A Justice Department representative said Tuesday that the proposal would not require Internet providers to retain records of the actual contents of conversations and other Internet traffic.
Color me totally unimpressed with their "assurance." As I have said before, there is no easy way to protect privacy with this legislation. What we need to know is what information they do in fact plan to ask for legal assistance in retaining. That's the key, and it's a point that is going to be missed by most of the political bloggers and talking heads in the media. A "web conversation" is the useful information. It's the HTTP headers and bodies that negotiate the transaction. Do you really want to bet your privacy on them just stripping out the URL that was requested in the GET/POST operation?
This is the problem, and why I suspect that the Bush Administration is not being honest with the public. There are no "conversations" as far as the protocols themselves are concerned. It would take an extremely sophisticated filtering system, one tailored for each popular protocol, to strip out the stuff that rightfully should be kept out on fourth amendment grounds. As far as the network is concerned, your instant message text or login attempt at your blog is just a block of text contained within a larger message. That message is padded with what is called "metadata" or information that describes the information being sent. However, to a logger on its initial pass as it filters the data for the retention law, there would be no distinction here. It's all data. So, naturally, we would be totally dependent on the government sticking to its word.
This should scare the hell out of people who care at all about freedom:
Details of the Justice Department's proposal remain murky. One possibility is requiring Internet providers to record the Internet addresses that their customers are temporarily assigned. A more extensive mandate would require them to keep track of the identities of Americans' e-mail and instant messaging correspondents and save the logs of Internet phone calls.
In other words, because it's the Internet, allow the government to log the audio of every single Voice Over IP (VoIP) call that you make.
Other previous entries on this, to give a perspective on how this battle has evolved:
Recording everything you ever do online.
Is this really a data retention law?.
America's pedocratic surveillance state.
Sounds like lies to me.
(wheedling voice) "We're just looking out for you"
Then you do something they don't like, like disagree with the leadership or some other heinous act and things change...
(commanding voice)"Now we've got you!"
This is the most dangerous change in the surveillance laws considered in the past thirty years, and where are the major bloggers? Nowhere! And I thought the blogosphere was supposed to be a lot better than the mainstream media. At least these proposals are making front pages in the major tech media.
Oops, I left out an "and" in that last sentence.
Once we've established that "Congress shall make no law..." and "...shall not be infringed" don't mean anything -- then what the hell is a "warrant"?
Remember the old joke where a guy asks a girl "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?" and she giggles and says, "I guess so."
"Well, how about $50?"
To which she replies "what do you think I am?"
Well, the same answer applies to the post-Republic Amerika the high priests of its new god:
"We've established that. NOW we're just dickering price."
You would think that Aleister Crowley had been elected President because we live by his maxim "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." What we have increasingly is just a law that says "we can do whatever we want, when we want and it is not up to you to wonder why we are doing it." A few more loopholes and the law will be literally nothing more than a way of justifying doing anything.
Very true, Mike - and it's ALL done by contract. Read the 'fine print' VEWWY CAWEFULLY. (Actually, it's called "adherent contracts". Like, you signed up for the benefits of being a "US citizen"; we didn't feel like telling you that you were exchanging God-given Rights for the temporary security of 'civil liberties'.)
It should be ever more and more clear what He meant when He said (through multiple witnesses) "Choose this day Whom you will serve..." and warned that no one can serve two masters. Don't mix the qadosh (set apart, holy) with the profane. Ultimately, "come out of her" and don't participate in the coming plagues.
They will only hurt themselves at the rate things are going. Who will fight for this country when we don't even have wealth to fight for?
[...] The MercuryNews has a good article on the subject of the new federal push for data retention policies at ISPs. As I have written in the past on the subject, there are a lot of security and privacy implications because the data that can be gleaned from raw packet dumps or proxy logs is enough to attract unscrupulous cops and criminals. It would be the ultimate repository of information for identity thieves. [...]
[...] Mandatory data retention. [...]