Posted on 02/20/2009 6:01:36 AM PST by rabscuttle385
Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.
The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.
"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level."
Joining Cornyn was Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who said such a measure would let "law enforcement stay ahead of the criminals."
Two bills have been introduced so far--S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Each of the companion bills is titled "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
ping
I’m sure we can have enough hard drives for that and taxpayers won’t need to take up the bill! Thanks, Big Gov’t.!
NO!
It might even pass. Obamanistas would love to track down those people who make an end run around the redstream media and post real news about their scams. I’m for maintaining law and order but with the criminals now in charge it’s going to be used against the good guys.
Instead of so much warehousing of data, how about
LESS
warehousing of criminals?
Great, between this and taxing (TRACKING) your mileage, Big Bro’ is here...
And people wonder why Republicans get a bad rap. Sometimes a bad rap is richly deserved.
I’d go along with this, on the condition that all elected officials be required to wear webcams transmitting over the Internet 24/7 so we can keep track of everything they do and everything they say, and to whom they do and say it.
This, folks, is the bad side of the social-conservative/authoritarian leg to the Reagan Coalition stool. (And kudos to Reagan for keeping it in check as much as he did!)
Buy a big magnet and keep it nearby.
In other news: Anonymizer stock prices shot up while developers promised new spoofing software by weeks end.
We are heading towards Socialism and Communism and this schmuck in the GOP wants to tag our every website visit?
FUJC!
So much for smaller, less intrusive government.
Oy, these are the people who are making decisions? Geez...
This gives the Democrats another chance to chortle about how clueless the GOP is about technology while secretly preparing their own ISP-based version of the same bill.
Republicans/Democrats, all politicians. I despise them. Term limits is the only thing that might save this country.
Is the Gubbermint going to issue coupons to small business owners and consumers to buy the hard drives required to keep such logs?
“I’d go along with this, on the condition that all elected officials be required to wear webcams transmitting over the Internet 24/7 so we can keep track of everything they do and everything they say, and to whom they do and say it.”
BINGO!!And as long as they are”public servants” ..we, their employers, should be able to transparently view their financial activities on-line.
In other news, Republican minority status in Congress is predicted to last until at least 2020.
I’m certain that these politicians will have their home computers tapped as well. /sarc
PING!
They don’t call it the stupid party for nothing!
With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?
This has *nothing* to do with the Social Conservative agenda. This is globalism, pure and simple.
Just about the republicans start to head toward the right path, someone jumps out front and craps on the trail.
Australia is already moving to this form of Internet censorship ostensibly to prevent access to child pornography, but already the government is adding to the list of objectionable sites and could easily declare sites like this to contain objectionable hate speech. read article here
I never liked Corynyn. He promoted the Real ID Act along at the same time, more breaks for illegals.Legislation rules these days, if you want to push a P.O.S. that no one wants, just mention, “it’s for the childrun” !
guilty before innocent.
Stupid party in action.
Hey, I didn’t say it was the good side of it! But yes, using state authority to ‘protect’ children is clearly a leaning of the social conservative (rather than libertarian) end of the Republican tent. Almost by definition they are the ones more inclined to use state power to enforce morality. In this case, massive state intrusion to prospectively stop some crimes. You can’t tell me this is a civil libertarian propensity!
If folks had any idea how easy it is to spoof a MAC addy, they would know what a silly waste of time this whole idea is- Therefore, it must have another, more nefarious purpose.
I notice it’s Republicans doing this.
Gee, sure sounds like they got the right message from their drubbing, huh? /sarc
Those deck chairs sure are crooked. I must go straighten them!
/mark
Exactly right!
It’s garbage like this that prevents me from ever being a republican.
They claim to be for limited government, yet they jump at the chance to implement ‘big brother’ type policies such as this one.
“If folks had any idea how easy it is to spoof a MAC addy, they would know what a silly waste of time this whole idea is- Therefore, it must have another, more nefarious purpose.”
I have 17 hotspots within range from my living room. Two of them use WAP encryption, nine use WEP encryption, the remaining six are open. How hard do they think it would be for me to use one of those other hotspots... Should i ever do anythign that nefarious. And how in the heck do they think they are going to get all of these router retrofitted with this software or replaced. Who am I kidding they would probably make it a requirement for all ISP to knock you offline unless you upgrade your router...
Don’t put anything past them.
