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Police Want Fast Track To Get At Your Private Data
An anonymous reader writes "According to this story on CNET, police again are pushing for new laws requiring ISPs and webmail providers to store users' private data for five years and also want a new electronic way of speeding up subpoenas and search warrants via police-only encrypted portals at all ISPs and webmail providers."
As well as criminality. Can we see a pattern here? These measures don't seem to help at all. They are ethically wrong and have been empirically proven useless.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
They think just because they can it's a good idea? Doesn't sabotage the principles of free and open societies at all?! Imagine if they did in real life half the things they already do online. I'd have already picked up a gun just because others already would have too.
Shh.
I have no problem with police getting this kind of private information, as long as it is fully disclosed that they have requested it, and they can only request it with probable cause. I doubt either of these conditions will be satisfied.
Aside from internal 1984 style abuse of this proposed system, the fundamental concept (and all existing implementations of it) introduces a new level of security risk and it is this exact interface that is said to be the weakness that was exploited in the Google China attack. From a computer security perspective, this is wrong on many different levels.
My work here is dung.
As long as the guy with the files is using Internet Explorer, they can have all the access they want.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The police have to pay for the storage. Since the amount of online data is constantly increasing, I figure having to lay out funds for that many terrabytes of storage should bankrupt them, and then they can focus on doing the job they *should* be doing (picking up garbage), instead of the one they *want* to be doing (invading privacy without probable cause).
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Hey, they can look at my data. It will bore them to death.
Seriously, the internet has enabled a range of new criminal activity. This move to preserve data and mine it is to be expected. As time goes on, it will get worse.
I'm reminded of how people used to live in small towns and everybody knew everybody else's business. The only difference is that, now, police agencies and other spying organizations can conceal their activities. I vote that ISP's must reveal who asked for what.
Best regards.
Just where is it taking us?
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Where is Kevin Mitnick when you need him?
Yo dawg we heard you like wire taps so we put a wire tap in your wire tap so we can hear while you hear.
A million internets to the first person to crack this system.
It's no great surprise the cops want this. But can you imagine the response of banks (and customers) if the police were to demand a special door in every bank so they could waltz in and search the safety deposit boxes at their convenience? Of homeowners if the cops were to demand a master key to every house to make search warrants easier to execute?
Unfortunately, when it comes to electronic records, lawmakers seem to think expanding the AT&T NSA rooms to access portals for every cop in the country is a great idea.
These "police portals" are logistical nightmares. Keep in mind that there are hundreds of police forces in the US then take into account security services and other interested parties are we might be talking about the population of a city who need completely secure access to a great deal of private information.
Then we need to talk about audit trail and legality of these searches. Who monitors the police/security services to make sure they're acting within the law? How do we know someone isn't spying on their ex' or getting stock tips?
I think the best system for all involved is a dedicated department at large ISPs/hosts who responds to requests, reads the warrant and grants/denies it. If they grant it then they're given a portal for JUST that request which disables when the warrant expires.
need to put to death.
There are going to be a lot of jackasses that comment with "so what you should have nothing to hide" or "that's what you get when you don't run your own email server" etc.
My question is, how many people would it acceptable if the USPO opened all your mail and made photocopies of it to store for their own use? What about UPS, or FedEx?
The solution everyone is too afraid to talk about is simple: kill the tyrants.
That will send a message to the other tyrants that we are no longer in the position to have our privacy, our freedom, and our liberty trampled upon.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Police-only encrypted portals?
Hmmmm... sounds like a challenge.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Anything that gives too much centralized and easy access to thousands of users' data is a terrible thing to even consider, be it for Police or whatever.
Law enforcement agencies are not filled with angles who will just stick to a line if they have access like this.
And criminals want to be given everything they want without having to work for it first.
They both need to grow the fuck up, and leave the rest of us alone.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
The bad guys are way better at getting this sort of data out of the ISPs
than the ISPs are at protecting it. The scammers are going to love
this new data, nicely collecting valid IP addresses, email addresses,
and more in convenient form to steal.
They want provisions to pay for all the extra storage and have provided a mechanism to verify a judge's sign-off and create a public record of the judicial process, right?
What are all those crickets doing in here?
I agree that until they have a very specific reason to be looking at my data, they have no business with my data. But I also acknowledge that, starting soon after 9/11, they started looking at my data despite laws that were supposed to prevent that.
And I also acknowledge that they will construe my information in ways that will put me at a disadvantage because I supported such-and-so politician, or because I looked into the side-effects of medication X. This manner of data-mining is already happening. Outlawing it is fruitless, but we can make laws that disclose who has looked at my data.
Until we have a sort of reciprocity wrt searching data, until we know who has been doing it, we will be at a disadvantage. The searching is already happening. But who is watching the watch-birds? That's what I want to know.
Best regards.
Why not just put people to work instead of simply locking them in a box? Let them all do something useful, and I don't mean breaking rocks into smaller rocks. If they're later found to be innocent, pay them for their time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you've actually committed a crime, I don't care about your privacy. I only care about the privacy of people who haven't committed crimes.
Define "crime".
You want the keys to the kingdom? Prove you can be trusted
1.) All police officers, all employees of all police forces that may have any kind access to confidential data and any contractors or consultants
must submit to annual interviews including polygraphs regarding their activities, private and professional, past and present.
The Canadian Mounties have a process like this for applicants but I don't think it's done once you become a constable.
2.) No question is off-limits; all questions must be answered.
3.) Failure to submit or answer a question will result in dismissal.
4.) All interviews are to be observed by a panel of witnesses of which several are private citizens
5.) All (unedited) interviews will be available to the public upon request.
If those conditions are met, then I'll gladly comply with your requests for private data.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I see 3 major issues:
* the desire for electronic-speed/non-paper efficiency from the police point of view
* the desire not to have records be routinely destroyed between the receipt of a police request and the time the record is scheduled for destruction, i.e. "almost immediate" data-freezing
* (not stated, but probably desired) the desire to have historical information available for years.
Traditional phone companies already keep records of what phone called what phone for 2 years, which IMHO is about 22 months too long. I'm sure the police would love similar transaction records of who emailed whom and who chatted with whom going back that far, and they would salivate over having the actual content of the communications for that long.
As a taxpayer, I'm all for increased efficiency as long as it doesn't increase the "efficiency" of illegal or barely-legal-but-inappropriate records requests. It also makes sense that data-retention requests should be honored as soon as practical, not "oops, we just now got around to processing your request from yesterday, the data you want was purged last night, sorry."
However, transaction records and other records should not be kept any longer than necessary for billing and other internal processes. For most services which aren't billed a la carte or per-bit or per-transaction, we are talking days, max, for individual records. For billed services, they need to be kept until the billing=dispute deadline has passed or until all billing disputes are finalized, or the normal "few days," whichever is later.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
for snail mail as well. You never know when you'll need that year old coupon.
The only real private data you have is the one you keep in your head or write on a piece of paper as long as nobody has access to the said piece of paper.
Don't get me wrong here, I still encourage privacy online defenders to continue their efforts but the above statement will always remain a fact when you think about it carefully. Electronic data goes with inherent risks for privacy in my humble opinion ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.