Attorney General Gonzales wants your ISP to keep more personal usage data:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.
Testifying to a Senate panel, Gonzales acknowledged the concerns of some company executives who say legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on customers’ privacy rights. But he said the growing threat of child pornography over the Internet was too great.
“This is a problem that requires federal legislation,” Gonzales told the Senate Banking Committee. “We need information. Information helps us makes cases.”
Notice how the government wants the right to torture so they can torture terrorists (and the terrorist-adjacent). Except, once those unitary executive rules take effect there will be nothing saying that the person held incommunicado, without charges, and maybe beaten with a frayed electrical cord absolutely has to be a terrorist. As long as the president or the president’s designee deems it necessary for security your aunt Martha could find herself strapped to the waterboard. But hey, stuff happens.
So Gonzales wants the right to snoop through your and my internet usage data because… look! Child porn! The chance that the White House will sign legislation with language mandating oversight rules that make sure that these new powers are used exclusively to fight child porn of course hovers somewhere between zero and negative infinity. So let’s strip away the hoopla and spell out what the White House wants here, which is to increase the government’s ability to snoop on you for whatever reason they see fit.
If you think that the problem with America is that we are not yet enough of a surveillance state then great, phone your Congressperson and pass on your support. That also goes for Glenn Reynolds libertarians who have special dispensation to oppose everything that libertarianism used to stand for. If you don’t think highly of government surveillance then try to make your judgment without getting caught up in the smokescreen over child porn. Anecdotes make terrible policy.
SomeCallMeTim
That also goes for Glenn Reynolds libertarians who have special dispensation to oppose everything that libertarianism used to stand for.
I thought we were all using the terms “glibertarian” or “schmibertarian” to describe the Reynolds of the world, in order to avoid tarring actual libertarians.
Keith
Given that the Internet is based in ethernet, and all packets are public (and for porn downloads, generally not encrypted) between segments, why can’t they get the information themselves? If they supposedly don’t go on fishing expeditions for data, I would assume that means they know at least the source of the child porn & can therefore packet-sniff the source plus anyone opening a session with it. That’s a very targeted search as opposed to looking through nationwide traffic records, and they can get the permanent MAC addresses as opposed to the potentially dynamic IP address.
Marcus Wellby
Ew, the internet is on computers now!
Pb
If that isn’t an oblique Daily Show reference, it should be:
Rob
It appears to me that true libertarians would have to stop voting GOP. This should have happened several years ago.
There seems to be many people that like to think they vote on the libertarian side of the political spectrum, and have always voted R, but at some time they will have to reconsider that choice.
If they don’t then maybe that was just an excuss for voting R or maybe there aren’t that many of them, or something else.
I have always thought I tilted to the libertarian side, but have voted mostly D because what I am more concerned with religious intrusion and social conservatism, than I am about the government spying on me. Not that I am not concerned about the government spying on me, but until recently I never considered it a real threat.
Jill
But background checks and the info collected when buying a gun (or 10) gets destroyed within 48 hours. These Republicans are always making so much sense.
Richard 23
Oh no, not the kiddy porn jackalope!
Why won’t these bozos ever tell the truth?
The Other Steve
It’s interesting, a few years ago on /. they were arguing about how great Napster was and were frustrated how the nasty lawyers were shutting down the servers, and they’d fix that by building peer to peer systems that would hide everything.
And I pointed out that nothing on the internet was anonymous, if you were paying attention. That is, if peer to peer became a problem, the governments would mandate that things change so that they could more easily track things down.
And that’s what is happening.
The child porn problem has come about because of peer to peer services such as tor, etc. The problem is, that criminal usage of something from a standpoint of the United States is virtually indistinguishable from criminal usage from the standpoint of China.(i.e. dissenting against the govt) Technically, that is, they’re both the same problem to be solved. i.e. tracking.
The Other Steve
When I worked at the university library back 20 years ago…
We would keep checkout slips for magazines one month. Just long enough for us to tally them up, keep track of how many people were checking out Newsweek versus Time, versus National Geographic.
And then they’d be destroyed.
Why?
Plausible deniability. If the govt comes demanding our records, we are sorry, but that is all we have.
And that was in the 1980s long before the patriot act. The ALA was well aware of how governments could use information, and they encouraged processes which avoided it’s abuse.
