

SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children" - fchollet
http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponsor-has-another-internet-bill-that-records-you-247-20210264/

======
biafra
"Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all
of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to
be stored for 18 months at all times."

How can my ISP store my search history? DuckDuckGo and Google offer https to
do the searching.

How can my ISP know where I use my credit card? Whenever I pay by credit card
I use https.

~~~
esteth
I might be revealing my stupidity here, but surely your ISP can MITM the HTTPS
handshake and decrypt all of your traffic? Unless you have a pre-arranged key
that hasn't travelled through their network.

~~~
vidarh
SSL is designed so that only the server with the private key for a specific
certificate can complete the handshake correctly for that certificate, and the
certificate is tied to the domain name.

The ISP can MITM the handshake and return a different certificate, but unless
a certificate authority supported by your browser is complicit, they can't get
that certificate signed for the domain you're trying to visit, and the browser
will complain.

~~~
ori_b
I would expect that if the US government is requiring this, they'd also be
able to get at least a few US based certificate authorities to play along.

~~~
vidarh
If they did, we'd get versions of Firefox and Chromium at least with the US
certificate authorities root certs yanked out within a day, and companies
scrambling to replace their SSL certs with certs that'd still be trusted by
users.

Unless they made it illegal to, I'm sure we'd see all the major browsers work
to deprecate those certificate authorities pretty quickly - not doing so would
make SSL useless.

~~~
keen
_I'm sure we'd see all the major browsers work to deprecate those certificate
authorities pretty quickly_

What about the recent Comodo breaches? Their certs are still trusted by all
major browsers (as far as I'm aware).

I realise they weren't complicit in issuing the fraudulent certs, but the
effect is the same.

------
zdw
Related: [http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-lobby-absolutely-
loves...](http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-lobby-absolutely-loves-child-
pornography-110709/)

There's a very slippery slope of misuse that eventually creeps in with any new
enforcement privilege. One example - the extra abilities the Patriot act gave
to law enforcement that now are used almost exclusively for non-terrorism
related investigations.

~~~
_Y_
That seems to be the right way to fight these things, if those that have been
abused as children are against this law, then this law isn't to protect the
children, but to simply push it under the rug.

------
tzs
The first paragraph is completely wrong. Of the things listed in the first
paragraph as things the bill requires, not a single one is correct.

The only factual statement in that paragraph is the link to the bill text.

In fact, I cannot find any even remotely plausible (or even an implausible)
way to misread the bill so as to come up with his claims. Either the author is
simply lying (to generate controversy and traffic perhaps), or is just
repeating something he got elsewhere and made no effort whatsoever to verify.

This is not HN quality material. Flagging.

For those curious, here's what is actually going on. Under current law, an ISP
has to cough up certain customer information to the government upon a proper
legal request. That information is name, address, phone number connection
records or session times and durations, how long the customer has been a
customer and what services they use, subscriber phone number or subscriber
number, temporary network addresses, means and source of how they pay for the
service (including credit card number if that is how they pay).

As far as I can see, there is no requirement that the ISP retain this
information. They just have to make it available if they have it. Practically,
of course, most of it will be retained for business purposes.

What this bill adds to this is that the ISP has to keep a log for one year of
temporary IP address assignments and mapping of them to the customer
information listed earlier. So, it's adding a new data item to log, and it is
making it so that the customer information mentioned early has to be kept a
year (which in practice is not a change because it is almost certainly kept
anyway regardless of legal requirements).

It also adds a section that says that access to this information may not be
compelled except by a government entity. This may be good news for those who
are doing file sharing, as on first reading it would prevent plaintiffs in
civil suits from getting access to the information.

Anyway, there is nothing whatsoever that will "have your internet service
provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a
credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP
information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored
for 18 months at all times".

------
twunde
Its worth noting that the RH (reported in house) version of the bill is
significantly better. This requires logging only ip addresses and only for 12
months AND the response may only be compelled by a government entity.

    
    
            (1) A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.
    
            `(2) Access to a record or information required to be retained under this subsection may not be compelled by any person or other entity that is not a governmental entity.