“If folks had any idea how easy it is to spoof a MAC addy, they would know what a silly waste of time this whole idea is-”
That wouldn’t solve the problem, would it?
If you have to log in to the ISP to get access then they still know who you are.
So if you have an unsecured wireless router because you don’t know what you’re doing, you are breaking the law.
But talk about unfunded mandates! Most wireless hotspots are simply standard store-bought wireless routers with hot-spot software in them. They cannot hold two years worth of data.
But now I see a market, a wireless router with hot spot software and a terabyte hard drive. These things already exist as media servers, so it’s just a software tweak to turn them into compliant hot spots. Still, it’s money businesses and libraries shouldn’t have to spend.
We need a massive clean sweep of incumbents in Congress.
If this were to ever happen, their first move should be to pass a law limiting the terms of Congressman to no more than 2 terms, with a mandatory retirement of 67 years old.
The second priority would be to enact line item veto.
Many of the Republicans are JUST as bad as the Dems.
With this law they’ll find they can get the MAC address, spoofed or unspoofed, and then they’re stuck in a dead end. It’s a wireless hot spot, so the user could be hundreds of miles away by now.
So the next step is to require ID or credit card be logged before use of any hot spot. Then we’ll be like China, with perfect tracking of all our online activities.
Are you sure you don't mean "MORE", as in "three strikes" type warehousing????
Good idea. Let the politicians lose their civil rights instead of the citizens.
I do not see Social Conservatives and Libertarians at opposite ends of the tent, but rather close companions, each devoted to conserving a particular and valuable portion of the American way.
Conservatives vs. Globalist Moderates /Liberals I can clearly see on opposite sides of the "Republican Tent", and the "for the children" mantra is a liberal mantra from way back. The liberal church may be inclined to back such pap, but no social organization I am aware of is pushing for such un-Constitutional means.
I come from a Social Conservative background (though I am now an avid Reaganite), and I will freely inform you that with the Church under constant legal attacks, There is little support for tracking systems of any kind... We are not that stupid.
Almost by definition they are the ones more inclined to use state power to enforce morality.
That must be a swipe at the Pro-Life position, or the Marriage amendment position of the Religious Right, both of which I will rightly defend as being above the right of the states and localities to define, for different reasons... and the Pro-Life position being completely above the jurisdiction of any court of man whatsoever.
Those are both far different issues than merely bending the law to suit our fancy. Other than those two exceptions, I believe you will be hard pressed to find the Christian Right pressing to give the Federal government any jurisdiction over anything- They are more likely to be found fighting to remove federal jurisdictions.
In this case, massive state intrusion to prospectively stop some crimes. You can’t tell me this is a civil libertarian propensity!
Your suspicions are massively misplaced. Look to the Globalists, who are also working to get satellite control of vehicles, funding RFID technologies in both highway and pedestrian settings, and who have worked hand-in-glove with the Liberal Democrats to bring Big Brother along as far as it has come already. To the Christians, these are all shadows of things to come, and they do not bode well for Christian communities anywhere.
Well, gee, if the internet is so BAD, why did the ‘Rats want to put it in all the classrooms and libraries? Didn’t they spend a lot of our money on such schemes?
How wonderful, then RINOS are lockstep with the fascists in passing fascist laws. Is there any difference between the current washington GOP crowd and the Stalinists in the white house?
That’s like opening every letter that goes through the Post Office and recording the contents. What they want to do is shut you up for fear their government can come after you.
The problem with controlling the web is that the great programmers no longer work for industry- They tend to be independent as a lot, and even if they may be liberal whackos generally, one thing you can count on them to fight for tooth-and-nail is net freedom and software freedom. Thank God for them, at least in that way, they are like us, and they will preserve free speech for those who can use it.
There will never be a net that the street hacker cannot overcome, just as there will never be music that the street hacker will not be able to exploit. They are smarter, they are more diligent, they are more diverse and distributed.
Bear in mind, I do not endorse network thuggery- that is not my point. But Linux, Free software, the Torrent, etc... That counter culture is priceless in order to defeat total control of the media.
Hey, I agree with you that by far the greater authoritarian threat in our world is from the right. But this kind of proposal is the ugly side of the Republican authoritarian leanings. That’s all. And I agree, the modern Christian movement pretty much realizes its threat from the state and is less and less inclined to legislate their preferences: they’d be perfectly happy just being left alone!
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