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Cops To Congress: We Need Logs of Americans' Text Messages
Dainsanefh tips a CNET report about a number of law enforcement groups who have put forth a proposal to the U.S. Senate to require wireless providers to keep logs of subscriber text messages for a minimum of two years.
"As the popularity of text messages has exploded in recent years, so has their use in criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. They have been introduced as evidence in armed robbery, cocaine distribution, and wire fraud prosecutions. In one 2009 case in Michigan, wireless provider SkyTel turned over the contents of 626,638 SMS messages, a figure described by a federal judge as 'staggering.' Chuck DeWitt, a spokesman for the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, which represents the 63 largest U.S. police forces including New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago, said 'all such records should be retained for two years.' Some providers, like Verizon, retain the contents of SMS messages for a brief period of time, while others like T-Mobile do not store them at all. Along with the police association, other law enforcement groups making the request to the Senate include the National District Attorneys' Association, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, DeWitt said."
No we wont. We may SAY we will, but we cant be bothered.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
These messages shouldn't be archived. If the police need to see the communications, they should be required to get a warrent, and only be able to intercept communications as their happening - as would happen with a wiretap.
Law enforcement should not be able to go back through prior communications that occurred before they got a warrant.
Does the USPS need to scan all letters? Do cell conversations need to be recorded and stored? Do emails need to be retained by the host?
Is this April 1st?
Why not require cops to put video/audio recorders in all their cars and require them to keep the tapes for 2 years. Make any missing tape a felony so that the incentive to "lose" them disappears. That would do more to make our country a better place than keeping SMS messages.
Do you have ESP?
And yet, you are totally missing the point. Its not a question of whether they should be able to obtain the messages, legally, with a warrant (which, incidentally, they currently don't actually need as far as I know). Thats totally off topic, if its there, of course they can get at it with cause.
The question is, why should it be retained. Why should the phone company be REQUIRED to store data, from everyone, all the time, based on their assertion that they might need to request it later?
My phone calls are not recorded, why should they not also be required to retain the audio of the calls? Why, other than current details of old laws, should the two types of personal data, be in in any way, treated differently?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
it would be unrealistic to record every phone call
I disagree. The capacity of communications networks increases over time, but the user base of voice does not increase as fast because it's already hit saturation. Say there are 300 million cell phone subscribers in a market, and each spends 1000 minutes on the phone per month, and each call is recorded at 8 kilobits per second. 300,000,000*1000*60*8/8 is only 18 terabytes per month. What's the total size in bytes of video uploaded to, say, YouTube per month?
For my part, everything in my house, save the gaming rigs, uses encrypted storage not because I have anything terribly important stored, but because I want it to be as difficult and time-consuming as humanly possible for the jackboots to find absolutely nothing. I'm sort of an asshole like that.
Get a warrant, intercept them realtime. Next they'll want recordings of conversations to be saved for X years. If a judge thinks a person is worth surveillance, then fine, but my past communications shouldn't be archived "just in case I'm a criminal".
Except if only 1 out of 10,000 is using encryption, guess who is getting red flagged? the 1 in 10,000. Its called a chilling effect, look it up. These aren't the keystone cops ya know, they generally know how exactly to word that shit so they can get away with doing pretty much whatever, hell its why they have laws like resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, its because these are "catch all" laws that they can use on anybody at any time. After all, who decides what is disorderly? And of course they can use resisting even when they have no valid reason to arrest you in the first place, so they get to do what they want and you can't say shit.
I would urge everyone to watch The end of America by Naomi Wolf where she lays out step by step, using historical cases, how a free society becomes non free. BTW she is now on the NSA watchlists for daring to talk about constitutional rights, can't have that now. She argues there are ways to stop it but I would counter short of violent revolution it is inevitable, with the propaganda power of the mass media and the ability to get these laws through by either slipping them in on an unaware populace or targeting them at "the other" that no one will dare defend, terrorists, pedos, they can get pretty much any police powers they desire and then the laws will simply be widened until they can use it on anybody.
As some law professors pointed out a couple of years back you ARE a criminal, and so am I, and them, and your family, because they have managed to get so many vaguely worded laws on the books that simply going through your daily lives you break probably a dozen laws a day, laws that could get you anywhere from 6 months to a couple of years per charge. the ONLY reason these laws haven't been used against you is they simply haven't had a reason to, but if they can spy on 10,000 and can't spy on only 1 out of that 10,000? Well then time to dust those laws off huh?
While I think Ayn Rand was total batshit even the crazy can have a moment of truth, and her idea that to the government ALL are criminals, its only a question of the charges, is pretty damned spot on. You can protest, write your congress critter, in the end they'll just tack this to the end of some bill at 3 AM and run it through.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Currently, the FBI really only sticks its nose into people that have done something 'big.'
You're serious? You haven't seen the dozens of cases where the FBI manufactured a bomb plot from some moron who chimed in on a 'shady' website that he wanted to bomb the US?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
UID 723572 doesn't seem to hide anything imho. He is just very conscience about his position in a world where both the government and corporate entities want to know ALL there is about EVERYONE. He probably prefers to talk personally rather than SMS/tweet/FB/chat everything to the entire world, and I salute him for it, for he is right. /. reader, REALLY believe terrorists and paedophiles use facebook to achieve their goals? Really? I surely hope not. So why does the government have to be able to access that? ...Or go and live in North Korea for a while...
:-)
Somehow western societies (both in Yurp and Yankeeland) these day's think you are a weirdo if you like your privacy.
The "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"-card is played far to easy, just as the "we need to do this to fight terrorists/paedophiles"-card. (respectively Yankeeland and Yurp in case you wondered) Do you, as a
The exception here is Germany, but than again they have had some experience with the government wanting to know a little bit to much about its civilians (Gestapo / Stasi, in case you were puzzled a bit again). The most important tool a government has to control its people is data. And if you think things like that wont happen these day's I guess you go and do a history course...
While you're there say hi to the guys of the SSD for me, will you!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Security_Department
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /