomph scary part. I'm easily a midrange user ... but no expert. I have no idea how to do all this stuff.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Senators and Representatives. There you go, it doesn't get much simpler than that.
1. Follow the links
2. Cut and paste the above post
3. Slap your name on it
4. ??
5. Profit! We as a nation will profit from having one less retarded bill rammed through.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
How would you argue that the economic stimulus package is either immoral or unconstitutional? It regulates interstate commerce fairly clearly. The Congress is entitled to raise funds and distribute them. "I don't like it" does not equal "unconstitutional." As to the morality of government spending? Lots of folks opposed to the stimulus supported the Iraq war. If you want to get into the relative morality of different kinds of government spending (even deficit spending), I think you'll find you're probably not on the firmest ground. Or would you argue that highway construction is somehow morally objectionable and war isn't?
I remember reading a similar case about someone who wanted to grow barley for use in home brewing. None of the suppliers would sell to him because of the tiny quantity he needed, but the government wouldn't allow him to grow his own because he would affect interstate commerce because he wouldn't be buying it on the open market.
No, without the ability to speak anonymously, things that are "objectionable" or "taboo" will never be spoken as no one will want their name associated with it, even if its not illegal.
That's crazy talk. In America, people that say things that are objectionable and taboo wind up making millions of dollars. Anymore, people just don't give a damn what anyone says. My wife and I were talking about the Beatles had to make clever drug references in their songs and there was a huge controversy when they did it, and now, no one even cares.
This is my sig.
The cynical explanation is that most people everywhere are populist at heart, which leads to a mish-mash of policies depending on what's popular and who the bogeyman is today. The right- and left-wingers have both typically been better at painting vivid images of bogeymen (whether fat-cat bankers or hordes of immigrants or whatever), and foment a sense of Emergency that Something Has to Be Done. In those conditions, the people promoting principled ideologies and cautious approach are usually steamrollered over by hare-brained solutions to the Emergency.
There's a certain populist ring to the classical liberal ideology of a level playing field with some moderate safety net, anyone can succeed but nobody starves, etc., but it's all a positive feel-good sort of vibe. I guess you can win on that sort of sentiment (it was a lot of Obama's "hope" campaign), but it's trickier. The good bogeymen I can think of focus only on one aspect so are already owned by the right or left; e.g. the opposite of civil libertarianism is 1984-style authoritarianism, but the left is already playing that sort of thing up in opposition to e.g. Guantanamo Bay.
A class-based analysis also gives a sort of population reason for it, since it tends to associate classical liberalism, and the similar European market liberal parties, as the ideology of the merchant classes, i.e. the educated middle and upper-middle class.
The entrenched upper classes tend to be more interested in maintaining their current position and exploiting networks of existing power, so aren't very in favor of dynamic markets and low barriers to entry, market fairness, social safety nets, etc. The lower classes tend to be more interested in immediate improvements to their position, and uncovering misdeeds of the higher classes that are allegedly responsible for their poorer position. Sometimes they also vote for conservative parties for reasons of religiosity or tradition. Neither of those classes, though, lend themselves to classical- or market-liberal types of positions. And there aren't enough educated middle-class folks who really understand and believe in the tradition of Voltaire, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
this could be the VERY thing to force ALL data to be encrypted.
Would be nice. The internet as a whole, however, was not designed to do that.
More widespread paranoia is required for more widespread encryption.
I don't actually see how you can outlaw fractional-reserve banking in a free society, since it requires central power to prohibit it. Say everyone started using gold coins tomorrow. This is actually kind of inconvenient, especially for large sums, so people would start producing "accounts" in which you could store your coins, and you could transfer gold to/from people with tokens, physical or electronic. Since not everyone needs to redeem their gold at the same time, some of these transaction services might lend some of the money out again, not operating at full reserve. As long as you agree to that in the contract when you sign up for an account with them, that seems perfectly legitimate to me.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What, you going to rebel against the government? That's called suicide-by-cop. It's always interesting that folks point to guns as protection against tyranny. Guess what? If you're going to try to use a gun against the government, the government will use many more against you. If you truly want to change anything in this country, the political process is the best (very very far from perfect) way to do it. You are far more likely to succeed at changing the way the government works by political processes.
Your chances aren't particularly good, but they ARE non-zero. Your chances of starting a successful revolution against the United States government with privately owned firearms are zero. Folks fetishizing weapons like this is obnoxious. Stop glorifying violence in your own mind and get with the 21st century.
Dude, I was just joking - of course I'm just going to bitch on /. without actually doing anything :P
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"SINCE YOU DON'T HAVE THE LOGS YOU WERE REQUIRED TO KEEP TO PROVE YOU DIDN'T ACCESS THAT CHILD PORN... ON YOUR OPEN NETWORK... YOU ARE GUILTY"
"I ask the jury, why would he not have logs -- if he were innocent?"
Oh yeah, this is next great thing from the US Senate. You don't get a 22% approval rating by doing things right.
Read and be enlightened
/.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.
----"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level."----
As a Texan, I officially apologize, a thousand times over, for John Fucking Cornyn. This guy needs to go down.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
So... if someone jumps on your WiFi and commits an online crime involving a server/pc in another state, wouldn't that fall under 'interstate' since the crime was committed over state lines?
That said, I think the whole '2 year log' thing is a bad idea. Just not for the same reasons as you.
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.
Yup, found out that my Vonage router doesn't allow me to log at all; keeps referring me to Vonage for "enabling that feature". Wonder if that gives me any immunity.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
...is that all this time, money and energy is being spent on bolstering a terrible system that already horribly violates the rights of the public. We shouldn't even be having this discussion at all.
Fix copyright law so it does what it's supposed to and all of these problems will cease to exist, virtually overnight.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Guess what? If you're going to try to use a gun against the government, the government will use many more against you.
