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June 16, 2005 4:00 AM PDT
Your ISP as Net watchdog
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Europe to push ahead with ISP snooping law
June 9, 2005 -
FBI adds to wiretap wish list
March 12, 2004 -
My (brief) career as an ISP
October 10, 2003 -
FBI targets Net phoning
July 29, 2003 -
Perspective: Privacy lessons from Europe
October 23, 2002
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guidelines that would require them to seek logs soon after receiving tips.
Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, compared the Justice Department's idea to the since-abandoned Clipper Chip, a brainchild of the Clinton and first Bush White House. Initially the Clipper Chip--an encryption system with a backdoor for the federal government--was supposed to be voluntary, but declassified documents show that backdoors were supposed to become mandatory.
"Even if your concern is chasing after child pornographers, the packets don't come pre-labeled that way," Rotenberg said. "What effectively happens is that all ISP customers, when that data is presented to the government, become potential targets of subsequent investigations."
A divided Europe
The Justice Department's proposal could import a debate that's been simmering in Europe for years.
In Europe, a data retention proposal prepared by four nations said that all telecommunications providers must retain generalized logs of phone calls, SMS messages, e-mail communications and other "Internet protocols" for at least one year. Logs would include the addresses of Internet sites and identities of the correspondents but not necessarily the full content of the communication.
France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden jointly submitted their data retention proposal to the European Parliament in April 2004. Such mandatory logging was necessary, they argued, "for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of crime or criminal offenses including terrorism."
But a report prepared this year by Alexander Alvaro on behalf of the Parliament's civil liberties and home affairs committee slammed the idea, saying it may violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
Also, Alvaro wrote: "Given the volume of data to be retained, particularly Internet data, it is unlikely that an appropriate analysis of the data will be at all possible. Individuals involved in organized crime and terrorism will easily find a way to prevent their data from being traced." He calculated that if an Internet provider were to retain all traffic data, the database would swell to a size of 20,000 to 40,000 terabytes--too large to search using existing technology.
On June 7, the European Parliament voted by a show of hands to adopt Alvaro's report and effectively snub the mandatory data retention plan. But the vote may turn out to have been largely symbolic: The Council of Justice and Home Affairs ministers have vowed to press ahead with their data retention requirement.
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I think these so called "necessary" invasions of privacy aren't going to stop terrorist or child preditors from doing business as usuall. I think all they are really doing is turning normal people into government hating, paranoid, recluses. I think of this as kind of like taking medicine to stop a cold before you catch it. It may help, but sooner or later your still going to catch a cold.
I think we should instead try better educating our citizens and making sure they stay healthy. Build a good, strong armed forces. And try not to start wars everytime we get a new president.
At the rate we are going I give America another 100 years before we have another revolution.
Doing all of this 'watching' doesn't stop crime, or even thwart it. People will go on doing what they've always been doing through other methods. While the average joe citizen has to suffer and lose all privacy.
I'll take my chances with the terrorists.
911 in scope and loss of life. My guess would be that a major
American city would have some kind of nuclear "event". No one
will ever be able to positively trace the origins of the "device". Al
Quida will be the de-facto villain. Yet some US military storage
facility somewhere will be missing a warhead or uranium or
plutonium. In reality, no terrorists will be involved. Only
members of a clandestine arm of our own government. The
extraordinary powers that will be willingly and enthusiastically
granted government and law enforcement subsequent to this
event will make the patriot act look like a pooper scooper law by
comparison. And then ladies and gentlemen, we will all wake up
in a country that no longer belongs to us.
That being said, the idea simply won't work - your ISP might store everything you put on their computers - email etc. But that doesn't mean that your email uses their computers. Or your IM's, your WebCams, your web pages. Anyone with a bit of technical expertise can set up their own server to do all of this and be beyond the reach of the ISP logs. Even attempts to trap all traffic from specific ports wouldn't work as the volume would be enormous and services can be run on non-standard ports. Copying all traffic and storing it not really technologically feasable, given the volume of internet traffic on even a small ISP. This idea simply won't work.
i.e. secret police fifty years ago.
How long will the American public put up with these fascist policies????
But, those people were just called "paranoid...", by those that did not want to accept what was going on.
Now, we have absolute PROOF (in the form of declassified government-documents) that the "Government" HAD intended to "mandate" the technology from the beginning.
Later, many discussed "Echelon", ...and were "pooh-poohed" for their troubles. Furthermore, at first, the U.S. Government actively DENIED ITS VERY EXISTENCE. Now, you can read numerous official publications on the program, its people and the installations involved.
The simple fact of the matter is that, "our government" (both Democrats AND Republicans) HAVE been working for decades to turn America into a TOTALITARIAN SURVEILLANCE-STATE (to serve itself AND a powerful-few).
If you do not believe it...
Try to walk down a city street without being recorded by a government video-camera.
Or, travel by bus, train, or airplane, without being registered in a government-accessible data-base.
