May 16, 2006 4:00 AM PDT
Congress may make ISPs snoop on you
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The proposal comes just weeks after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Internet service providers should retain records of user activities for a "reasonable amount of time," a move that represented a dramatic shift in the Bush administration's views on privacy.
Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "conduct criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.
In addition, Sensenbrenner's legislation--expected to be announced as early as this week--also would create a federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and many other Web sites. It's aimed at any site that might have "reason to believe" it facilitates access to child pornography--through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance.
Speaking to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last month, Gonzales warned of the dangers of pedophiles using the Internet anonymously and called for new laws from Congress. "At the most basic level, the Internet is used as a tool for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography on a relatively anonymous basis," Gonzales said.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc.
Until Gonzales' speech, the Bush administration had explicitly opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click here for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, top administration officials began talking about it more favorably.
The drafting of the data-retention proposal comes as Republicans are trying to do more to please their conservative supporters before the November election. One bill announced last week targets MySpace.com and other social networking sites. At a meeting last weekend, social conservatives called on the Bush administration to step up action against pornography, according to a New York Times report.
Sensenbrenner's proposal is likely to be controversial. It would substantially alter U.S. laws dealing with privacy protection of Americans' Web surfing habits and is sure to alarm Internet businesses that could be at risk for linking to illicit Web sites.
A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee said the aide who drafted the legislation was not immediately available for an interview on Monday.
U.S. Justice Department spokesman Drew Wade said the agency generally doesn't comment on legislation, though it may "issue a letter of opinion" at a later date.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, called Sensenbrenner's measure an "open-ended obligation to collect information about all customers for all purposes. It opens the door to government fishing expeditions and unbounded data mining."
The National Security Agency has engaged in extensive data-mining about Americans' phone calling habits, USA Today reported last week, a revelation that could complicate Republicans' efforts to enact laws relating to mandatory data retention and data mining. Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, for instance, took a swipe at the program on Monday, and Democrats have been calling for a formal investigation.
Worries for Internet providers
One unusual aspect of Sensenbrenner's legislation--called the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act--or Internet Safety Act--is that it's relatively vague.
Instead of describing exactly what information Internet providers would be required to retain about their users, the Internet Safety Act gives the attorney general broad discretion in drafting regulations. At minimum, the proposal says, user names, physical addresses, Internet Protocol addresses and subscribers' phone numbers must be retained.
That generous wording could permit Gonzales to order Internet providers to retain records of e-mail correspondents, Web pages visited, and even the contents of communications.
"In the absence of clear privacy safeguards, Congress would be wise to remove this provision," Rotenberg said.
Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at the free-market Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, said the Internet Safety Act "follows in a long line of bad laws that are written in the name of protecting children."
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Alberto Gonzales,
data mining,
legislation,
Bush Administration,
Republican
liberties. All under the guise of stopping "evil doers." These people
cannot be trusted at all. Call your members of Congress now to
urge them to oppose the Sennsenbrenner bill.
Do you really think this is just about pedophiles on the internet?
I am a little confused as to what ?reason to believe' means stated by the atourney general. What I am reading here is that they are not trying to store all data and only for a limited time. Just data collected from these illegal web ISPs.
?A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
My question is: Is this a valid warrant. Something that the public will be aware of so they can make proper judgment or is this more of the terrorism 'total power' thing?
Basically I would be for it, with a warrant, because there are too many jerks on the Intent getting away with monstrous things. Frankly I'm sick of it. There are way too many kids getting raped in this country, I think because the Internet was a free-for-all in the late 90s when it got popular all in the name of privacy and freedom without respect of the privacy and freedom of the victim.
People can't just sit there a squawk freedom and then do nothing about crime.
heard, make an appointment with a couple of
friends to go visit the guy. Most congressmen
are deep into lots of other people's pockets --
a constituent's concerns might get some
consideration, but unless you go the extra mile
to really catch their attention, you'll be
marginalized.
I don't care about this so much. If it looks
like it'll pass, I promise I'll release an
open-source cross-platform internet traffic
noise generator to everyone. You can easily
render all of the records utterly useless and
too voluminous to be practical, and too noisy to
be reliable.
I'm not sure if they'd be able to push this
through before times up anyway.
Someone should tell this clown that this type of approach will not work, especially once Grandma Millie's IP address is spoofed or hacked by crooks and she's hauled off in handcuff's.
These two additions will just be put in the yearly budget or something that is so large it never gets fully read.
Now the G'ment has almost realtime ablility to monitor the Internet legally. You will know this is a reality when some idiot in congress spouts off that we need federal ovesight into the management and security of wireless networks. The last loophole over truely anonymous access will be closed. And George Orwell lives!
If you want to write Congress, make sure that this law strictly enforces audit trails, etc and the information is used only for that purpose.