While that's generally true, if there were a truly popular uprising, the government and the military would be vastly outnumbered.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Well, if you get enough people with guns , say if a large part of the populace gets 'up in arms' literally...and they have a bunch of rifles from these guys make (I like the .50 cal 82A1 model myself), you'd have some serious firepower to go along with hope that if it was a large enough movement against something, that cops and soldiers (if they federalized and brought them in) aren't going to gun down that much of the populace, and might even join in.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"2. It will require expertise which most people simply don't have, forcing everybody to hire IT professionals to manage their home networks. (Ask your congerssperson if they know how to set up such a log without enlisting the help of an expert. Then ask them how a working-class family could ever afford to hire such help simply to use the Internet on their home laptops.)"
I remember a time when content ripping and P2P downloading required an "expert". Not anymore.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Wikipedia isn't enlightment, its censorship of the masses censored by the people that run it. It's useful sometimes, but to say that "chilling effect" matters is ridiculous.
I mean, seriously, what is it that you want to say, but you feel like you can't say in person? What, you don't like black people? There's web sites for that. You don't like white people? sites for that. Or women, or dogs, or you like to engage in some kind of gay stuff? There's sites out there just like that.
What are you afraid to say? You can say it now...
This is my sig.
We should only rebuild roads and bridges we've blown up in Iraq.
The only welfare should be guaranteed employment in the military or industries that create death machines.
If you disagree, we'll kill you, and then say your son or daughter or brother or sister or mother or father who come to kill us because we killed you did it because they hate our freedom.
It's been a long time.
Congress: We decree that all Routers and Network devices must be replaced by July 1, 2009 and all new hardware must contain 500GB ROM Write-Once storage for saving mandatory log files. If your logs fill up, you must buy a new device and archive the old. A nightly dump will be done of your logs to a server in Langley. Goodbye to your upload cap, Comcast users.
-SaNo
Congress: Oh, and new Network cards for everyone. Your new MAC address will be your social security number appended with a unique counter denoting how many network devices you've owned previously.
-SaNo
The lumber industry is in on it!
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
As a citizen I'm outraged and this is the Stupid Congressional Idea of the Month ...
As an employee of a network firewall company that includes log servers as part of our default installation package, thanks for the marketing efforts, Congress!
It's good to know that the idiocy of the GOP continues unabated.
It's sad to realize that the moronic Dems will probably also vote for this.
The only thing that will save us is that ISPs will fight this tooth and nail
Of course, the big ISPs will probably agree to do it since they can afford it and it will help them drive the small ISPs out of business.
What a great system of government we have... not.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
And more to the point - why should your surfing history and emails be kept for two years? Do you have to store your snail mail for two years? Man, America is getting increasingly totalitarian. What's next, body cavity searches when you go to the library?
What was once true, is no longer so
Except that I am not receiving any highway funds, so they cannot use it as extortion to make me retain logs. They might be able to force state legislatures to pass such laws, but highway funds give them no leverage over individuals.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
While ISP are required to keep logs already, on tuesday when introducing the debate on yet another clueless copyright bill, the Minister of Culture told her intentions of requiring public access wifi (schools, towns, ..) to only allow a whitelist of sites.
The opposition deputee ironized telling it could include the governement and the UMP (the majority party) sites...
What a shame, really!
I mean before deposit insurance, that was more or less the system we had. But people didn't all gravitate towards full-reserve banks, despite actually bearing 100% of the risk if a bank went bust. I blame people being short-sighted: they'll go for the fractional-reserve bank if it doesn't seem that likely to fail in the immediate future, and pays better interest. Then when the banks actually do fail, especially a lot of them at once, people demand something be done about it. Which is why we have deposit insurance now, and even the last European holdouts against deposit insurance are instituting it after this round.
I guess I don't have that much confidence things wouldn't work out the same way in another go-around. The fractional-reserve gold banks would become more popular than the full-reserve ones, creating the same money-multiplier issues you describe. Then when some of them went bust, people would demand something be done to restore their savings.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
after all, they did somehow manage to rule the growing pot and other things for personal consumption somehow could be construed as interstate commerce
Actually, they didn't "rule" anything on that subject. The DEA is simply completely ignoring the issue of lack of constitutional authority and conducting the raids anyway.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Is the response "All my logs are right here in this 200 pound case of paper punch cards... what do you mean, you don't have any equipment that will read them?" an acceptable answer when they request your logs? Or would paper tape be a better media on which to store logs?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
> What's next, body cavity searches when you go to the library?
They already have these at my local library.
Or wait, maybe that guy was only DRESSED like a policeman..!
And I suppose all traffic you generate originates in that same state? The Feds have trumped this argument over and over by invoking the commerce clause as saying it involves interstate commerce. They could certainly get away with invoking it here when dealing with the "world wide" web.
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!
I don't understand where logging the DHCP data connecting the IP address to the MAC address for a particular timeframe even gets you anything in a home environment. If the home user's wifi is assigning the IP address then its almost certainly an IP masquerading system. So I record that 00:21:91:21:12:19 got assigned 192.168.1.121 on my LAN. So what? Its not like that IP address, or even that MAC address ever gets shown to anyone. Unless I misunderstand, the router passes on the request as if it came from itself, and knows where to pass the conversation back to via which ports and IP address in the outside world the packets come back from. The other server isn't going to ever see 192.168.1.121 in their logs, so they're not going to know which machine to request info on. As far as they know, the connection originated from somewhere in my network, but that doesn't narrow down where at all.
LOL. It actually DOES take a law degree. Words in a legal sense quite often have a different 'meaning' than their use in the common vernacular.
What if I told you that Congress can regulate the amount of wheat grown by a farmer solely for personal use, on the grounds that his action affected interstate commerce because he would not be buying wheat on the open market? Even if it would take hundreds of farmers doing the same thing to affect the supply and demand equation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
"Hey Virgil - how come everybody is going to this 127.0.0.1 website? I don't see anything there. Got any ideas?"
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*
WRT54G v3.0 FTW!
