DOJ starts 'mandatory data retention' for ISPs to keep user data/activity

[cyberpj]

Big Brother really will be watching soon.......

On File
By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet. Posted June 22, 2005.

The DOJ recently issued a regulation, which goes into effect next week, updating the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act for the Internet age. This law, also simply known as 2257, after its number in the criminal code, requires adult businesses to keep detailed records proving that all the models they use are over the age of 18. Incidentally, these records will also contain the real names of performers, and often their addresses too.

(snip)
That's why 2257 is a great testing ground for a much broader scheme by the DOJ. This scheme, sometimes called "mandatory data retention," would force all Internet service providers to keep files on everything that people using their services are doing online.

(snip)
That's how it goes. First they come for the pornographers, and then they come for you.

http://www.alternet.org/story/22289/

[Vickers]

1. I think this'll snag more repressed Conservatives than anything

Seriously.

[cyberpj]

3. But that's not who they will "go after" now, is it? Bet those just

slide through the nets. Just like Jimmy-Jeff and anything else that reflects badly on "them".

[HockeyMom]

2. Right

Exactly like the Leave No Child Unrecruited Act.

[Syncronaut Seven]

4. Seems like a great way to get dirt on

politicians and key industrial players. Blackmail baby! That's what they'll do with the info. In fact I suspect they'll plant "evidence" on the ones with nothing to hide.

I once had an employer try to fire me by setting me up for surfing porn on a company computer.

After demanding to see the log I instantly produced a Taco Bell reciept timestamped for almost exactly the time of the alleged "transgression".

The owner was furious with me, demanding to know why I wasn't at my desk (on my lunch hour) I had broken from tradition that day.

The next day I was layed off with about 25 others, I was the highest paid, It was about the unemployment, bastard didn't want to pay it.

[RickWn]

5. Not surprised

I've long assumed that anything I do on-line is monitored and recorded for posterity. I've nothing to be apphehensive about except for the occasional explosion in my face when something wholly inappropriate appears on my screen. Who the hell are these people that post such obscenity?

Riddle me this: If ISP's can track and monitor all you download, can't they just as easily monitor what you upload?

Shouldn't the focus of investigation be not on who is downloading what, but on who is uploading what?

The very nature of the internet is so similar to the television. You "turn on the set" and start clicking through the "channels". Seems to me it would be a lot more effective for law enforcement to use limited resources to monitor what is being broadcast rather than what is being viewed.

The DOJ and our congress should be creating law that puts strict limits on what and how "content" is broadcast.

Right now, there seems to be no problem with segregating websites into ".com", ".net" and ".org" partitions. So create another one called ".por" and put the porn over there.

That move right there would automatically clean up three fourths of the world wide web. Every browser should be required to have a parental control ability... that is, your child can't access, even by accident, the ".por" portion of the WWW.

Newsgroups: there are some 38,000 of them. Here's where the hotbed of porn is most active, but in only hundreds of groups and most specifically in the "alt" heirarchy. Put a software V-chip in every browser to block the whole heirarchy if desired.

IRC: Internet Relay Channel, here again, set up guidelines so that channels swapping porn are separated out from those swapping innocent pics.

Lastly, the big bug-a-boo about porn is always the picture. Picture files are specifically labeled with unique extensions that make them readily identifiable, i.e.: ".bmp", ".gif", ".jpg", ".png", "tif", etc.

The government seems to have all the resources to scan every text message (we are talking billions here) posted each day, but not enough resources to monitor pics to a porn site, group or channel? Hard to believe, isn't it.

Bottom line, I don't have much complaint if the government wants to force pornographers to prove and keep records that their models are of legal age. That to me seems a reasonable means of keeping a watchful eye on the broadcast industry. Kind of like making sure the topless dancers in a local bar are all of legal age.

What gags me and makes me scream "foul" is when the government claims it is easier and more important to track and monitor what a private citizen is watching, rather than tracking and monitoring what is being displayed. It's the uploads that should be watched, not the downloads.

[aion]

8. Saving your data for posterity's sake

About 10 years ago, I visited my University's computer center. I was an employee, and was being shown the layout and such. There was a server which sniffed every email from every email going to and from student accounts. It would be given a list of words-of-interest, and a match pattern. The example that was given was "K/kill + P/president". You might also consider "L/liberal + M/meeting" as an idea of how this capability could be abused.

These emails were not blocked, but only copied to a security folder. This was all transparent to the end-user.

I can only imagine that things have gotten a bit more sophisticated in the past 10 years.

[unhappycamper]

6. This is the second assault on the First Amendment.

The first was the Flag Act in the House last week.

[reprehensor]

7. Not good.

It's a foot in the door. Give them an inch...