Once again, a leading Republican comes up with a way to sacrifice liberty without any appreciable gains in security:
(a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information.
(b) Failure To Comply- Whoever knowingly fails to retain any record required under this section shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, and imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
I have written extensively before on data retention and why it is just a bad policy in general, but here's a simple reminder. You are creating a huge repository of personal information that can be easily compromised by criminals. Every unencrypted thing that you do online is vulnerable to data retention policies. That means every username, every password, every blog post, every email, every IM conversation. The whole motherload of what you do online that doesn't involve serious encryption. There are two obvious threats from this. First, you have the temptation on the part of government agents to abuse the data repository, and second, you have the fact that it represents a real coup for an identity thief.
The way that this bill is worded is such that the Attorney General can basically surreptitiously get everything that he wants, which does in fact include tracking your online activities, not the basic information you use to connect with your ISP. He has "tried to be nice about it" with the major ISPs before by trying to convince them to voluntarily join in on the surveillance program, but that has failed. If Lamar Smith gets his way, the first step toward total communications surveillance will be in place. That is not paranoia, but a simple fact of how the Internet works. Once the system is in place, adapting it to new protocols won't be that difficult. That's why I just don't get why so few people seem alarmed by this.
As has been shown by not only the creation of the Patriot act, as well as it's non-terrorism abuses, they care nothing for the Constitution. Bush et al have decided it doesn't matter any more. I say that as one who voted for him.
That's because people probably don't know about it.
The Legacy Media Cartel are too stupid and intellectually enfeebled to ponder anything short of the here-and-now implications of this. Namely, "unidentified sources" giving them a juicy bouquet of all the dirt of just about anybody of interest.
And like I've always said over at my blog, America is a nation of pussies. They're not going to squirm until the boot's firmly pressed on its throat, and by then it'll probably be too late.
If there was a perch of safety on this Earth I could grasp for, I'd gladly kick back and watch the barrel go over the gorge. But unfortunately, the complacent inertia of the masses will drag you and I down, as well.
Like Plato said, the price of not taking interest in politics is to be ruled by your inferiors. Democracy sucks. That's why the forces of darkness have always insisted on it.
Well Billiam, when I was in high school, back when he was first running for office, he was my choice for president as well. He even seemed to be a great leader back then to many of us. He has gone to pretty amazing lengths to disappoint most of his base.
Abe, I think all of that is a given at this point. They worry about the stupid stuff like how the grocery store has kept all of your purchasing history, but damn, if they aren't silent about real abuses like the government storing all of your activities.
I am not alarmed by this because I cannot see any harm coming to me because of it that cannot already befall me in equal measure without it.
My online transactions, postings, writings, download histories and surfing cannot cause me anything more than brief embarrassment, which I will get over.
I have also been in on several government projects that made grand promises about data retrieval from huge data bases. So far, they have all failed to deliver as promised.
There is in government and law enforcement the idea of the data silver bullet. If only, I had enough data and a sufficiently robust search algorithm, all crimes would be solved and all problems mitigated. It never works. They always get too much useless information and key information somehow never gets into the data set. Other key data gets hidden in the chaff.
Yet, I concede that you are right to complain about this additional and unnecessary burden on your privacy and on ISP business profitability.
There is also a tremendous amount of abuse possible here. I don't think it's unrealistic to suggest that corrupt law enforcement or criminals could get ahold of these logs and then sift through them for specific users. There are good log analyzers out there on the open market that can do that. I could also see the FBI just grabbing gigs of log files and analyzing them to pick out a few criminals as well. They already do similar work with their successor to the Carnivore system with data packets.
Moral of this story is: Don't conduct your illegal activities online.
Just like the mob learned about the telephone,
modern gangs learned about cell phones and OBL learned about satalite phones.
Once you learn your opponent's vulnerability, shame on you if you don't exploit it.
Online Reaction to Proposed Bill for Government to Require ISPs to Retain All Tracking Data Indefinitely
I've been tracking reaction to the announcement from U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican, a couple of weeks ago called the SAFETY Act, which is short for the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act. Accordi...