Or maybe I'll just steal my neighbors' WiFi and let them deal with it.
MAC address spoofing FTW!
They could withhold any kind of funds they want to get states to do it their way.
Someone remind me why we have a 9th amendment again?
When a bank or similar asks to see your 1040 from last year, do you tell them that?
Exactly. What he should have done is leave out unconstitutional.
At "rather than submit to tyranny." it's reasonable. And presumably expresses exactly the same sentiment.
Because really, would it be okay just because it was constitutional?
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.
Do I have logs? If I do, where do I get them? I've never seen these logs your talking about. I don't even have a fireplace. Why would I keep them around?
This is nonsense. There's no friggin way the fed can expect me to keep computer logs for two years. Heck, I can't even keep a hard drive two years anymore, little loan maintain a data warehouse for some law enforcement agency. Who's going to pay for that?
This will be treated just like most un-funded mandates handed down from congress. Ignored.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
My router keeps it's logs in RAM and is deleted every time it reboots -- which is more often than I'd like because it's D-Link firmware and it's crap like most other routers out there. Are they going to buy me a shiny new router/WAP that keeps persistent log files in perpetuity? I think not. More bullshit legislation that isn't going to go anywhere because when it comes to technical things they're talking out of their ASSES. MEMO TO LEGISLATORS: Concentrate on getting the country back on it's feet financially and stop wasting time with things nobody cares about and that you're wasting money talking about, k?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.
I'll have you know that half is well on it's way to seventy-five percent, thank you!
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
Shortly before World War I, the German Kaiser was the guest of the Swiss government to observe military maneuvers. The Kaiser asked a Swiss militiaman: "You are 500,000 and you shoot well, but if we attack with 1,000,000 men what will you do?" The soldier replied: "We will shoot twice and go home."
Almost. It's time for them to stand up and state the limit on what they will accept.
Would you, all worked up about opposing the feds, back down quietly if they showed you how a single comma, not on your badly photocopied copy of the constitution, allowed whatever unjust behavior you were protesting?
Because I think it's unreasonable for them to demand this logging at all. (What penalties are there for non-compliance? How is this audited? Will a missing router be assumed to be destruction of evidence?)
Who knows what a fundie can read into a document?
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
There is a difference between 'can't find' and 'intentionally destroyed'
I generally delete my logs. If the police want to investigate crimes they're going to have to do their own legwork.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Interstate commerce.
Does you're network ever connect to a system outside your state border? well then, they can do this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OK, I may be a clueless bastard that believes fairy tales and does not comprehend the dangers and law of unintended stuffs and so on, but...
1) Storage costs for ISPs. GIVE ME A BREAK! Lets say a record is 100 bytes per event (and it won't be more than that since they are only asking about DHCP records), lets say an ISP has a million users and they all get new IPs twice a day (lets pretend no cable modem is ON 24/7 for months and same IP is not reassigned to the same MAC at reconnects). Such ISP would end up with horrid 73G file a year. It would likely compress to 10% of that size with zip but lets say we keep it uncompressed. Puhlease, ISP that can't handle THAT doesn't deserve to live.
2) Public AP. Same math- different budget or providers but I can guarantee that simple firmware update for the router and retention policy "download once a week, burn on a 30c CD and put it into a safe" or something like that can be easily implemented.
3) Home users... Plain stupidity, don't even want to go there but router developers should start taking better care about securing this stuff by default, like forcing first password change and defaulting to WPA2.
There were few other points floated: text files are editable, MACs are spoofable, etc. All valid, but nobody said that logs alone are supposed to carry burden of proof. Making part of evidence chain might be enough.
Finally, privacy concerns. First, bull about "ISP would have to store mount of PII" is just that, bull, unless bill says "and will not issue such IP before driver's license or alternate form of ID is provided". Just MACIP mapping. If whoever asks for these logs can find machine with that MAC- they have something. ISPs can also (and IMO should) include customer ID number or something. Now, there is (IMO) a very legit worry about censorship and about authorities using this to inquire "how went to this Arabic newspaper site" or "who googled 'how to make a nuke from household materials'". I think this is a HUGE concern and we might want to concentrate on that and how it will play with Patriot act and such. But rest is noise (again, IMO, please correct me)
How do they expect ordinary people to set up a log? I know that most people with wireless networks do not even know what "DHCP" means, never mind how to monitor it. Also, where are the logs supposed to be stored? Are ordinary users supposed to have storage servers in their basements? What about all of that "conserve energy" stuff? I wish the government would get a clue. I am reminded of the "System of tubes" speech...
Hostes futuri sint socii.
Yes, it does. http://www.commerce.gov/
Commerce is just business. Slashdot is a business and provides a service. DO you live outside the state the /. servers reside?
Also the FBI comes into play if they suspect any crime has been committed that may have crossed the state border.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, a nation of laws is the best defense. After that, firearms.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just keep a paper log when you use your own access point.
Problem Solved.
It's really quite simple: Any time you buy something, go plug an ethernet cable into the back of your router and do it from the wire. Now you haven't actually used your home Wifi access to enact in trade, and are therefore not responsible to log a damn thing.
Furthermore if my ISP is logging everything I do for two years regardless, I highly doubt what my home system logs is of any consequence unless they just need more ammo to conduct a search - which is an interesting possibility - getting a subpoena to nab your gear based on "access to logs". My guess is the existence of the logs is really not as useful as the reason to enter your home.
It's all a bunch of Orwellian bullshit anyway. I have no intention of logging anything. Maybe I can rent some colo space in some country that isn't a police state (if it exists) and run an encrypted proxy. Log that, bitches!
If I murder another human being in my home (whether I invited them in or they broke in and threatened my family) you can bet the law is gonna get involved somehow...
