Off-topic, but required reading...

YachtForum · Sep 20, 2006

One-by-one, little-by-little... our privacy is being stripped from us. I can understand the need for security, safety and record keeping, but...

At what point do we draw the line?
At what point do we stand up for our rights?
At what point do we say... enough is enough!

Follow this link, or scoll down to read about legislation to force Internet Service Providers to track what their customers do online...

http://news.com.com/Gonzales+ISPs+must+keep+records+on+users/2100-1028_3-6117455.html?tag=nefd.top

I know this is off-topic, but it has far reaching implications and if you're reading this on the internet... this means you. It's cleverly disguised as a way to catch predators. In reality, this information could be used for many other purposes... and it's not with our better interests in mind. So what's next? Will governments require humans to have implants that track our thoughts?

It's not my intent to start a political dissent. I just thought it was important to raise awareness on this.

Returning to big boats that belch black smoke now...

Yacht News · Sep 20, 2006

My concern would be the privacy issue...it's almost like a peeping tom looking into you bath while your bathing.

landlocked · Sep 20, 2006

People who trade liberty for security will get neither. However people who hack that database will get my online banking password.

YachtForum · Sep 20, 2006

This is clearly one of the most violating initiatives to personal privacy in our nations history. If you are so inclined, here is a list of e-mail addresses for your Governor, Senator or Congressman…

http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm

If you are further inclined, you might want to add to the stuffing this guy’s mailbox is getting…

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
URL: http://www.usdoj.gov/
E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

YachtForum · Sep 20, 2006

Because the link to this story may be discontinued, I have posted the article here.

Credit: CNET News.com

WASHINGTON--Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday stepped up his efforts to lobby for federal laws requiring Internet providers to keep track of what their customers do online.

Gonzales asked senators to adopt "data retention" legislation that would likely force Internet providers to keep customer logs for at least a year or two. Those logs, often routinely discarded after a few months, are intended to be used by police investigating crimes.

"This is a national problem that requires federal legislation," Gonzales said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "We need to figure out a way to have ISPs retain data for a sufficient period of time that would allow us to go back and retrieve it."

As the November election approaches, politicians have been devoting an unprecedented amount of attention to the topic of children, pornography and the Internet: At least three committees are holding hearings on the subject this week alone.

One committee even enlisted an outside-the-Beltway celebrity, basketball icon Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq appeared on videotape before the Senate Commerce Committee, and said: "I've seen images that make me very sad, I've seen images that make me very mad...Yeah, I'm mad, very mad, senator." (O'Neal is a spokesman for the Safe Surfin' Foundation, a federally funded nonprofit group.)

It's unclear what the prospects are for mandatory data retention in Congress this year, or whether politicians will delay action until 2007. One senior House Republican drafted a bill (click for PDF) but then backed away from it, and a Democratic proposal (click for PDF) has not been voted on.

But with the Bush administration firmly behind the concept, and with state and local law enforcement lending a hand in the lobbying efforts and saying such mandates would help protect children, industry groups and privacy advocates may be hard-pressed to head off new regulations. During Tuesday morning's appearance, for instance, Gonzales favorably cited a June letter (click for PDF) endorsing mandatory data retention that was signed by 49 attorneys general. The letter said: "It is clear that something must be done to ensure that ISPs retain data for a reasonable period of time."

Myriad suggestions...

Sen. John McCain, who presided over the afternoon hearing, scolded Internet companies who "were invited to participate and chose not to." He said he would talk to Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, about scheduling an additional hearing during which the companies would be grilled.

Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, a Republican, used the hearing to tout a proposal, now tacked onto a mammoth communications bill and awaiting a vote, that would require all sexually explicit Web content to be labeled as such and home pages of all sites to be free of such content.

That measure, he said, "will help children from unwittingly stumbling across these words and images online."

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, echoed Gonzales' calls for ISPs to hang onto customer records. "Some companies have policies on retention, but they vary widely, are not implemented consistently, and frankly, most are too short to have meaningful prosecutorial value," he said.

Data retention legislation could follow one of two approaches, and it's not clear which is more likely...

One form could require Internet providers and perhaps social-networking sites and search engines to record for a year or two which IP address is used by which user. The other form would be far broader, requiring companies to record data such as the identities of e-mail correspondents, logs of who sent and received instant messages (but not the content of those communications), and the addresses of Web pages visited.

During a series of meetings that Justice Department officials have held with private companies--first reported by CNET News.com--officials have been ambiguous about how they want legislation worded, private-sector participants say. Companies involved have included AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Verizon Communications and trade associations.

Suggestions for congressional action at Tuesday afternoon's hearing didn't stop at data retention by private companies.

Sheriff Michael Brown, who heads an Internet Crimes Against Children task force in Bedford County, Va., called on Congress to ensure that any state, federal, local or educational institution that receives federal funding also conduct "appropriate transactional logging to allow the location of individuals that use that access in the exploitation of children." He said in his testimony (click for PDF) that the government could not, "in good conscience," make such demands of the private sector if it didn't also do the same.

That concept--restrictions slapped on using federal funds--echoes a 2000 federal law called the Children's Internet Protection Act. CIPA effectively forced schools and libraries to filter sexually explicit Web sites by tying that requirement to the receipt of federal funds, an approach the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in 2003.

The concept of more federal laws was popular at Tuesday's pair of hearings. Sharon Cooper, an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, urged politicians to require that all public-school health classes, from elementary to high school, teach "child sexual abuse prevention strategies as well as online and communication technology safety strategies."

And Sen. Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican, suggested that the Justice Department create a successor to the widely criticized Meese Commission, a 1986 federal panel that claimed to document the harmful effects of pornography. "Isn't it time we revisited the creation of an attorney's general commission and update, if you will, the kind of things the Meese Commission prophesied would happen?" Bennett asked.

