

Police: Internet providers must keep user logs - nextparadigms
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078653-281/police-internet-providers-must-keep-user-logs/

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nextparadigms
_""The limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from
company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify
predators when they come across child pornography," according to a copy of
Brown's remarks. Any stored logs could, however, be used to prosecute any type
of crime."_

I would laugh, if it wasn't so sad. It really does seem that they were right
in the Torrentfreak article the other day, and now they are all using the
"child pornography" excuse to introduce any type of law like this.

That excuse is starting to become really _insulting_ , because they're
assuming we're all too dumb to recognize they have a different agenda behind
this.

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rhizome
Well, they're going to treat us like idiots until they understand that (the
amorphous) "we" is not. That said:

<https://twitter.com/#!/emptywheel/status/90798809378062337>

It's not about kiddie porn, that's just the excuse.

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nantes
This is _not_ a defense of the proposed legislation, only my experience with
local law enforcement in Kansas.

TL;DR There are many professional and thoughtful police officers and deputies
that take every precaution to protect citizens' privacy. Because of their hard
work and professionalism, logs of the last 24 hours were more than enough to
help their investigation.

While working for a sizable WISP in 2010, we were approached by a local police
office asking if we could help them pin point the location of a murder suspect
on the run from Wisconsin.

The suspect had used our wireless mesh network to access his MySpace account,
which was being monitored. Because our logins reset every 24 hours and because
of the NAT'd nature of our wireless network, we were able to give the police
approximately 10 locations where the suspect might have been within a 200'
radius. The police followed up on those locations and were able to find where
suspect had been staying.

Unfortunately, they missed him by a few hours and he was eventually caught in
Colorado a few days later. It was an eye opening experience. The officers
reiterated again and again that they wanted as little extraneous information
as possible and did not want to involve anyone that had no connection.

~~~
cstavish
This legislation would certainly aid responsible and trust-worthy law
enforcement officers in catching criminals. Bush's (and now Obama's) policy of
warrantless wiretapping may have also been effective against terrorism.
Perhaps torturing indefinitely-held detainees in secret overseas prisons shed
even some light on terrorist operations. That said, I vehemently oppose both
of these policies, despite any good that may have come from them. The former
is obviously by definition abuse, and the latter has a staggering potential
for abuse. As citizens, we should be wary of any legislation where the
potential for abuse is high, or where the consequences of any abuse could be
severe.

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jrockway
Do all laws have such disgusting names? Why do they call it the "Protect Our
Children Act" instead of the "Mandatory IP Address Assignment Data Retention
Act"? Are we all really that stupid?

If this is such an important problem for society, why not just install cameras
in all homes just to make sure nobody is producing or watching child porn?

~~~
geebee
It's all in a name, isn't it? There are strict rules around how you're allowed
to describe legislation as it appears in the voter guide, and this can be very
contentious. Prop 8 in California was ultimately defined as "Eliminates Rights
of Same-Sex Couples to Marry", but proponents of Prop 8 fought pretty hard to
have it listed as "Defines Marriage as a union of a man and a woman" (or
something like that). It makes a difference.

How it is presented in the media is, of course, completely up for grabs. I
think prop 8 was promoted as "Defense of Marriage Act", and some media outlets
went with it, others didn't.

I find examples that irritate me on the right and the left. I'm socially
liberal, but I prefer to say that I support legal access to abortion, rather
than describing myself as "pro-choice".

Of course, in the bare-knuckles world of politics, many people would say
"thanks for the civics lesson, now please put some grease on my facial cut,
check my glove strings, and get my water bottle, cause the bell is about to
ring for round 10".

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cstavish
I think I may start habitually ssh tunneling my traffic through a VPS. My
desire for privacy is not and should not be inherently incriminating.

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loup-vaillant
In France, we set up that a long time ago. Presumably, the amazing effect it
had on child pornography convinced US representative to try the same…

Sarcasm aside, I'm saddened to see my country set the example for something
_opposite_ of the universal human rights declaration.

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beatpanda
We need an internet without ISPs. These attacks on our privacy are getting
ridiculous.

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nolite
I need to get Tor set up now..

