Proposed bill would force ISP, WiFi logs for security, criminal investigations
By Laura June 
posted February 20th 2009 4:54PM
posted February 20th 2009 4:54PM
This proposed bill has been floating around the ether for a long time -- and it's just made a big time comeback. Essentially, the Republican-backed bill would be a "sweeping" federal measure which would require all ISPs and many WiFi access point providers to keep records of their users for two years, in order to aid police investigations. There are two separate bills -- one in the Senate and one in the House -- both named the "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act. Catchy, right? The bill would cover, as already stated, not just the major ISPs, but WiFi providers, including both public and password protected access points. The bill is undoubtedly going to be quite controversial, but is also expected to appeal to legislators across both parties. We'll see what, if anything, becomes of it, but in the meantime, what are your thoughts on this one?
Wait, who's that behind you! Oh never mind, it's just Big Brother.
Personally I think this is a load of crap. Do we really need this bill? Now, of all times? We should be focusing on the bigger problems instead of nitpicking at stuff like this.
On a side note, Chuen almost all Cellular devices of this day and age have GPS built in, or the ability to track it. It's supposed to be used for Emergency Services. My phone from 6 years ago even had a GPS chip built into it.
Time for more people to learn how to use encryption.
i love the idea. on one hand, who would care about joe schmo ordering an escort service or going to a pr0n site. on the other hand, who else but the politicians themselves could/should be caught in their own trap! you could really do some heavy damage to their image with this kind of material. very nice! and it makes for good comedy.
Yes, it's amazing how protective these politicians are of their own privacy.
We don't need this bill. All we need are for parents to act like fucking parents and teach their children of the dangers that exist on the internet and with people in general.
Remember when it used to be great to be an american, what happened? Why does our country suck so bad now? Do we really need more laws? personally i think we need far less laws
Benjamin Franklin said, and I paraphrase, Anyone who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither...The Patriot Act made a mockery of the Bill of Rights, and is as patriotic as facism. This law is just one more opportunity for zealots to abuse their positions of authority to the detriment of everyone. It sounds good on paper, but it is a ruse.
I'm a Republican and I think this bill is stupid.
If it gets passed you can blame the current administration.
Just another government rope around everyone's neck.
Remember "Give me liberty of give me death." Patrick Henry,1775
"Essentially, the Republican-backed bill would be a "sweeping" federal measure which would require all ISPs and many WiFi access point providers to keep records of their users for two years, in order to aid police investigations."
THE REPUBLICAN BACKED BILL...... why would you blame the current DEMOCRAT administration???
Well, if it gets passed, that'll mean a Democrat majority in Congress didn't stop it, and a Democrat president signed it (so the administration, i.e. the President, is to blame), or that a Democrat-controlled Congress passed it by 2/3 vote over a Democrat president's veto (in which case the administration's off the hook, but the Democratic party still comes out stinking).
Unfortunately, I fear it doesn't matter what the average citizen thinks... if the "govern"ments decide that they need to tap into your personal records, they just do... and the laws are written afterwards... or there's always the secret listening techniques which we don't really know anything about.
There is a horrible stench in the air and the smell is getting worse. The people who are supposed to be preserving our liberties are frenziedly taking them away. F#&k 'em.
What the heck?
Our country was founded upon the idea that everyone should be free to pursue their own happiness. We fought against the British, because they prevented us from speaking out on our own behalf. We fought ourselves to make sure that everyone had an equal voice (civil war). Now we find our enemy in the mirror once more.
The Patriot Act, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, goes too far. Sit down and read it, and begin to wonder how the heck it passed through those who rule on our behalf. I no longer go to libraries, due in no small part to the overzealous abilities of the government (to get a list of everything I checked out). I find that RFID tags in passports are little more than a problem waiting to happen (as proven several times).
Is it not clear by now that the goals of technology and government are different. Government is ponderous and ineffable. Technology is fast and momentary. Government is ill equipped to deal with technology, and allowing it to set the policies is... to paraphrase... foolish.
I don't want to see terrorists or child molesters. In my opinion, both should burn in the deepest rings of Hell (or wherever they believe sinners pay for their crimes). At the same time, limiting and monitoring the internet is completely moronic.
Please, for the love of whatever you believe in, do not let bureaucrats set the policies for technology. Be reasonable, these are the same people who run both the DMV and Postal Service. If nothing else, both of those agencies speak volumes about how these people suggest things should be run. It's 2009, not 1949. You need to be reasonable, and our government has shown anything but reason for the last few years.
BS, i do not think this is gonna work, i hope the stimulus bill doesnt talk of broadband for everyone for this reason! I am sure not, Obama can do better.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/stimulus-bill-seeks-plan-to-ensure-all-americans-have-broadband
The surprise of the century! Remember kids, you can force through any law, no matter how fascist or self-serving, if you follow it up with cries of "It's for the children!" Let's reinstitute slavery! It's for the children! Let's exterminate all adults over the age of sixty! It's for the children! I want all the money in the world! You can't refuse my demands, because it's FOR THE CHILDREN!
Damn. I hope this country finally gets over its secret fascination with pedophiles and starts using logic instead of hysteria to write its laws.
You know in this book I read once it wont matter... when they Activate the Cloverfield Act.
Hello Government
yes?
Im takin a shit, I just thought you'd like to kno
and how many turds was it?
Uh let me take a peek, well one big one, probably bout a foot and a couple nuggets
alright I'll log that down, that you for calling the National Shit Registry
fucking big brother
Couldn't this fall under the fourth amendment as an unreasonable search and seizure? It is most definitely an invasion of privacy.
