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Last week, I wrote about the effort by Congress to kill
internet neutrality and hand the medium over the massive corporations and
relegate those of us not willing to pay big bucks to the slow lane. Now comes
word of Congress critter Diana
DeGette’s proposal to force ISPs to “retain records of their
users’ activities,” an idea supported by AG Alberto Gonzales. “Last
week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, gave a speech saying
that data retention by Internet service providers is an ‘issue that must
be addressed.’ Child pornography investigations have been ‘hampered’
because data may be routinely deleted, Gonzales warned,” reports Declan
McCullagh of CNET News.
DeGette’s “proposal says that any Internet service that ‘enables
users to access content’ must permanently retain records that would permit
police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least
one year after the user’s account was closed…. An expansive reading
of DeGette’s measure would require every Web site to retain those records.”
If passed, DeGette’s nanny state proposal would jack the cost
of running a website or blog through the ceiling. Not only is the hardware and
software required to retain data expensive, it also gives excessive power to
the state. DeGette may indeed be concerned about child pornography. But Gonzales
and the Bushites are less concerned about child pornography and pedophiles than
keeping tabs on their political enemies.
It may be time to use a virtual private network or an anonymizer proxy, the
latter designed to cloak the internet address of the user through standard ecommerce
cryptography. Of course, this will be of little use if the feds start grabbing
log files from ISPs, but it will foil standard traffic analysis, that is to
say the current effort of the NSA to snoop all email and web destinations (with
the help of data-mining equipment installed in secret
rooms at AT&T switching centers).
It is completely beside the point that I don’t surf child porn and all
of my web destinations are entirely legal—news sites (albeit mostly “subversive”
alternative news and opinion sites) and sites related to my profession as a
web designer. It’s about the Fourth Amendment (”the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated”). But then, according to our “decider”
dictator, the Constitution is little more than a “god damn piece of paper,”
so the Bill of Rights is effectually dead in the water, as AG Gonzales demonstrated
once again last week.
Last year, our globalist rulers attempted to force through a data retention
law in Europe, and then it was discovered the Justice Department was also interested
in such a proposal here in America. “One U.S. industry representative,
who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Justice Department is interested
in at least a two-month requirement,” McCullagh
wrote on June 16, 2005. “Justice Department officials endorsed the concept
at a private meeting with Internet service providers and the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children, according to interviews with multiple people
who were present. The meeting took place on April 27 at the Holiday Inn Select
in Alexandria, Va.” Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry
Association, was told by representatives of the nanny state (apparently including
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children): “You’re
going to have to start thinking about data retention if you don’t want
people to think you’re soft on child porn.”
In short, if you don’t let the nanny state run your business and violate
your rights under the Fourth Amendment, you’re a child porn enabler, sort
of like those of us who defend the Constitution and Bill of Rights and oppose
the criminal occupation of Iraq are terrorists.
“Even if your concern is chasing after child pornographers, the packets
don’t come pre-labeled that way,” Marc Rotenberg, director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, told CNET News. “What effectively
happens is that all ISP customers, when that data is presented to the government,
become potential targets of subsequent investigations.” In Britain, this
process is well along, thanks to the Anti-Terrorism, Crime & Security Act
2001 (simply known as the “Act”), although the retention of data
by ISPs is now “voluntary” (the Secretary of State for the Home
Office has the ability to make this practice compulsory).
All of this will cost us a pile of money and will eventually make simply having
an internet account, website or blog hosting service prohibitively expensive.
McCullagh notes that “many Internet service providers don’t record
information about instant-messaging conversations or Web sites visited.”
Adding the appropriate technology will cost a fortune and that cost will be
passed on to us.
If Diana DeGette’s proposal becomes law, and ISPs are forced
to install the appropriate technology and hire staff to provide data to the
capricious whims of a politically motivated state using child pornography as
an excuse to violate constitutional rights (as the so-called “drug war”
and now the “war against terrorism” are used to violate rights),
look forward to millions of people falling off the internet, especially those
of us already pushed toward the economic edge, thanks to the deliberate and
systematic destruction of the economy by our leaders and their bankster neolib
handlers.
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Read from Looking Glass News
Congress may consider mandatory ISP snooping
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=5883