Your phone is tapped by "CALEA" requirements. And, your car (if made after 1996) is required (by Federal-law) to have a "travel-data recorder-port".
Your banking-transactions are available to the Government, without a warrant.
Your Library activities are subject to government-seizure, and scrutiny, without "probable-cause".
You can be stopped, without cause, and be ordered to show ID just to walk down a public-street. And, you can be ARRESTED and SEARCHED for simply asking "why..?".
And, this is just the TIP of the iceberg.
But, at least the FBI (by Federal-Law and at TAXPAYER-EXPENSE) must now treat allegations of "copyright infringement" as a serious FEDERAL-CRIME.
Boy, I feel safer. Dont you..?
In another 10 years the only difference between China and the United States will be that China has all the jobs and economic growth. I think we all better start learning Mandarin.
things that people should be locked up forever and kept far
away from. Enforcement of child porn laws should be vigorous.
BUT: In our great free country, preserving our democracy and
liberty are far more important. Maybe we can trust today's FBI,
but who knows if we can trust tomorrow's? This is why we have
the 4th and 5th amendments: to make sure we are free of abuse
from government.
These log retention laws are a violation of our civil rights. No
matter how bad child porn and exploitation are (and they are
awful!), it would be a shame to sacrifice our freedom for what
would amount to be an incremental improvement (if any!) in
child porn law enforcement.
It irritates me to hear people attack those who are in favor of
draconian laws like these claim that people who attempt to fight
them are 'soft on child porn.' It's only fair for me to retaliate
with an equally absurd claim of my own. To them (and only
them) I say, child porn and exploitation would be less of a
problem if those people kept a closer watch on their kids and
taught their kids how to handle inappropriate situations.
I wouldn't make the same charge against people who don't try to
get these laws passed.
Privicy is what freedom is built on.
As for as the 9/11,They had the tools,but didn't use them.
I myself don't care that much about them listening on me,but if they can listen to me I want the same to listen on them, The Gov.has more to hide than I do.
I told a friend more than 10yr. ago what #3 said.
They have tried to back the constitution for quite some time.
Besides who would able to determent what one is saying to another. I learned that one word could change the meaning of a sentence,& a sentence could change the meaning of a paragraph, so how would they know what you are talking about,who would determent this?
The Internet is the last bastion of free speech in America. Sure, Echelon watches over it all, so they can catch the baddies if they really want to. This is just another case of eroding our disappearing rights even further.
Give it a rest, guys. The Internet is free territory.
An individual faked some death and rape threat emails which she claimed originated from my Tahoo account. I wasn't worried - I thought there'd be logs. I contacted Yahoo - they said sure, but we can't just give it to you, you need to subpoena it. I had a subpoena issued. Yahoo ignored it. etc. etc.
Luckily for me, the woman who faked these emails took them to the police, who quickly figured out she was lying. Her story when the police asked to actually see these emails (not just the printed copies) was that she printed them and immediately deleted them. Add to this her established history of harassing me and psychiatric history and it all smells a bit funny. Even better for me, her email provider does keep logs - the police issued warrants and voila - proof positive they had been fabricated. The police warned to leave me alone - a happy ending?
Not quite. That all took some time though, especially since the police (to save their time) were waiting for Yahoo to honour the subpoena and provide the activity log. This lunatic took me to a civil proceeding in the meantime, and an older magistrate, obviously with no knowledge of how easily these can be faked, believed her.
That's the danger you face, without these logs being kept. As things currently stand, if someone doesn't like you, this is all they have to do to cause you some very serious grief:
Step one - create an account using your name (eg. yourname@yahoo.com) or something close.
Step two - using the account with your name on it, they send themselves (preferably to an address with a provider who also doesn't keep account logs) that is somehow illegal in nature (eg. threats)
Result - you're in a lot of trouble.
I was horrified when the govt agency helping me to sort this out with Yahoo told me that Yahoo had (after some months of communicating with them) finally admitted to not keeping the logs. Then I did a web search, found this article and WOW. I'm amazed that they aren't kept, but I'm glad there seems to be some pressure for change, and possibly even legislation.
For those who cite "privacy" concerns - the only reason you have to fear such logs is if you're doing something you shouldn't be doing. If you're like the majority of people in our civilisation, you have nothing to fear from these logs, and in fact they protect you.
I sincerely hope such logs become a standard in the near future.
- Big Brother and the ISP watchdogs....
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by
July 26, 2005 10:52 PM PDT
- Tell me...why should I trust my ISP? Because they had more money to get started in the ISP biz than I did or do?
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See all 35 Comments >>Who can you trust nowdays....I liked Terorism Schmerrorism.......BUSH is who should be under the microscope here!
Check me out...I'm clean except for dirty UA's which I believe to be unconstitutional and against the law....I get cut off meds I need because I like drugs? Something wrong with this country BAD!