If Congress would spend more time passing legislation that was actually needed, that was actually helpful, instead of trying to come up with catchy acronyms for unconstitutional laws, then perhaps I'd be a bit less cynical when it comes to the government.
screw it, i'm moving to the pirate bay
They better pay for all the fscking drives I gotta buy to hold all that b.s.
How 'bout a law that requires parents should police their children??? How proving someone logged on, spoofed, or otherwise used your internet access is evidence of something more sinister, I will never know. Congress is so out of touch.
[quote=Wii60][i]If it isn't abused, and is used solely to investigate terror cells, then why not? If the checks and balances are there to prevent infringing on my rights. I don't mind.[/i][/quote]
We should not forget, Wii60, that terms such as "terror cells" are ambiguous at best. The current U.S. admin, like the former, seem to have reserved absolute rights and privileges to determine who is and isnt a terrorist. The problem is, as we're continuing to see, that its usually unfair and nasty in its application.
Not only will the new rules sooner or later make terrorists of us all, if we continue to seek security in illusory checks and balances, our apathy and idealism will make us dead terrorists.
Seems they forgot to include the word 'patriot(-ism)' in the bill's name, sloppy.
Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?
If this bill passes, not as much will change as people think. Most ISPs, if not all, already keep logs of everything for legal reasons. Most large companies have a data retention policy. In this age of frequent and frivolous lawsuits, they have to. I admit that this would affect operators of wifi hotspots and any other public internet access points quite a bit, but the rest is pretty much already covered.
The problem is, this law would force everyone into keeping logs longer than they would otherwise and probably make them accessible to the government without just cause. This just makes it easier for the data to be abused. The types of online activities that can reasonably be logged require connecting to some kind of remote server, so any criminal investigation should start there. Once they get logs of who accessed that server, they can go through proper legal channels to request the specific, relevant data from the ISP. The logs should be available only on a need to know basis.
I hope this bill is quickly rejected. It reeks of ulterior motives. No laws are ever what they seem anymore. I wish congress actually cared about the citizens.
Republicans, at it again. This political party is a joke! First they want no goverment influence in the economy, but monitoring my isp provider as well as hot spots in my area to keep tabs on "predators". Maybe we should let the non-serious criminals out of the jail systems. ie. first time offenders, non-felony drug offenders, and maybe we would not have overcrowding in our jails. To which we then place these "predators" in stead of having them live on our streets, and allowing them there freedom.So "Uncle Sam" can worry about serious issues, like turning this country in to communist china.
This bill would not only cause privacy issues. It would also cause a massive and expensive headache for shop owner's who provide wifi.
Yep Stephen you're right. This is why education is important. So people don't fall for this crap.
Republican's are a scary lot. I read this yesterday and saved it. Did not think I would ever share it!
Here you go; " Republicans…..party first……country last!" Said by one of their own.
Fuck em both, Republican and Democrats are both Constitution hating thugs. Vote Publican!
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." ~Ben Franklin
I love how we're forsaking our forefathers.
Exactly how is this intended to prevent Adults From Exploiting Children? Do most pedos use anonymous wifi?
"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like."
- Justice William O. Douglas 1898-1980
"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and
in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high
with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law
and order [...] and the like."
- Justice William O. Douglas 1898-1980
By the way when you do hear on the news how they catch predators they already got the evidence.
Why are they doing this? So they can dig through your shit, Prosecute you anytime they would like.
The new world order is coming... These are simple underlying steps before it happens.
They do catch predators and magically get the evidence without **WITHOUT** this law, imagine the possibilitys they have ?
If you download a music or movies , They can dig through ur records and fuck you.
This is ridiculous. We are losing every form of privacy. First the RFID chips now the Internet, this is disgusting. The control of the Internet under corporation through the government is essentially a prelude to socialism.
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12
The logging that would be done by ISPs and especially he WiFi sites would be intrusive and a law protecting data privacy should be issued instead.
America the home of the enslaved?
A lot of IT people have mentioned the impossibility of keeping up with that amount of data - but they're only going to have storage problems.
I work at a small, local ISP that services about a thousand rural homes with dial up. While the hardware we have works just fine, parts of it haven't been upgraded in a long time. The system we use ONLY logs connection details - that's it. All traffic is routed anonymously through a switch that goes in to our main network. There is NO WAY of tracking what data is being sent to whom anywhere on our network.
While it's only dial up, so in theory it wouldn't be too hard to manage keeping backups of all this stuff, that's not even the issue here. We would need to upgrade multiple, expensive parts of our network just to comply. Adding insult to injury, we're trying to get OUT of the dial up market, yet if we don't and this passes, it's going to force us to drop a substantial part of our income.
So either they kill our business, or force us to invest money we didn't want to invest in to doing services we don't want to do. That's nuts. Even beyond that, I would assume since we're also a web hosting provider, this could easily be made to encompass us too as far as mail logs and whatnot.
Have they considered the cost whatsoever? I mean, if they're going to provide the appropriate equipment and all I have to do is plug it in, that's one thing - but if I'm going to have to purchase all of this stuff and maintain it myself, that's just ludicrous.
Oh right, and then there's that part that it's an invasion of privacy, and fascistic bullshit - so that too.
Once again the US is asking the US people to give up freedom for security, using fear to control the people. the US has been doing it since 2000 and even before that. How much more freedom must we give up. Don't forget what the constitution says. If the government starts to overextend their power, then it is the right of the people to over throw such government.
Nevermind the powers enumerated in the Constitution, all this kiddie porn is destroying our nation!!!
geez, cops policing the criminals on the internet? phew, let me wipe the sweat from my brow..........
tomo