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives will have its own hearing on the Internet and child pornography.

'Preservation' vs. 'retention'...

At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention, or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.

A 1996 called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."

Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time.

An IP address is a unique 4-byte address used to communicate with a device on a computer network that relies on the Internet Protocol. An IP address associated with CNET.com, for instance, is 216.239.113.101. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)

When adopting its data retention rules, the European Parliament approved U.K.-backed requirements saying communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.

The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time and duration of phone calls, voice over Internet Protocol calls, or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.
Click to expand...

OutMyWindow · Sep 20, 2006

Everyone wants law & order but is afraid on how it’s implemented.
The sad fact is that the Internet is the new tool of choice whether it is for the good (yacht forums) or the bad (child porn).
Being a father, I’m OK with them doing whatever to get these people of the street.
Bank fraught is also a popular gig with Internet crooks, if you don’t have Internet records, how will you prosecute them.
Not that long ago, people were all exited about security cameras in public places; I must say, it’s nice to see they caught the London subway bombers.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had the best of all worlds all the time and lived in Happy Land.

Arniev · Sep 20, 2006

CCamper said:

This is clearly one of the most violating initiatives to personal privacy in our nations history.
Click to expand...

One of our most IMPORTANT and BASIC RIGHTS, the Right to Privacy, is being taken away from us by the very government that is supposed to protect it!

We don't need BIG BROTHER snooping over our shoulder, in the guise of fighting crime!

YachtForum · Sep 20, 2006

I agree that protecting children from predators and porn should be a priority, but there are OTHER ways to go about doing this. For example, triple-X extensions could be mandated, in place of .com, .net, .biz, etc. This is a viable solution that would give parents control over what their children can view online. In addition, software can limit who they exchange messages with.

Unfortunately, the porn industry has gained enough lobbying power to curtail the initiative for xxx extensions. And now... law abiding, tax paying, decent people will pay the price. If people don't take action to protect their privacy, then we will have lost one of the most important freedoms we have. More and more, legislation is being quietly passed, usually in the form of an amendment that doesn’t receive much notice. Before long, we have new laws that are controlling every aspect of our lives.

The trickle down effect of this legislation will have broad reaching effects on an unimaginable scale. This has nothing to do with porn, sleeze or perverts. The internet is the most valuable education tool the world has EVER known. It has brought about rapid paradigm shifts, vast collective knowledge, radical new ideas and ultimately… brought us all closer together on a level playing field.

The ability to research new technologies, materials and applications, along with business models and the ideas that are developed from this research… are the types of proprietary information that will suffer. If someone else is able to see what you’re researching, implementing or conducting… then the net has lost great value for consumers and business alike. If you think the internet is treacherous due to spyware… you haven’t seen anything yet.

techmati · Sep 20, 2006

have you read this stuff from earlier in the year? getting ISPs to keep logs well thats not so difficult. Using Narus technology to snoop optical traffic at carrier speeds well thats quite amazing and worrying especially when it is done on peering links as well.

Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT&T - April 08, 2006
http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/ATT_tech_outs_NSA_spy_room.asp#statement

Bush administration to intervene in ATT surveillance case - April 29, 2006
http://www.spamdailynews.com/publish/Bush_administration_to_intervene_in_ATT_surveillance_case.asp

AT&T leaks sensitive info in NSA suit - May 26, 2006
http://news.com.com/AT38T+leaks+sensitive+info+in+NSA+suit/2100-1028_3-6077353.html?tag=nefd.lede

At&T Redactions - 26 May 2006
http://cryptome.org/klein-decl.htm

Judicial Panel Merges NSA Spying Suits - August 11, 2006
http://www.betanews.com/article/Judicial_Panel_Merges_NSA_Spying_Suits/1155308440

airship · Sep 21, 2006

One can only commiserate with this yacht forum's owner with regards to increasing legislation and the loss of privacy.

Having always loved Gordon Lightfoot's music and lyrics, may I offer this consolation:

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
But time has no beginnings and history has no bounds
As to this verdant country they came from all around
They sailed upon her waterways and they walked the forests tall
And they built the mines the mills and the factories for the good of us all

A long time ago and probably well before the Internet, an individual's innermost thoughts and vices remained a secret, known only to himself (and his God). That could only be betrayed by some obvious and unambigious action.

Today, perhaps because to many, the Internet has become "an extension of their very being", the modern Man will have to get used to sharing "what he is" with the 21st Century "God". That is, the State. Who may decide at their whim, whether to act in a God-like manner, or not.

Whatever, what is certain, is that if they consider that you have transgressed "the law", your punishment no longer merely awaits you at heaven's gate, but here, on earth...Amen.

Codger · Sep 23, 2006

What exactly is a youngster doing surfing the web unsupervised anyway?
Seems to be somewhat akin to dropping your child off to play by himelf in Port Harcourt or Manhatten.
I take it that children accessing porn accidentally is the issue. Or is there something else going on here?

techmati · Sep 23, 2006

Codger said:

Seems to be somewhat akin to dropping your child off to play by himelf in Port Harcourt or Manhatten.
Click to expand...

i agree. problem is that many parents know much less about computers than their children. ideally site blocking should be done at an isp level. but it is a very difficult technology to implement successfully.

i see some entries in my site stats as
http://parentalcontrols.aol.com/webunlock/PendingRequests.adp

i assume that means that aol does not know my site so it has to be unlocked for children using a connection with that parental control service. gives an idea how inept the technology really is. that would be quite effective indeed but hardly intelligent technology at all.

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