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May 5, 2006 12:52 PM PDT
Republican politico endorses data retention
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The aide said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who chairs the House committee responsible for writing Internet and telecommunications law, has pledged to work on legislation related to mandatory data retention--a concept recently endorsed by the Bush administration as a way to crack down on child pornographers.
"We have made a commitment with the congresswoman to address that issue," David Cavicke, general counsel to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said at the Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference here. Cavicke was referring to Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, who has drafted legislation making it unlawful for an Internet provider to delete certain types of customer information.
In response to a question from CNET News.com, Cavicke said he didn't know what form the legislation will take--whether, that is, it'll be a standalone bill or an amendment to a much broader proposal to rewrite telecommunications laws.
It involves figuring out "how to protect consumers' personal information and protect American citizens from scourges like child pornography," Cavicke said.
CNET News.com was the first to report last June that the U.S. Department of Justice was quietly shopping around the idea of legally required data retention. In a move that may have led to broader interest among U.S. politicians, the European Parliament in December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers.
DeGette's proposal says any Internet service that "enables users to access content" must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could only be discarded at least one year after the user's account was closed.
It's not clear whether the DeGette language would be limited to commercial e-mail providers and Internet providers, and to places like coffeehouses, bookstores or home users that provide Wi-Fi access at no charge. An expansive reading of DeGette's measure would require every Web site to retain those records. (Details would be left to the Federal Communications Commission.)
For their part, Internet providers say they have a long history of helping law enforcement in child porn cases and point out that two federal laws already require them to cooperate.
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
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."
In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which is, in turn, charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.
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We have nothing to fear but...the government, regardles of whether we have done anything illegal.
The only difference between this intrenet policy and China's internet policy is the kinds of content allowed.
If we are the leaders of the free world, why aren't we leading?
I still stand by my position that they need to clarify exactly which data they intend to retain, but:
It would be impossible to cache actual content that has been downloaded by subscribers and will never become possible.
They could monitor content people surf by monitoring client DNS queries on ISP's caching name servers, but the opposition would simply bypass this by setting up free anon name servers.
The technology to monitor all IP traffic at the router level _does_not_exist_ and would be very difficult to establish.
The technology to monitor which users have which IP addresses is in use today with a ~6 month retention, if they only wanted to extend the retention time for _that_ data it would be fairly trivial in comparison.
I get the impression that if that is all they wanted to retain they would have just said so, right??
besides, the statement "keep records of their customers' activities" would explicitly imply they are looking to do more than log IP address/user/time.
So just _what_ do they want to retain and how do they plan to do it?
Also, how long before this child protection tool becomes and anti-terrorism tool and they begin investigating people becasue they don't like what they are saying? Sounds like another country *cough China* I have heard of.
old Tailgunner Joe McCarthy of the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee days - blackballing people, ruining lives with
unfounded accusations and J. Edgar Hoover creating dossiers on
American citizens simply because they dissented with the
current administration - or worse, with HIM.
It's why we have rules about having to get a warrant to wiretap
someone's phone... oops, that's gone now...
It's why we have the right to a quick and speedy trial before a
jury of our peers... oops, that's gone if you are ACCUSED of
being a terrorist...
It's why we have the right of habeas corpus... oops, that's gone if
one is accused of being a terrorist...
It's why a person's criminal record is supposedly kept out of the
public eye ... oops, that went away with the Sex Offender
Registries - even if someone is later proven NOT to have been
an offender, getting their name removed from those lists is
almost impossible...
Yep, the blacklists are back and Congress seems hell-bent on
repeating history...
Sure, it's important to protect the cildren, don't get me wrong -
but we must also protect the privacy and the rights of our
citizens from the invasive intrusion of the government. Ask
anyone who has shown up on the TSA Suspect List incorrectly -
like a Rabbi who has the same name as a terrorist suspect, for
instance.
Same thing, different list, same people that will be prosecuting
from it and using it to screw up people's lives.
America, right or wrong? Nope. America - if it's wrong - FIX IT!
And this is WRONG.
There are better ways to protect our children than creating a
database and dossiers on American citizens. That's been done
before and it took over thirty years for the fallout to clear from
THAT fiasco! We do NOT need to repeat history.
Lee Darrow
Chicago, IL
As an American-Citizen, you only really have two choices...
Get used to it, and ACCEPT it..
Or,
...prepare for a violent-revolution. And, yes, it will be "violent" because both this current administration, and the previous one, HAVE clearly demonstrated their complete willingness to use ANY FORCE NECESSARY, ...even the KILLING of innocent CHILDREN, if need be, to further this TOTALITARIAN-AGENDA.
Make no mistake, ...it is painfully clear that ENSLAVEMENT of the American-People IS the final-goal.
These ARE simply the FACTS. I just pray Im wrong about just how far this, ABOMINATION, will actually be allowed to progress, ...before it all comes to a head.
trivia: My K7 was an Athlon 64 1800+; it came in at 1.53Ghz. Follow; Now I have a 2.2 that hit 2.19Ghz idle and registers 1.97Ghz<984Mhz 500Mhz (FSB). processor core-clock is set at 2200mhz.
Do the math!
Theory(Intel Duo&X2 Opteron) 12/16 appl.txt we read (HT)Technology or 8/8 hyper Thread Transport. A New Frontier! x64 plus(Wow!)= Vista and a GUI for Longhorn Server software.
"Happy Birthday 2U!"
If these thugs in congress are going to vote for this and pass this anyways, it's no time for us to get passive about it, and we SHOULD all amke them eat their words and lie in the bed they made when this issue does expolde like it eventually will. Make them regret they ever brought this up, advertise that they did this and WHY it was wrong for them to do so, and actively campaign to get them out of office.
America is back in the Roman Era. Rome crumbled from within,not from the outside. That's what America is doing now, crumbling from from within.