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House Panel Approves Bill Forcing ISPs To Log Users
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.'"
'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.'
Conyers hit the nail on the head.
And just wait till the subpoena’s start flying from divorce lawyers
No? I thought so...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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?
This bill will sail through with bipartisan support. Point me to the privacy-invading bill that was unilaterally forced through. The worst and biggest ones were bipartisan, namely the DMCA, which no one would even sign their name to, and the PATRIOT Act, which very few voted against.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
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.
this is akin to place a gps on every single person in the States and keep track of where they are going, when, how, etc. I am amazed how civil liberties are constantly being eroded by the "anti big government" party.
...seems to consist of people who truly believe that whatever you can get away with is kosher. F*** I can't stand them. I can't fathom how a middle class or lower person could even dream of voting for them - all that bullsh** about family values - they couldn't care less, they'll say whatever you want to hear. There are some dems like that as well, Nancy Pelosi (for example) - that b**** is the devil.
Step one to a better USA - abolish the party system entirely. Your only affiliation should be to individual constituents.
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Where the hell is the tea party? They talk about keeping the government out of our lives, but when it really matters they aren't anywhere to be found.
They can hold the entire country hostage with this ridiculous debt limit kabuki (it's ridiculous because congress already authorised the spending when they passed the bills spending the money earlier this year), they are trying to have their cake and eat it too) but they can't stop one minor bill that directly contradicts their stated ideology? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Considering a Democrat president ordered the assassination of a US citizen I'd say the Democrats are just as evil as you think the Republicans are.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Yep, this is what the small-government people want. More regulation and requirements on business so it can continue to innovate. This is government getting out of the way.
I hate the way this group lies blatantly. The rampant hypocrisy and lying is endemic to this movement. I hope you small government fiscal conservative types take note here. Or maybe you should stop telling yourselves that's what you stand for.
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