Tim F.
Viva Stephen Colbert.
Tsulagi
The torture post of our rendering a Canadian citizen coupled with this reminded me of a nifty provision in Patriot Act II. The sequel legislation that Ashcroft wanted more than Rush craves Oxy.
The provision would have enabled the president or the AG to declare someone in this country an enemy combatant, revoke their U.S. citizenship, then render their butt to a country of their choosing. No court oversight, no delays, send them straight to Egypt.
Now, of course with all the data mining they’ve been doing and more they want to add to the haystack, no way they could make mistakes as with the Canadian. Right? Plus, the moronarch who loves to rule by
fatwasexecutive findings written by Abu Gonzales wouldn’t have cherry picked that rendering provision from Patriot II for a finding. Nope, remember, these are the grownups who brought back honor and integrity. Have faith. But still, if you get an unsolicited invitation to take a ride in a Gulfstream, I’d pass.BlogReeder
Now I can agree with Tim F. on this. The article is unclear about what customer records mean. Do ISPs save all cached pages?
lard lad
From the puckered orifice of Alberto Gonzalez:
Wow. Just… wow. And this clown is the Attorney General of the United States. You have to admire Bush, in a perverse kind of way, for probing beneath enough rocks to scare up an attorney general worse than the likes of Edwin Meese and John Mitchell.
Gonzalez is beneath contempt. To call him a douchebag is an insult to feminine hygiene.
sglover
Wow. Just… wow. And this clown is the Attorney General of the United States. You have to admire Bush, in a perverse kind of way, for probing beneath enough rocks to scare up an attorney general worse than the likes of Edwin Meese and John Mitchell.
Gonzales has actually pulled off the extraordinary trick of making me nostalgic for John Ashcroft.
leefranke
“glibertarian”
Gets my vote.
How about a post/thread on what to call those that abandon their libertarian roots for the warm embrace of authoritarianism?
Pb
What, the usual words don’t apply? Or is partisan neocon fascist traitor just too long? Anyhow, according to the typical 2D political model, any “big-government conservative” is a de-facto authoritarian.
Also, check out this post–apparently a Trotskyite is just a Neocon who isn’t in a position of power yet:
The Other Steve
No, and it would not be feasible for them to do so.
I think what Gonzales is talking about, is every Router in the country would need to maintain a log of every packet sent through it. Not necessarily the content, but the source, target and a time stamp. This is essentially like keeping a record of every telephone number you’ve dialed or received a call from.
It’s a massive undertaking. How do you accomplish it? Router phones home? Router dumps to disk? to tape? Who archives these things? Where do we store them? If it phones home, who pays for that increased bandwidth? How long do we archive for?
And keep in mind, we are talking about tens of thousands of routers all over the country.
Even then, I’m not sure it’s feasible and I’m not convinced it can’t be defeated. Consider an anonymizing server… lot’s of people connect to it, and it connects to the bad site. Whose fault is it? The anonymizing server? If they don’t maintain logs of who requested what, how will you track it back?
It seems to me it’s a lot easier to just go after the people distributing rather than receiving. They’re a static target. They don’t move, and you can find them fairly easily.
BlogReeder
Lard Lad says:..You have to admire Bush..in…a way…for…Gonzales…
I knew a conservative was lurking beneath. :)
Sorry. I was scanning the comments and saw that phrase and had to do a double take.
The Other Steve
A woman I work with is originally from China, and of course my girlfriend is from Russia.
Both countries attacked homosexuality, lewd behavior and what not as evidence of a morally corrupt western culture. While at the same time discouraging the practice of religion. For instance, chinese girls were not allowed to wear shorts to school. Other aspects of western clothing were also bad, like jeans, t-shirts, etc.
Similarly, both countries don’t give a shit about the environment, workers safety, etc. All Republican side of the issues.
BlogReeder
It seems to me it’s a lot easier to just go after the people distributing rather than receiving. They’re a static target. They don’t move, and you can find them fairly easily.
Sounds more reasonable to me. Would it matter it they were offshore?
LoafingOaf
Tim F says: ” That also goes for Glenn Reynolds libertarians who have special dispensation to oppose everything that libertarianism used to stand for.”
I always love when socialists like Tim F tell libertarians that they are not true libertarians.