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c1122yS...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c1122yStpw:):

~~~
twunde
It still needs work, like requiring reasonable suspicion of child pornography,
but it is significantly better. Also if anyone can confirm whether or not that
Reported in House means that the actual bill that has been fixed and that it
is not just suggested changes to the bill that would be great

------
nextparadigms
We need to call them out on how Orwellian this bill is and how they are hiding
behind child abuse to monitor the whole Internet and everyone, before they get
a chance to ask "why are we against protecting children online?".

Let's frame the issue before they do. Also bring up the point that Rep.
Lofgren tried to add an amendment called _"Keep Every American's Digital Data
for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act."_. Of course
they rejected it.

~~~
Nogwater
Maybe Reddit should organize a campaign to send every member of congress a
copy of _1984_, and maybe _Fahrenheit 451_. Seems like they could pull it off.
On the other hand, it might just give them more ideas.

~~~
pi18n
They could use a new book, they've finished reading Brave New World a while
ago.

------
JumpCrisscross
When is Lamar Smith's next election? Are there any candidates running who
would say they're opposed to this nonsense? Seriously consideing putting
together a PAC in New York City.

Update: Ouch, this will be expensive...
[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/elections.php?cycle=2...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/elections.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00001811&type=I)

~~~
w1ntermute
If there's a group of people that understand technology less than Smith and
care less about protecting freedom of speech on the internet than him, it
would have to be the people living in Texas's 21st congressional district,
which he represents.

Smith's been in the House since 1987, so he won't be going away any time soon
without a fight. He won his last reelection with 69% of the votes, in 2010.
Even though you've got 2 more years to prepare to take him down, I'd say
you're extremely unlikely to succeed, particularly when you consider how short
the public's collective attention span is.

Reddit already did an analysis of this[0], and determined which Congresspeople
who supported bills like the Patriot Act, NDAA, and SOPA/PIPA are most
vulnerable in the 2012 elections. I think they decided upon one or two targets
to focus on, which is a smart move. If they can come up with a winning
strategy and get a pro-internet/freedom of speech politician who sticks to his
principles into office, then they have hope of gaining support from other
groups of people in future elections.

0:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nylx0/a_megalist_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nylx0/a_megalist_of_congressmen_facing_2012_reelection/)

\-----

Personally, I believe that many of the current problems with the political
system stem from (a) the electoral system and (b) the campaign finance system.

The electoral system allows otherwise unelectable politicians to get into
Congress and hold onto their seats purely by virtue of gerrymandered
Congressional districts. This[1] is Texas's 21st Congressional district.
Ignore the vast swaths of land in the middle of nowhere, as those are not very
densely populated. Focus on the parts of the district that approach the cities
of San Antonio and Austin. See how oddly shaped they are? This is to ensure
that only wealthy people in those cities are in the district. By combining the
social conservatives (religious people) in the rural areas with the fiscal
conservatives (wealthy people) in the suburban areas, they've created a
district that is unwinnable for a non-Republican (Democrat or 3rd party).

Moreover, the lack of proportional representation in favor of a winner-takes-
all situation makes it impossible for 3rd parties to get a foothold in the
public consciousness, so that they can build over several elections into a
formidable force. So even in districts that aren't so blatantly gerrymandered,
you're left with what's essentially a political duopoly.

We've gone over the campaign finance issues with lobbying and all in other
threads here, so you probaly already know the issues with that. The bottom
line is that solving any of these issues requires first getting "our" people
into office, _using the current system_.

The best hope of doing this is to identify local elections where we can first
bring in an opposition candidate who supports us. This requires an election
where (a) there's an incumbent who isn't really liked by his/her constituents,
(b) a dearth of opposition candidates, and (c) someone living in the district
who's supportive of our views and has the time, interest, and ability to run
and win. This person would have to run as a Democrat or Republican (whichever
the incumbent isn't) in order to get people to vote for him. If we can repeat
this process in the _same geographical area_ for several other positions, all
of these candidates could then leave the parties they're a member of _at the
same time_ and form a new one. Now you would have a 3rd party with credibility
and _several respectable members already in political office_. From there, it
would be a matter of expanding to other states, and eventually to the national
level.

1:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Texas.21st.Co...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Texas.21st.Congressional.District.gif)

~~~
wisty
(a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits
don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a
senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation,
compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say
stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a
few extremists really love, and if voting is compulsory you'll have normal
people voting", and not realise that's a good thing.

I've no idea what the Australians get wrong ... though it probably involves
having too many levels of government.

~~~
graphene
_The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory
voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system_

I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following
politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation
where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some
degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an undue amount of
influence to a small number of party bigwigs, and the inevitable mess results.

As for compulsory voting, at least in Belgium, it has been credited with
fuelling the rise of more extreme parties, notably the anti-immigration
Flemish nationalists, since people who feel disenfranchised by the whole
system tend to cast a protest vote, without seriously considering the
consequences. Also, the notion that you could get fined or jailed for not
voting seems to me to be as illiberal an idea as ACTA or the Patriot act.

~~~
vidarh
Coming from a country with proportional voting (Norway), I can't say I agree
it makes people toe the party line - in Norway all the big parties have
factions with varying level of parliamentary support.

But even if it did, it makes it sufficiently easy to establish new parties and
get representation in parliament that the parties are careful about not
letting too big conflicts arise these days (one of the current coalition
partners in government, for example, started out as a large chunk of the youth
organization of the other, which broke away as they were far more left wing
than the parent party)

Norway has regularly had 10+ parties represented in parliament (with 169
seats).

If done well, this results in an environment where everyone are interested in
compromises because it's the only way of getting anything done - anyone who
just tries being obstructionist like the current crop of Republicns would end
up with no influence, as it just makes the other parties go elsewhere to find
someone to cooperate with to establish majorities.

The current government is a coalition of three parties, and coalition
governments have become the rule rather than the exception in Norway over the
last few decades.

~~~
graphene
I meant that members of parliament toe the party line in PR systems -- are you
saying that members of parliament in Norway commonly vote against their party
faction or even switch factions when they feel like it? If so, I'm impressed
:-)

I fully agree about it being important that parties can be esatblished and
elected easily; again in Belgium, there is a rule (initially devised to keep
out the increasingly popular Flemish nationalists) that parties need to get 5%
in elections to gain any seats at all.. It's good to hear not all countries
have this!

I'm not so sure about the spirit of compromise being so positive; again
relating to Belgium, decades of compromise agreements between Flemish and
Waloon, and left- and right-leaning parties has created an institutional
structure that is very complicated and obtuse (google the term "Belgian
compromise"), and indeed its complexity and inflexibility have been at the
heart of the recent problems.

It might be a bit unfair of me to base all my argument on the example of a
single country, but I guess my main point is that it is not so much the choice
of political system which determinces how messed up things get, but much more
the polititians themselves. I'm not surprised that you as a Norwegian seem
quite satisfied with your political system, because Scandinavians have a
reputation for being prudent and reasonable, and I would bet that it wouldn't
make all that much difference if the rules there were more like in the US for
example.

~~~
vidarh
It isn't unusual for votes to go against their party faction, though the
parties do generally have rules that allow the party to demand they follow the
party line in certain situations, though they can't legally enforce that. The
worst they can do is exclude said person. There have been a number of
situations where there have been important cases where they've tried to
enforce a specific vote and members have left the party in question in order
to vote as they pleased, which makes the parties careful about when they use
those mechanisms.

But the ability for smaller parties to get in also mean that each of the
parties are far more homogenous than the US parties, for example, so it's
natural for them to toe the party line to a reasonable extent for important
votes. In US terms, most of the parties in the current Norwegian parliament
would've been members of the Democratic Party, but in Norway that span is
considered so wide that it would be unthinkable for any of the current parties
to merge.

In terms of barriers, there's a 4% limit below which you need to get in on
direct votes, but no other limits (other than being able to fill a list, so
you need at most a couple of dozen people willing to put their names on each
regional list for parliamentary elections - a low enough number that even
parties with a few hundred members have no problems fielding lists in
parliamentary electins). The way the Norwegian system works is that most seats
are tied to a region, so there's, say (I haven't looked up the actual number
recently), 18 seats for Oslo. Each party provides an ordered list. So for the
first 2 people on a party list to get in on direct votes, they need the total
number of votes for Oslo / number of seats * 2, or more.

All the parties that get more than 4% nationwide then shares in a pot of
additional seats that are used to even out _their_ share to best match the
actual nationwide percentages. Which regional party list is awarded the seat
depends on who got closest to getting in, but the party is determined based on
proportion of the vote.

The combination of this is that small parties have a chance of getting in - it
takes 15.000-20.000 or so votes per region to win a seat - and larger parties
proportions are further evened out so there's no tactical advantages in
fighting harder for "close" seats. At the same time a regional link is
maintained, which tends to be one of the thing people like to use as an
argument for single seat constituencies.

In terms of compromises, I think Belgium has a big problem because it is too
disparate. Belgium has two alternatives: Devolution of power (or splitting the
country up), or compromises that nobody will be happy with but that are still
better for either side than if the other side were to shove things down their
throat. When these types of compromises are bad it is usually a sign that both
sides to some extent would prefer to shove decisions down the other sides
throat, or they could've agreed to devolve more power to the regions...

Norway does have enough conflict too where neither side are happy, but that's
the nature of a system that represents everyone reasonably well.

------
RexRollman
I really don't understand why a republican would sponsor this. Their party
claims to want a smaller government, and yet, they don't have a problem with a
more intrusive one?