If you've killed someone after they broke in and threatened your family, you haven't committed murder. You've defended your home and your family. The police will likely show up (the police are not "the law"; the police merely enforce the law), document that a crime has been committed (take statements, etc.), see that the perpetrator is dead, and call the coroner. If you live in a place where murder charges would be filed against you for defending yourself, your family, and your property, then you need to move. NOW. Anything else that may be tying you to that place is not worth it.
I suppose it works better to stand in the cold with a sign on Constitution Ave while being looked down upon as if you were some kind of terrorist...
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
If I am required by law to keep my router logs for two years... well, no way my router can store that much data, so I need have it send my logs off to a syslog server or email them to me or something. I'm sure I can figre it out, but that is BILLABLE TIME. For someone less tech savvy, they might have to buy a new router or hire someone to set things up for them, costing them actual money.
IANAL, but I believe that when federal government passes a law that mandates something that costs money, the state can resist it if there's no associated funding... State vs local governments have something like that too. Sucks that we little folks don't get the same break.
Of course, I live in Massachusetts... whose idea of "Universal health care" is to fine the crap out of you if you can't prove you have insurance. I am used to being sh*t on by da gubbmint.
Ok, done being histrionic now. /annoying bill DO NOT WANT
The Digital Sorceress
2 things, 1) This has no bearing on what is being discussed because they are not talking about having states pass this and 2) Not all states play along
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
This law speaks of retention, not generation.
Ergo, the solution is to simply not generate a log.
Hound your ISP about it, too.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Ehh, you talkin about that 'damn piece of paper'?
[Citation needed]
[A]nd if they find nothing, all they say is oops, sorry, and you have no recourse.
Look up Section 1983 claims sometime. The usual recourse in a 4th Amendment case is to suppress evidence against you in trial taken by illegitimate means, but if there are no charges, you can independently sue the government for violation of your civil rights via 42 USC 1983, and plaintiffs do win in cases where the police acted unreasonably.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Man, it hurts my brain to agree with Clarence Thomas.
Even if you were being sarcastic, jail is never the best place you can be.
Yeah, you don't get sarcasm.
Why are these idiots still in office? What in the hell do we have to do get politicians in office that actually work for the American people instead of a bunch of errand boys for the MPAA/RIAA?
DEAR WASHINGTON, F**K YOU! GET BACK TO WORK YOU USELESS BUNCH OF BUFFOONS.
Why do you keep voting for Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and the rest of the gang in DC?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Dude, I'm already in a foul mood so don't tell me I agree with Clarence Thomas on something. I just don't need that kind of shit right now.
Okay. You agree with Michael Savage. Better?
At least you don't agree with that insufferable Captain Sullenberger. He's never in a fowl mood.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
But the 1st lecture is based on an incorrect premise. So I'm not sure if I should waste my time on the other lectures.
;).
The statement "Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." is incorrect. I don't care whether it was Thomas Jefferson who said it or not. I say he's wrong.
Governments do not get their just power from whether they have consent or not.
Governments that are just, _serve_ the people they govern (and serve them well I hope).
After all, it is possible (though hopefully unlikely) that an unjust government could have consent of the governed. Especially a devious and dishonest government.
People never consented to being born into a world and to be governed by the laws of physics or Man or "Daddy". Daddy got his just power to punish and restrict you not through your consent, but because he is _serving_ you.
You're going to end up with government and laws anyway, wherever you go (unless you're alone on some deserted island). Government and laws emerge once you have more than a few people living together. Whether people consent to them emerging or not is pretty much irrelevant.
What people should do is work towards getting governments and laws that better serve the people.
The US people are lucky they live in a democracy. If they really do not like any of the candidates, they can themselves be candidates. If nobody better than the candidates can or wishes to serve, then you've got the best candidates. As long as the election is not rigged, the resulting Government is a reflection of the people's will. Yes it's a distorted reflection, but keep working to improve it (and don't forget to try to working to improve the people as well - no point having a perfect reflection of an ugly image).
Lastly, on the Constitution only restricting the government (and not the people). If that's such a wonderful thing according to the lecture, then wouldn't you prefer strong governments, and not big strong corporations - since corporations aren't restricted by the constitution.
Seriously though, as I've said what you want is a government that serves the people. Whether it is big or small is irrelevant. Don't get distracted from the important stuff.
Yes, and with two hundred and twenty-two years since that was written, the damnable tyrants have gotten very good at finding highly creative interpretations of that. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that growing marijuana on one's own property for one's own consumption constitutes 'interstate commerce' on the grounds that if one grows it oneself rather than buying it from a dealer, it could potentially have a miniscule effect on the price in other states. I wouldn't count on the interstate commerce clause to provide any meaningful limits on federal power at all.
How much space does keeping DHCP assignment logs require, though?
My computer boots once a day, perhaps twice.
My wife's boots a similar amount.
My laptop, when actually being used (rare) probably connects a couple times in a day, perhaps more if wireless connections in my house are flakey.
My server boots ~2x a year due to bumping-the-UPS-switch accidents.
Non-nuclear family members occasionally bring laptops (~3x a year), and those are I think negligible.
In theory, I deny wireless access to everyone else.
All told, that sounds like my network sees less than 2000 successful connections per year, right? If logging one connection uses one kilobyte of space (and for a line in a text file, that sounds like an overestimate), I'd still only use ~1.8 MB per year. Less than two megabytes per year. Why should I be worried about storage costs?
Also ... if I change my router's firmware to OpenWRT, would I be able to gather such information? I imagine I would. It'd be an interesting data set to look at. (Well, a boring one, I hope.)
You know, I was trying to word my post in such a way that it avoided including taxes as something their not allowed to force you to pay, but it seems that I failed miserably.
Actually, until the sixteenth amendment, income taxes were unconstitutional, so taxes are actually an exception to the (still valid) generalization I made. However, IA(still)NAL.
Your reply illustrates exactly what I mean, and just reinforces my question... how did the Libertarian party become equated with "death by salmonella"?