Let's provide some help for the innocent out there to try to prevent the next 9-11 or the girl down the street being abducted from a child molester..
Yet those boneheads up in Wisconsin just can't seem to get enough of this guy!!??
"The Bush Administration seems committed to trampling over civil liberties."
You have to remember, folks, that C-Net News, like most mainstream media, has a Bush-bashing, liberal leaning to it, and, while not as obvious as most of them, still attempts to sway you when it can. Note the following two sentences from the beginning of the article:
"A prominent Republican on Capitol Hill has prepared legislation that would rewrite Internet privacy rules..."
Okay, there's your truth. A Congressman has introduced the bill. Now for the spin:
"...a move that represented a dramatic shift in the Bush administration's views on privacy."
So, according to the article, Republican Congressmen are mere pawns of President Bush, complying with his every whim. A summation that I'm pretty sure the aforementioned Congressmen would object to.
So now, with the words "Bush administration" lingering in the reader's mind, the article then launches into all the gruesome things the bill would do. As you read through them, it's only natural to think, "That damn Bush administration!", whereas what you should be thinking is, "Why did those jackasses in Wisconsin elect this jerk?", referring to Rep. Sensenbrenner.
Remember to watch for the buzzwords, folks. If the site is left-leaning, the telephone database collected by the NSA is "surveillance" of Americans, or "spying" on Americans as the original C-Net article called it. The monitoring of terrorists' phone calls is "domestic" spying. And, as in this case, watch for the term "Bush administration" where it simply doesn't belong.
As far as the article goes, once again (for what feels like the 100th time in the past 20 years) I feel sorry for the poor ISPs that get caught in the middle. I loved this line:
"...and even the contents of communications."
That means, of course, that not only does an employee from the ISP have to read through every email before it's sent on, but actually has to try every link in said emails. Not every porn link is "www.GetSexHere.com", and that's doubly-true for sites trying to protect illegal contents.
Here's another goodie:
"It's aimed at any site that might have 'reason to believe' it facilitates access to child pornography--through hyperlinks or a DISCUSSION FORUM, for instance."
So, if someone states in a forum, "I've been surfing the web for years and, while I've certainly blundered my way across the occasional porno site, I don't ever recall seeing any child porno. So what's the government talking about?", and you answer, "The child porno is usually hidden", then you've just 'fascilitated' access to child pornography, right?
Well, I could go on and on, but I've got some things to do. I do, however, have one little question for the group first.
I've been surfing the web for years and, while I've certainly blundered my way across the occasional porno site, I don't recall ever seeing any child porno. So what's the government talking about?
No, wait.
Don't answer that.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
God I hope America wakes up soon, before the document this Amendment came from becomes just a worthless piece of paper. Please fight for your rights, before you lose them!
The best watchdogs are able to notice when physical location discussions appear to be moving toward direct contact and also notice the bridge phrases that lead to hard-core sites.
The law enforcement then can use existing laws and their own judgement as to getting more information if they see cause to do so. This does not infringe anyone's private information, nor does it expose innocent people to false accusations, as the new law certainly would do. Watchdogging does not presume guilt, in fact it presumes innocence in asking legitimate authorities to take the steps necessary to investigate a specific situation before anyone gets accused of anything.
The new laws will presume guilt on the part of all adults who appear in risky discussions. This can include those who are involved in a completely innocent thread that later gets hijacked by new participants.
We have all seen groups in the internet change in character as membership evolves. We know that our membership info in groups we have long forgotten can persist.
This new ISP set of rules is absurdly dangerous and ineffective. It can only hurt the innocent and let the guilty swim free in a sea of confusion.
I don't mean to be overly critical because this is something that needs bringing to the forefront, but it's hardly new.
Let's face it we've known for years that you don't write anything in an email you wouldn't want the government to see, hence the existence of things like PGP and the government lawsuit to try to get it banned.
But this particular bill is so far out there it defies belief. The people responsible are on both sides of the house, and are using the rhetoric of tabloid news channels like CNN, MSNBC and Fox to justify it's existence.
What is curious is how they anticipate locally owned ISPs being able to store that much information without the resources of a Hollywood studio trying to digitise it's entire library of movies.
Obviously they feel we're not paying enough for our internet and ironically we'll end up paying in subscription charges for the equipment used to spy on us.
Robert
- Party has a drug problem
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by rmiecznik
May 16, 2006 12:34 PM PDT
- I think all the drugs that are ceased go straight
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See all 71 Comments >>up the Republicans noses. It is a known fact that our current president used to snort cocaine up his nose and smoke marijuana, yet he is our president, and that he is part of some stupid Bones and Skulls club for little kids. lol
There is no doubt in my mind that Democrats will take over the Majority and the Presidency in the next election, only a moron would vote republican.