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Oz Govt Pushes Ahead With ISP Customer Data Retention

Posted by Unknown on from the security-through-rampant-privacy-violation dept.

angry tapir writes "The Australian federal government is pushing ahead with reforms that could see consumers' information kept on file for up to two years by ISPs. This could include the data retention of personal Internet browsing information which intelligence agencies could access in the event of criminal activities by individuals or organizations."

8 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Conclusion of the report... by hey_popey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We see an increase in SSL connections to Sweden.

    1. Re:Conclusion of the report... by Sorthum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or tor. Or VPN endpoints overseas. Or ssh tunnels.

      I don't really see how legislation can reasonably expect to keep up with technological innovation.

    2. Re:Conclusion of the report... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nah, what we really need is a program that just sits there all day doing random DNS lookups and loading the web pages...let 'em try and store exabytes of data and try to find anything useful in it.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:Conclusion of the report... by djsmiley · · Score: 5, Funny

      Average facebook user tbh.

      --
      - http://www.milkme.co.uk
    4. Re:Conclusion of the report... by k(wi)r(kipedia) · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But this can be done. Ban all encrypted traffic not specifically authorized by the authorities. This way, the first SSH/VPN connection to somewhere, and the cops come knocking at your door. Those using Wifi will be limited to plain HTTP, enough for the feeble (Facebook people) to post and check their accounts.

      The big "trusted" media companies can be granted exceptions for their DRM in exchange for having server-side monitoring software (backdoors) installed in their systems.

      The passive Pirate Bay-style of trying to run circles around government Internet policies will fail in the long run, unless accompanied by some sort of active political resistance, be it Net-only site "black outs" or flesh-and-banner street protests.

  2. How could they even begin to do this? by Sorthum · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't see where it stipulates what would need to be retained. Is it merely header information? A list of URLs (SSL will break this)? A copy of the data itself?

    No matter which direction this goes, it seems to me that it would be very, very easy to overwhelm them with data. Fire off a perl script that connects to $giant_list_of_random_URLs 500 times a minute. Turn it down when you need to do work, crank it up when you go to bed... and you're suddenly costing them an enormous amount of storage while turning their signal to noise ratio into crap.

  3. Re:Wow! Teetering on the edge! by coastwalker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't kid yourself, the security forces have been monitoring for years, Carnivore started in 1997. I don't think many people have qualms about the spooks looking for nutters with explosives from their IP traffic.

    Its just time to start opening the data up to regular law enforcement agencies so that they can openly take to court all you criminal copyright thieves and put you in jail. Because we all know by now that 'home taping kills music' and that copyright infringement is 'Terrorism' or 'Pedophilia', just ask Hollywood or the RIAA.

    You might feel that this is a little excessive, especially as the next tier of petty bureaucrats to be given access to your traffic will be Local Government and Social Service droids. Don't kid yourself that the Sheeple are going to object to this, after all it will be done to catch 'Terrorists' and 'Pedophiles', and anyway Facebook will be telling them what to think by then anyway.

    Isn't it weird how we fought a cold war for half a century against totalitarian communism and now we are becoming totalitarian democracy's.

    Its a bit disappointing.

    --
    Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
  4. It doesn't cost the government much by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, costing the ISP a packet for storage (which they will pass on to you) while the government is free to go on and makes more pointless laws to tinker with the net.