~~~
nextparadigms
BOTH parties agree on the important things : getting more control and power
for themselves.

------
skymt
> Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all
> of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP
> to be stored for 18 months at all times.

Where did the author get that idea? I just read the bill, and the only part
relating to ISP record-keeping is the section requiring ISPs to keep a log of
what IP address is assigned to a customer. There's nothing about tracking
searches or financial transactions, or any traffic monitoring at all.

------
brian_cloutier
Am I reading this right? At the bottom of section 8 is this gem.

[...] a court shall presume [...] that the distribution or publication using
the Internet of a photograph of [...] a specific person serves no legitimate
purpose [...]

What does that mean? If you transmit a picture of somebody without them giving
the okay first you're probably up to no good?

~~~
pestaa
In my country you cannot store/distribute a picture of a person without
explicit permission if the person is the picture's main content.

You can, however, use a picture of a group of people without asking them one
by one.

------
ramblerman
Lamar Smith, creator of SOPA and this bill, is the same guy who killed the
"Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011". Proposed by Barney Frank
and Ron Paul, he cut it down before it had a chance using his rank of chairman
of the House Committee on the Judiciary.

It would have pushed legislation from the federal to the state level. . A lot
of our young ones are ruined in our current penal system over trivial crimes.

He is a staunch anti abortion activist, and has signed multiple bills to make
abortion as difficult as possible, if not impossible. Even signing a bill to
prevent a mother from taking her unborn over state lines to perform an
abortion.

If you ever want to know my political opinion on something, just check Lamar
Smiths' position, I'll be on the other end of it.

------
brudgers
Proposal: Smith's Law

Every discussion of internet regulations eventually references child
pornography.

------
drblast
The usual assumption about politicians and lawmaking goes something like this:

A lawmaker receives large contributions from certain moneyed groups with an
agenda, and will introduce legislation favorable to that group. The only way
to prevent this from happening is to either contribute more money to the
opposing side or more directly by ensuring that passage of the legislation
will anger so much of the populace that no amount of money will save the
incumbent come election time.

That doesn't seem to make sense in this case. The same technologically
clueless people who introduced SOPA aren't of their own accord going to decide
that ISP's need to keep a year of DHCP logs in case that information is useful
later.

It looks like the only entity to benefit from this would be the U.S. Attorney
General, as it ostensibly will prevent the circumstance where the evidence of
a case hinges on tying a person/household to an IP address but the logs are
missing or overwritten.

Creepy. If this involved real-world monitoring and logging it would be the
biggest news story of the day, but since it's the Internet it's just tech
stuff.

------
drunkenmasta
"Think of the Children!" will always remain a tactic as long as people are
concerned that, by opposing the argument, they will be seen as "anti-
children." Simply knowing that it is a tactic should take away the fear of
opposing it for what it is. A manipulation tactic.

------
rdtsc
This is the nuclear option but also shows they are desperate.

------
josteink
I love living in a country where the government realizes it is too
technologically inept to try to legislate and regulate the internet.

It just creates normal laws for the normal world, and whenever things from the
internet crosses borders to the real world (like Amazon-orders) that just
falls under the normal laws for mail-order businesses.

That seems reasonable and fully sufficient to me.

------
bytenotes
Is it possible that a website be created that will aggregate thoughtful
arguments against such legislation, attach videos, talking points, letter
templates and such as well as connect local people that can practically get
involved in resisting constant attacks on freedom?

Or is there such a website already?

------
noonespecial
"Ultima Ratio Politicus"

 _English Translation: Think of the children._

