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House Panel Approves Bill Forcing ISPs To Log Users

Posted by Soulskill on from the uncle-sam-wants-to-know-you-better dept.

skids writes "Under the guise of fighting child pornography, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require internet service providers to collect and retain records about Internet users' activity. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses. Per dissenting Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): 'The bill is mislabeled... This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.'"

5 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. I'm a bit confused about this bill ..... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Informative

    I read an article about this earlier today (I think it was on BoingBoing?) and despite trying to follow several govt. web site links to read the actual bill's contents, I wasn't able to view the whole thing anyplace?

    If I visit the link the EFF suggests, for example, and click the link claiming to offer the "text of legislation" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:), I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it? Under "Section 4" though, it appears this was put in:

    `(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'.

    That makes it sound like they're simply wanting to collect the IP addresses issued via DHCP of all the customers, not anything else?

    1. Re:I'm a bit confused about this bill ..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The entire text of the bill is on the gpo.gov site:

          http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1981ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr1981ih.pdf

    2. Re:I'm a bit confused about this bill ..... by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

      I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it?

      That's how bills work. There's a huge blob of text (the United States Code), the bill is basically a patch to that USC, so you have to get out the entire USC and apply the bill to it in order for it to make complete sense.

      The first change made is adding "Whoever knowingly conducts, or attempts or conspires to conduct, a financial transaction (as defined in section 1956(c)) in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowing that such transaction will facilitate access to, or the possession of, child pornography (as defined in section 2256) shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both." (It is interesting to note that growing your own pot in your own backyard for your own use is "affecting interstate commerce" so this will almost certainly be used against everyone touching kiddy porn whether there was any kind of trade or financial transaction at all)

      The second change is to change the money laundering laws to add kiddy porn and facilitating access to kiddy porn to the list of "specified unlawful activities" covered by money laundering.

      Third, the "Required disclosure of customer communications or records" is updated to require that ISPs track which user is assigned which IP address when, for 18 months. And that it is the "sense" of Congress that the records "should" be stored securely.

      Fourth, "No cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider of wire or electronic communication service, its officers, employees, agents, or other specified persons for providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with the terms of a court order, warrant, subpoena, statutory authorization, or certification under this chapter." is changed to "No cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider of wire or electronic communication service, its officers, employees, agents, or other specified persons for retaining records or providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with the terms of a court order, warrant, subpoena, statutory authorization, or certification under this chapter." This goes from "you can't sue your ISP because the government forced them to tattle on you" to "you can't sue your ISP because they stored information on you, or because the government forced them to tattle on you".

      Fifth, storing information on you is further disallowed as a cause for civil action.

      Sixth, federal marshals are given the power to issue administrative subpoenas regarding "unregistered" sex offenders. The subsection referred to describes various sex offenses that subpoenas may be issued for, but does not define what makes someone an "unregistered sex offender".

      Seventh, additional laws against harassing child witnesses. As part of this, it includes this fascinating nugget:

      (2) For purposes of subparagraphs (B)(ii) and (D)(ii) of paragraph (1), a court shall presume, subject to rebuttal by the person, that the distribution or publication using the Internet of a photograph of, or restricted personal information regarding, a specific person serves no legitimate purpose, unless that use is authorized by that specific person, is for news reporting purposes, is designed to locate that specific person (who has been reported to law enforcement as a missing person), or is part of a government-authorized effort to locate a fugitive or person of interest in a criminal, antiterrorism, or national security investigation

      Eighth, additional levels of sentencing are mandated.

      Ninth, additional punishment is added if the kiddy porn showed someone under 12. (sorry, getting bored of chasing down all the original rules)

      Tenth, the sect

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  2. Not just Republicans by yog · · Score: 3, Informative

    The DOJ wants to collect data, too. And some Republicans like Rep. Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin oppose data retention.

    Basically, people need to get off their duffs and agitate to prevent these bills from becoming law. This is so typical of law enforcement, going after the lowest hanging fruit which is the privacy of innocent civilians rather than doing the difficult detective work of hunting down that tiny fraction of criminals.

    As for child porn, I don't see how we can possibly prevent its use. It's out there, the internet is huge and uncontrollable, and it's going to continue to be passed around. All we can really do is try to limit its spread and impact on society. There have always been sick individuals and there has always been sexual abuse of minors. We should be focusing on better education and moral training from an early age.

    Obviously, just blanket sweeping the usage statistics of every user out there is a huge step toward a totalitarian control over information and that's not acceptable in a free society. China tries to do it in a bumbling, paranoid manner and mainly they're shooting themselves in the foot. We should be better than that.

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
  3. Re:Damn Tea Party! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    from across the pond is mostly looks like the tea party is so wound up in their hate for Obama that they would gladly burn down the entire USA and p*** on the ashes
    if they could make Obama look bad by doing it