Posted on 12/06/2007 2:39:08 PM PST by LibWhacker
I believe this won’t past Constitutional muster. the Supreme Court struck down the CDA, there is no way that this bill as written now will hold up to muster if the CDA case is used as a priori.
The bill states: Anyone providing an "electronic communication service" or "remote computing service" to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's "CyberTipline" and (b) "make a report" to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves.
The key word here is "Learns". I take that to mean discovered or found out by either deliberately reading my users traffic or inadvertently discovering such while preforming something like intrusion detection or traffic analysis.
I will not read the users data or traffic deliberately as that would violate other laws. So they only way this would come to my attention as an ISP employee, etc, would be inadvertently.
How they gonna prove I "learned" of it?
For my users, my motto is what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Don't ask, don't tell. Now if you get caught because you're violating the rules or are extremely blatant about it, that's another thing, but I don't see ISPs being forced to spy on their customers in this bill.
Would you offer free wifi service under these draconian penalties and rules? How are they going to monitor this and keep logs and copies?
I suspect you can say goodbye to working on the internet for free at your local coffee shop or restaurant.
My guess is that Pelosi and company got a large donation from somewhere.
Who profit$ if that happens?
If New York passed a particular law last year, it is against the law in NY to have an unsecured wi-fi.
Depends on your setup.
Most home wireless AP’s can be configured to only use a certain range of IP addresses or to only respond to certain MAC addresses. Start off by using WEP encryption, and if you still detect somebody stealing bandwidth, tighten the screws down.
If most of this sounds Greek to you, hire a professional or talk to your ISP.
Don't you think that's really the point? 409 to 2? What's the biggest threat to our legislators comfortable positions? The way the Internet is revolutionizing politics!The fewer people who can get on line and search out the facts for themselves, the safer our congress-critters will be...
Right here where I'm sitting, I have FOUR different unsecured wireless networks that come up on my computer.
I know who two of them belong to, but as for the other two, I have no earthly idea. They didn't even bother to give the network a name, let alone secure it.
What you are saying is that a busness offering WiFi to its customers is a totally different setup than the home wireless connections I have. In the business setup is there a server on site that the connection goes through? Just asking because I have no idea how they work.
I predict that those who enjoy child pornography will now start their own ISPs, and conform fully to the SAFE act, thus obtaining safe harbor for “retaining” child porn.
Some networks have stealth mode where you can choose to not broadcast the network name.
This is just an ordinary suburban neighborhood, lots about 3/4 acre, people on both sides of us and across the street. Clearly lots of folks have these wireless systems and just plug and play.
Does this put any responsibility on you to know exactly what they do and don’t consider “offensive”? If I’m reading this correctly, you’ll have to transmit them a copy of the images, and then report yourself for doing it (and include another copy of the images), lather, rinse repeat....
Can you get to an option screen for your wireless AP? Are you using the default gateway number of 192.168.0.1?
Without knowing the setup you have, I can’t tell ya exactly what you can or can’t do. My router will:
block certain MAC’s
Hard assign IP addresses to certain MAC’s
allow WEP
allow me to change the default router (192.168.0.1) address
allow stealth mode, where the machine trying to connect has to know the MAC address of the router
about four more options I haven’t even tried playing with
My set up at home is quite fine and protected from outside access. I just posed the question ... how would I know (if I were not using protection) what someone sent over it? I just thought a commercial WiFi connection would be like my home connection ... how would they know what use their WiFi connection was being used for?
Thankfully, today's laptops make that a snap. You can even buy t-shirts that light up when you get close to a wi-fi network. But personally, when I make a connection, I couldn't tell you whether it was peer-to-peer or a client/server setup.
I don't have a home network myself. I'm surprised that you can't tell when someone is using your network, or what they're doing with it. Just another reason I'll probably put off going wireless in this house!
The idea is that you're responsible for any usage on your own WiFi router. It's as though you assume responsibility of someone steals your car and then goes forth to commit crimes with it.
But they'll ram it through anyway. If it perchance gets defeated on the floor, it will reappear as a rider on every unrelated bill until it passes in some unguarded midnight moment. Just as with all the Hollywood-uber-alles copyright legislation, we will have rely on the pirates and hackers to save our last shreds of freedom.
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