~~~
jugularity
Yup. The most popular current excuses to shirk problems by suppressing
liberty:

(1) anti-terrorism (2) health and safety (3) think of the children

I was actually pretty shocked to hear initial talk of protecting American
inventions from 'foreign thieves'. That kind of language seems way out of
date...

------
Vivtek
Dammit, I hate being right: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476099>

------
iamgilesbowkett
Y Combinator is right to be mad, but wrong about the target.

Smith also attempted to expand the DMCA in 2006, again pushing for new
wiretapping privileges for police. It's a question whether this guy is trying
harder to destroy the Internet or the Fourth Amendment, but imagine how
awesome it would be if that was just an academic question about a guy who
didn't have a career in politics any more.

The bad news is he's been in office since 1987 and has won his most recent
elections with crushing victories. The good news is he's a Republican, and
SOPA is wildly anti-business; the other bad news is it may be tough to make
that stick, because it's only obvious to the technologically literate.
Fortunately, he also he has motivated, successful enemies on his home turf;
his district includes parts of staunchly Democratic Austin, and that's because
the Supreme Court ordered his Congressional district redrawn after the League
of United Latin American Citizens won a gerrymandering lawsuit against then-
governor Rick Perry. This probably also means he's extremely corrupt, but it's
hard to imagine SOPA coming from anybody who wasn't extremely corrupt in the
first place.

Let's all form a political action committee called the Coalition To Defend The
Internet From Ignorant, Corrupt Assholes and get contributions from every
millionaire in Silicon Valley so we can deep-six this guy so completely "Lamar
Smith" becomes a synonym for "no career in politics ever again."

We can use a two-pronged attack; fund his Republican competitors, and find
ways that they can show how pro-Hollywood and anti-business SOPA was
(Republicans hate Hollywood), while at the same time also funding his liberal
opponents. A Democratic victory in Smith's district is very unlikely, but his
Democratic opponents probably hate him enough to make some noise, and I think
it's extremely likely that Texas is full of younger Republicans who would love
to take his place. There's got to be at least one who understands the
Internet.

If you want context, I also posted nearly exactly this same thing on my blog,
plus a bunch of links (mostly to Wikipedia) providing factual backdrop:

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-end-lamar-
smit...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-end-lamar-smiths-
political-career.html)

~~~
tszyn
Let me just point out that, according to the research done by Steven Levitt,
author of Freakonomics, money does not win elections, so if you agree with
Levitt's conclusions, financing Smith's opponents is not the best way to
proceed.

------
shareme
Doesn't corrupting US Congress harm children?

It devalues their future voting rights, etc at the very least.

------
nkcraddock
Where's YC with a startup to catch people who sexually abuse children?

~~~
pgeorgi
Catching predators is (still) a matter of law enforcement (and IMHO that's a
useful safeguard, even if flawed in some instances).

Providing law enforcement with better tools might be a worthwhile geek venture
(and given the tools they are sold by megacorps, "better" might not even be
hard), but with the existing procurement rules (etc etc) it's probably hard
for a startup to enter that market.

Alternative route: Build tools to optimize other public office work, and then
use the political process to request that freed money (and headcount) is
retargetted to supporting the police ("think of the children!"). While there
is still a procurement problem, there might be areas covered in less red tape
than police work.