By repeatedly advocating for the abolition of the FDA. (e.g. Here. Most commonly, it's done under the evidence-free belief that the FDA causes more harm than good protecting Americans from unsafe drugs, but there are a handful that also think food safety is just more nanny state tyranny.)
How did a party that says "People should be free to live their lives and take responsibility for their lives" become the "idiotic" party that screams "government control is bad bad bad"?
You tell me. Why is the libertarian solution to every difficult problem to "let the market sort it out?" The environment? Public health and safety? Unfair contracts and predatory lending? "Let the market sort it out!" And if the market managed to tread on someone while "sorting it out," then it's solely that person's fault for not making the wisest possible purchasing decision based on their total freedom to consider it in a vacuum with their perfect knowledge of the market. We are all >homo economicus!
"Act responsibly" is just a cop-out for blaming the victim when someone takes advantage of you. Drink contaminated milk? Well, shame on you for not doing your research and intelligently picking another brand! (Even if the contamination wasn't reported to anybody.) And if all products in an industry are contaminated with something except for a handful of "luxury" versions, then obviously that contamination is good because of how it lowers the price and makes the product more available. The market has spoken.
This is the sort of attitude that many vocal libertarians have that makes people roll their eyes at the party for being completely divorced from reality. The Libertarian Party is the party of no public education, no health and safety organizations, no social security, no public medicine, and no other help for the impoverished at all; no protections for workers, no restrictions on contracts, and no protection against racial or religious discrimination. Try to boil yourselves down to being "pro-freedom" and "pro-responsibility" and everyone will agree with those principles, but explain what you actually think they mean and people will run away in horror.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
Besides the questions of storage space and what good it will do to log MAC addresses that people pull out of their *sses.....
....doesn't Congress have anything better to do right now? Afghanistan? The economy? Israel vs Hamas?
Have gnu, will travel.
The Amish don't have to put reflectors on unless they want to use publicly maintained roads. My home network is my responsibility to maintain. The government has no say in what I do inside my own home on things like that.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You can still drink with parental supervision in many states if you're 18 and at home. Any younger and they claim it's "endangering a child" or some other such bullshit.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"Translated, the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on--but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses. (That method is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP.)" So if I just use static IP addresses I don't have to log anything?
my hotspot has DHCP, but just like every other DHCP server in the world, it doesn't collect any information related to the "identity of the user", it just gives out IP addresses. Do one thing, do it well.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
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.
Ah, but where does the burden of proof lie? Not only does your "tough shit" answer have to cover your ass with regards to the lack of logfiles, but you'll likely have to prove that your device(s) have NO way of archiving that much data. If they do(in any way), you'll likely have to produce it. And yes, most wifi boxes (even today) have the ability to save the logs, the problem is it is a VERY manual process for YOU to archive them off before you run out of memory.
What?! They are encrypted? Oh, that's too bad. What's that? You want the decryption key? Oh yeah, I lost that darn thing right after I generated the key pair. Guess you're going to have to brute force all 512 bits yourself.
>Last time I checked, the government can't suddenly force everybody to pay money for something.
Like digital TV converter boxes?
...to the Hired Help in D.C. who submitted this bill and to those who co-sponsored it.
Email daily, weekly, monthly logs. Several times, just to make sure they get them.
The Post Office has flat rate boxes. Send hard copies if you can afford them.
If they're so concerned with US keeping records, then they can keep those records for us.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Anonymity is not necessary for free speech.
The Supreme Court has strongly disagreed. Take McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n , 514 U.S. 334 (1995). In the majority opinion, Stevens noted that any attempt to force people to include their identity in their speech was an attempt to regulate the content of the speech.
He stated: ... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation--and their ideas from suppression--at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.
"Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.
Thomas concurred in the judgment, but he based his reasoning off of a rather fascinating historical analysis (worth a read). Scalia (with Rehnquist on board) was the only dissenter, finding that he could "imagine no reason why an anonymous leaflet is any more honorable, as a general matter, than an anonymous phone call or an anonymous letter. It facilitates wrong by eliminating accountability, which is ordinarily the very purpose of the anonymity." He said that there should be exceptions to protect against a fear of threats or reprisals, but no general rule protecting anonymity.
You should be accountable to your fellow man for what you say. Words are actionable things.
Why? Why should you be "accountable" for your beliefs, and what form of "accounting" do you consider acceptable?
Stevens noted, "The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. ... On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent."
Why are all of these reasons wrong to you?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The home user part is just a distraction; if it actually gets to the notice of lawmakers they'll write a weak-ass exemption (which the FBI will immediately figure a way around when they want to nail a home user). The whole concept of requiring people to keep records to make the police's job easier is a bad idea in the first place. It screams "police state".
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s.00436:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.01076:
DHCP can log the NIC's MAC address. While not identifying by itself, it could be used to link the user to other sites.
Unless of course they have learned how to spoof MAC addresses.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I would guess that you only have to comply with this if you run your own open source firmware on your router. For eveyone else they can just get the logs from the NSA database.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that tax filers were required to keep records for something like 10 years. Or maybe it's just a common practice recommendation for the odd-ball chance you get audited. I don't know for sure. However, if this is true, then there is precedent set for The Man telling you to keep records.
And just what kind of information should be logged? DNS queries? DHCP leases (per the headline)? All stream/socket connections? There are a million permutations of potentially useful data that can be logged by a router, and probably just as many ways to flood, obfuscate, or otherwise make those logs useless. Random MAC address at boot-up, anyone?
If this passes, maybe I should I should invest in CAT5 cable vendors, or companies who make ethernet-over-electrical-outlet devices. I'll be damned if I'm keeping any logs in my home for government tracking -- I'll wire the whole damned house if I need to.
I just can't see how this law would work in practice, especially for the home user. Very poorly, is my guess. Juts more useless think-of-the-children feel-good pandering legislation to add yet more mandatory time to sentences that (in many cases) are already way too harsh. Oh yeah, the perennially-strapped-for-cash FBI needs more cash for their little pedo porn database.