Tim F recently took part in a censorship campaign against ABC in which Tim F transmitted erroneous propaganda to his readers.
Don’t talk to me about libertarianism.
Correct your errors during your censorship campaign.
Pb
LoafingOaf,
Cite?
DougJ
Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. If you are not an enemy of the country, then you should have no problem with the governmnet reading my email. They’re welcome to read mine — all they’ll learn is that I love America and hate terrorists.
What are people like Tim F afraid of? It makes me wonder what they’re really up to. Maybe it’s time to fly some of you to Syrica to be tortured. Then we’ll find out what you really think.
Hyperion
what did that canadian guy have to hide?
cd6
Gayness, one can only assume
Zifnab
Don’t forget that the vast amount of child pornographers and abusers are gays, right? It’s all part of the homosexual agenda. So we better start spying on all those homos for any suspicious activity quick, maybe even start doing neighborhood sweeps and house-to-house searches, before anyone young innocent blonde-haired blue-eyed white child is viciously assaulted by one of the racidal homosexual agendaists.
Muslims want to kill you. Pedophiles are everywhere. Only the Republicans can protect us. That’s why we need to know where your grandma Phyllis has been Googling.
DougJ
If you think he’s innocent, you’re more naive than I thought.
craigie
That’s right. They accused him, so he must have been guilty.
Eric
So what’s to stop the government to send you unwanted child pornography then breaking down your door to arrest you for possession? I saw something similiar to this once before on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Richard 23
Ah, the Police Raid sketch.
Didn’t something similar happen to Willie Nelson? Except the bag of illicit substances were his I suppose.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
The policeman is correct. Narcotics were on the premises, and the premises are YOUR domicile under YOUR control. The fact that he brought the narcotics into the domicile is irrelevant. Same thing goes for child pornography; its very presence under your roof, even if brought there by a law enforcement official, qualifies you as a sexual predator.
Syria has laws against that sort of thing.
leefranke
I did not realize we had dixie chick sympathizers in the readership….
(is the snark a bit too obscure?)
Angry Engineer
I keep repeating the same thing to my friends every time Gonzales’ name shows up in the news. At least Ashcroft was interested in preserving gun rights – Gonzales certainly can’t be counted on for that.
Angry Engineer
Unless Tim F advocated that the government step in – and I don’t remember seeing that – then I don’t see any inconsistancy. In fact, pushing for a consumer boycott (as opposed to governing corporate behavior via legislation) is about as true to libertarian principles as one can get.
Zifnab
That terrible horrible censorship campaign. The one in which Tim, Clinton and his administration, the FBI agents who worked on the film, and a great number of moderate pundits requested that ABC remove or rewrite a number of scenes that never even had any close parallels in real life. How dare they try to put the docu- back in docu-drama!
ABC has every right to air whatever version of history its right-wing pundits can dream up. And so do the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. Why can’t you just watch the ad and judge for yourself whether John Kerry was a filthy commie traitor who’s cowardly actions and political manueverings managed to get himself a Purple Heart? Because Propoganda is protected under the 1st Amendment, so long as it doesn’t involve wearing an anti-war T-shirt within 1000 feet of the President.
Tim F.
Stalker for teh win! Oaf gets bonus points for failing to comprehend the meaning of censorship.
yet another jeff
Tim was declaring censorship just like Clear Channel censored the Dixie Chicks…sheesh.
Why was it the market at work then and not now? Why is there so much Bush Derangement Syndrome on the right?
The Other Steve
It does not seem unreasoable to me for the Govt to establish some sort of internet filter. We have such filters on people entering the country, goods entering the country. Why not internet transmissions?
That itself is an interesting problem. We’d need a treaty with foreign govts promising to track down child porn. If the country does not abide, then we filter out everything comin from that country.
Of course, now the question is… anonymizers running in Finland transmitting stuff coming from Thailand, as an example. How do we handle that?
So wait, this question goes back to the ISP routing issue. How do you handle foreign countries? They’re not going to log routing for you.
Zifnab
Off topic, but from the Huffington Post. This is too hilarious.
http://www2.kbcitv.com/x79311.xml
Sojourner
Serious question: Given that they are using the airwaves, which are owned by the public, to what extent do they actually have total freedom to do so? At what point do they have a responsibility to the public?