Method of processing duck feet
Dude, by all means be outraged, but at least know what you're talking about:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/06/scotus.medical.marijuana/index.html
I know a decision really sucks when I agree with a dissent written by Clarence Thomas: "If Congress can regulate this, they can regulate anything"
Be careful with that. What could happen is a government mandate that all routers report to a central server cluster and they'll just store those logs for you...
Except in the northern parts of Vermont and Maine, where the drinking age is "go to Quebec".
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I can see it now Granny gets fined for not keeping logs of her access point
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
Lord Bitman, Master of all:
The bill is NOT "to maintain access logs for 2 years to aid in law enforcement". The bill is meant to make it difficult and expensive for small operators. The entire intent is for the big ISP's to be able to make more profit.
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt.
Yes, like digital TV converter boxes. I'm not about to rush to defend the government in this case. I'm not saying they didn't have reason to do what they did (free up some radio frequencies) but they shouldn't have mandated that providers make the switch. Maybe give an incentive, but it is not their place to make such a mandate.
On the other hand, there is no "right" to watch TV for free over the air waves in the same way forever and ever. Technology improves and they're trying to keep an old service relevant. Sometimes the only way to do that is to deprecate the old service. I'm not saying it's right nor am I saying that it is the federal government's place to do that, but I also don't think that people should be complaining as much as they are about a change in a gratis service that will ultimately improve the service.
I say we let them pass this law under one condition:
Whoever wrote the damn bill show that they know how to configure their own router to save the logs for 2 years.
I'm running for city council in a large city next election. I have to start somewhere if I want to become a senator.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Dunno, a bunch of GIs managed to do quite a bit with a few rifles and handguns in Athens, Tenn. in 1946...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
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.
Like Ypsi wireless right down the street from me? I think these are excellent initiatives that allow wi-fi to be rolled out in poor areas on the cheap, Will they be required to keep these sorts of extensive records of their users?
http://www.wireless.ypsi.com/
When did we start taking East Germany in the Communist era as the model for our society?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I can tell my NICs to use whatever MAC I want. I can do the same with my router as well.
They do, but only up to 802.11b. 802.11g and 802.11n are still out, and forget about pre-shared passkeys as 13 digit hex pair keys are the minimum amount of sophistication allowed.
But I'm more worried about legislation that has a chance of passing. Legislation proposed by a minority party to pander to its crazy-base is not particularly interesting, or likely to pass.
"until the sixteenth amendment, income taxes were unconstitutional"
They were certainly constitutional. There was debate as to whether they were examples of a "capitation or other direct tax" which would, under Article 1, section 9, require that they be levied on states proportionally to population. The courts were ruling (not terribly consistently of clearly) that they were direct taxes for certain sources of income, but not others. My understanding (IANAL) of the distinction between direct and indirect taxes leads me to conclude the court was just wrong, as most supporters of the sixteenth amendment thought at the time.
The sixteenth amendment cleaned all that up, but taxes on income were always constitutional. It was only a matter of whether they had to be proportional to state populations (which would be stupid, IMO) or not.
I wasn't suggesting the government maintain the logs for us...eek..I don't even want to think of that. I was approaching the financial aspect. However, I could see the whole "well if you don't have the money we'll just keep an eye on that for ya!" That's for suckers...
Why is everyone going backwards? I am setting up an open wifi, but blocking inet access for everyone but me. That way every iPhone that walks by, and half my neighbors will be logged. Get out of jail free card for me!
Except in the northern parts of Vermont and Maine, where the drinking age is "go to Quebec".
Only with a passport. Can't get back in the US without one now. They'll log your returns to the US and probably question why.
FTFA "Other portions add criminal penalties to other child pornography-related offenses, increase penalties for sexual exploitation of minors, and give the FBI an extra $30 million for the "Innocent Images National Initiative." " So are they going to spend $30 million to pay some people to sit around and look at porn all day, ensuring there are no kiddies in it under the "Innocent Images National Initiative"? I think I know where I am applying for employment!
I'm also going to complain on Digg, thankyouverymuch!
To log IPs on my network, I'd have to set up an extra server to act as DHCP, and log from there. I wonder if the law will basically require a few gigs of flash memory in new routers to hold a log, or what?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Just wanted to say: Your sig is quite explicitly detailed. And a little shocking.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And of course to keep the information safe for their perusal the information has been encrypted. The password is the unabridged complete works of Shakespeare translated in Sumerian using a numeric system defined by the refraction of the light from Polaris through this lens in the year 4027 April 1st placed on the ocean floor at the north pole atop the shroud of Turin.
Good hunting gentlemen!
IOU one (1) signature
The internet is "inter-state", sure, But my home network is a separate network. That's what a router does: it joins two networks together. Now, my home network isn't interstate. It doesn't even leave my apartment (WPA hacking aside...)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10168642-38.html RIAA, MPAA, Time Warner, et al.
...The trouble is that "small government" is usually taken to mean "smaller government social services for the lower and middle classes"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
Please see Wickard v. Filburn. The Supreme Court doesn't necessarily agree with you in RE: Reach of Federal Jurisdiction.
Remember that post about geeks thinking they are lawyers?
What's the relevance? It's not even a law yet. Please wait until then to prove how smart you think you are.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I'm not worried that they'll require me to do it. I just want to know if they'll give me money to do it. /sarcasm
No. It isn't about the ISP keeping logs. It is about you not being able to claim that someone else committed a crime with your internet connection through your wireless router. If you have to keep logs, if you don't have logs that clear yourself then you are guilty.
This is an attack on the presumption of innocence. I don't believe they have any serious thoughts about regular users keeping 2 years of logs.
Study Con Law much? That line of reasoning went out the window several decades ago.
First of all, I assume you occasionally access sites that are outside the boundaries of your own state. Your packets are therefore crossing state lines, and you're paying your ISP to route them that way, advertising is coming at you from another state, there's very little "wiggle room" here to say that this is not "Interstate Commerce" and thus proper subject matter for Federal legislation.
Are you with me so far?
Now, even if hypothetically you never access an out-of-state site, it still doesn't really matter. Your access of in-state sites still "affects" Interstate Commerce. Those in-state sites offer services which could be provided out-of-state, thus by accessing them, you are depriving the out-of-state sites of possible revenue. You're "affecting" Interstate Commerce. See Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942) (in that case it was about wheat which was consumed entirely within a state, the ruling was that the consumption still "affected" Interstate Commerce). Wikipedia has an entry for that particular decision, if you don't want to wade through the legalese of the decision itself
P.S. IANAL, Con Law is just one of my hobbies
I don't know about there, but in my state (Texas), the statewide Libertarian candidates actually want to abolish Texas's public school system, not just get the federal government out of it. They fundamentally oppose the levying of taxes to provide free universal public education, and believe schooling should be provided solely by private institutions, whether for-profit or charity. But public schooling funded by taxes is hardly something that started in 1980; the common school has been a feature of the U.S. essentially since its inception.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The general philosophical problem here is to what extent packets sent and received on the internet constitute public speech vs. the extent to which they are extensions of the private thoughts of the user. We already know that search engine queries reveal an enormous amount about what a user is thinking. We (at least many Slashdotters) also know how the internet can at times feel like an extension of our brains. But if all of our internet accesses were put in the public domain (and associated with our real-life identity), we would very soon begin to treat internet access more like public speech.
The question is whether people should be able to use the internet as a brain extension. My feeling is that this has enough value that it ought to be not only allowed, but encouraged. I think people should at least be able operate with one or more identities which are explicitly designated as anonymous. It would then be up to server administrators to determine what access would be allowed to an anonymous identity. This is similar to the current state of things, except that I would add explicit legal protection for anonymous identities as an extension of the right to privacy. I think I would draw the line at anonymous monetary transactions, as these have too much potential for abuse. That is not to say that all monetary transactions should be in the public domain, but that I have no objections to record-keeping requirements for monetary transactions, and making them subject to a reasonable discovery process.
As a practical matter, guaranteed privacy of internet accesses appears to at least involve multiple hops through a large number of random nodes, or is impossible, depending on your assumptions. Encryption, when the server supports it, helps with hiding the nature of accesses as they cross the internet, but guarantees nothing about how much information may be logged on the server side. Because of the practical difficulty of achieving privacy on the internet, I do think it needs legal protection. That wouldn't make privacy any easier to assure technically, but would provide some legal recourse if someone's privacy is violated.
For the people who think there should be no anonymity on the internet, I'd ask you to consider how you'd feel about technology that can read your thoughts directly from your brain. Because that's not far off. I do think that privacy will be virtually eliminated someday, and that sentient beings can exist happily without it, but we aren't ready for that yet. And anyway that's not the same thing as the government having access to your thoughts while you don't have access to theirs.
People must be willing to stand-up for their freedom, not just buckle under, and if that means spending a little time in jail because you refuse to comply with an unconstitutional law, so be it.
It appears the US government's solution to prisoners of conscience was the institution of for-profit prisons...
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.
I'm bitching about people interpreting the constitution to serve their own needs, I don't care if it's a religious fundie trying to prove atheists can't hold office or a fundie anti-gun nut. They're still stuck to their fundamental principles above logic or the actual meaning of the constitution.
Thanks though, asshole. You certainly make this whole "we the people" thing nicer with your friendly nature and helpful assumptions. With this kind of teamwork maybe we could actually get somewhere.
Am I going rah, rah, rah, and cheering this bill on?
Irony anybody ?
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
My Nokia 800 tablet was stolen. I had it configured so that every time it detects a network it downloads my mail
from a server I control. The thieves did not notice, so I accumulated a lot of logs that I passed to the police.
Did they catch the thieves? No way! They had the logs for 3 months now, but their "computer expert" is still trying to figure out what to do with the IP addresses. It is not that difficult, though, as one address shows up a lot and is clearly a cable connection, so that must be the thieves home. So logs are totally useless to the police, at least in small towns.
To log a DHCP server address assignment, there are really only 3 pieces of info you can possibly log: timestamp, IP address, MAC address, lease duration.
If you use as few bits as possible (which you should), 32-bits for the assigned IP address, 32-bits for the timestamp, 48-bits for a MAC address, 16-bits for the lease duration. Perhaps 2-bits for a logging 'record version' and 6-bits for a 'record size in bytes' field
That's 136 bits, even if you pad that to 256 bits (which allows extra space for IPv6 addresses and a checksum), it's still pretty small.
You can record 2 billion log entries, and it's still only 4.9 gigabytes of log data.
Nowadays, you can just about fit that on a flash drive.
The average home user won't over the entire lifetime of their AP record even 2 million entries, let-alone 2 billion.
The space requirements for the average home user should be less than 4mb for a couple years worth of data.
Since it's not illegal to go drinking in Canada, what does it matter?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
holy fucking shit, when did that happen? Turn your back for one second....
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'll comply with their silly non-enforceable non-positive law when they repeal the illegal unconstitutional income tax as promised.
Till then Ted Kennedy or whatever other moron thought this up can slob on my knob.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
And just how do you know that someone with a Pringles can antenna isn't sitting across the state border downloading child porn from your Wifi hotspot?
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
You can generate it with a fake logger...
I would deliver 5 TB of logs in floppy disks :P
I guess it's as good a cause as any to dust off the box of AOL floppies I collected in the 90s.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Essentially, the requirement to preserve is a seizure of your private archives. As it is not based on probable cause determined by a magistrate, it is an illegal seizure.
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?
Well, it's a dinner party! The important stuff went cold on the bain-marie of the media while the maitre d' of government was busy cramming your plate with shit du jour. Attendance is compulsory, but you'll want to chow down anyway 'coz it's all for the children! Happy eating. Oh - and did someone say a French restaurant would somehow be better ...?
Note that the UK government, usually the leader in Orwellian initiatives, has actually tried to plan for extensive phone call logging (of content!) at the provider level. Google.
We have a simliar law in Thailand. I implemented our logging using wireshark. I may have to log the stuff for the cops but I don't have to make it easy for them to read it.
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Always consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for legal advice and legal services.
I'm not trying to be rude, but you are terribly mistaken in your interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
SCOTUS has pretty much settled on a VERY liberal interpretation of the "interstate commerce" language. They can pretty much regulate any damn thing they want to. Only recently has the court been applying the 10th amendment as a restraint on Congress' commerce powers.
Why the hell do you think that your WiFi device has to comply with FCC regulations? Gee... what does that F stand for?
I'm not saying I agree with the current reality. Merely that the law is likely not what you think it is.
Slashdot readers are NOT lawyers.
For Internet firms, the quandary is this: The mere provision of e-mail, electronic storage, cloud-computing services, and social-networking sites could be viewed as an act that "facilitates access to" illegal content, especially if the provider knows that some users in the past have been less than law-abiding. (And the threat of arrest, indictment, and imprisonment makes them unwilling to hope prosecutors interpret the language conservatively.)
The internet is clearly "interstate". People pay money for it. Accordingly, it falls within the purview of interstate commerce as it has come to be defined. Contrariwise, the most outrageous extension of the commerce clause that was upheld by the Supreme Court was back during the depression and one of the great legacies left by the FDR administration. Crop controls were placed upon farmers through a federal bill limiting the amount of grain that a farmer could grow. A farmer in Illinois, if I recall correctly, grew more than he was permitted, but he didn't sell it or anything. He just grew the grain for his own use on his own farm. The Supreme Court at the time opined that because the farmer grew more than he was permitted, he would buy less from the general market decreasing the interstate demand for grain. Accordingly, his actions on his own private land for his own private needs and uses affected interstate commerce and the law was enforceable. The point is: the use of the internet is clearly within the purview of the interstate commerce clause and is subject to regulation by the federal government. While I don't like this idea in the least, technical limitations aside, I would prefer it if the individual users maintained the logs instead of the ISPs. That way, the Feds have to get a warrant to get your logs instead of just asking your ISP nicely.
That'd be good, until the Feds decide that they don't need a warrant to come crashing into ones home and grabbing ones logs, as they've apparently decided that they don't need a warrant to grab the logs from the ISP's.
As to the farmer growing extra crop, don't the Fed's pay farmers for not growing the extra crop ? I believe so.
So if they pass this law, if they are going to require everyone with a router to keep logs for them, then they can pay everyone with a router to keep said logs for them... just like they pay the farmers to have idle land.
IMHO.
So, I'll figure the cost for configuring MY router to keep logs, and then my having to save said logs on a regular basis, backing up those logs, and of course the use of My space on My hard drives to save and backup these logs, should come to, oh, $50,000.00 a year.
My time isn't cheap. And if they want to turn every average user with a router into a forced partial sysadmin now, they should have to pony up the cash.
In my opinion.
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.
I thought the Fourth Amendment covered all citizens.
Actually, this sounded more like a Fifth Amendment issue to me when I first read it since you could be forced to provide your logs as "testimony" against yourself.
Apparently you haven't heard ... that there is a war in Iraq.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
that people will set up their routers to email the logs to them to be saved in a .zip.
shameful politicans.
If gov. big brother wants to they should require the logs emailed to a local police station for scrutiny.
Perhaps I was unclear. The income taxes that would have made any logical sense whatsoever and were at the time being implemented were unconstitutional due to them not being proportional to population.
I'm not quite sure what the founders were thinking when they wrote Article 1 section 9, but my best guess is that their meaning of direct tax was not the same as the interpretation of it by the courts in the 1910's. They may have meant a direct tax on the states, as IIRC it never says anything about being able to tax the people (even there we have to assume that taxing goods!=taxing people). In the end it's all a bunch of confusion and I have to agree with you that they needed to clear it up with the sixteenth amendment.
How is he supposed to manage this nonsense? Besides, divulging this information is likely to have fifth amendment implications.
The courts have held, many times, that the right to speak means nothing if other people do not have a right to listen. And, that the right to publish means nothing if other people do not have a right to read. Censorship of reading, by which a person is forbidden to read a certain type of material, is not different from censorship of publishing.
Have you ever stopped to take a long hard look at the people who run this country? You know, the congressmen, senators, etc? Sadly, these are the people among us that create policy every single day affecting the very mechanisms of society they simply do not understand.
The problem is most of the criminals on the Internet who aim to do harm to our country are not the same idiotic dirty old men that show up on NBC's "To catch a predator" because they were horny for a 12 year old. Proxy servers and onion routing are technologies that have existed for sometime now and are becoming more and more common and easier to use everyday, even for 60 year old perverts.
When are these empty suits in our government gonna wake up and realize that this cat and mouse game is only gonna cost our society more money and wasted effort leading to just a few more arrests than they had before? If you're worried for your child's safety on the Internet, then keep him off the damn computer! Hows that for a novel idea! I liken this whole thing to the driving with a cell phone ban. The cops can't enforce it and people keep driving with their cell phones pressed into their faces more than ever. So what's the point????
I'm all for law enforcement, just not law enforcement that amounts to wasted effort and my hard earned tax dollars thrown out the window by a clueless empty suit with a bad haircut and a southern accent. If you don't believe me, just ask Al Gore (the inventor of the Internet) what he thinks!!
speaking of setting up a separate server, you know in most consumer broadband contracts that you are "not allowed to run any server" on the network. Most people do anyway, I mean honestly I shouldn't be running a listen game server on my Verizon connection as that is considered a breach of contract... yeah... really...
Get our government out of our homes please
Where's that cap to the Decanter of Endless water???