Posted on 02/09/2010 10:18:41 AM PST by wrrock
WASHINGTON--The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes. FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
FBI acts alone on this? Presidential Executive Order?
Keeping the records of billions of web visits so that they can catch 1/100th of a percent of kiddie porn folks? Seems a little inefficient doesn’t it?
Obviously someone hasnt got a clue about how the internet works.
Or do they?
BIG BROTHER....PING.
Do it for the children.
Why go thru all that effort when even when you catch these sick monsters you let them play at the halftime show at the superbowl?
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a thread winner.
Wow.
How long before the government demands all sites register their content?
The know the lame stream dinosaur media is dying and new rules like this would keep them on life support for a few more decades.
People that do understand the technology and IT know that the technical challenges to this would far out weight any benefits to any investigation.
There are currently laws on the books that permit any LEGITIMATE request from law enforcement to get information from the ISP's. This is political intimidation and economic coercion at its finest all in one nice, neat little packet designed to "save the children".
The worst child abusers don’t put pictures online they use the “family nudist” sites to advertise their wares and then the abuse comes in person.
this is just stupid. all it would take to circumvent would be a secure vpn connection to a proxy server
This ranks right up their with other idiot proposals by the government.
It is possible to spoof an IP address and make it look like a server request came from person X when it really came from person Y. Address translation in the router will block the response packet to person X, because they never asked for the request in the first place, but too late; you can now nail person X for visiting a web site person X never visited (”Look, I’ve got your IP address right here in the server logs!”).
The bottom line is the government is paranoid about anything it does not fully control, and they want to control every aspect of everything you do. It’s in their DNA.
The bottom line is the government is paranoid about anything it does not fully control, and they want to control every aspect of everything you do. It’s in their DNA.
They can’t tax it either, apply controls shortly followed by a taxing proposal based on user traffic.
Apr16,2009 Homeland Security Chief Defends Report On Right Wing Extremists
They don’t really care what sites you visit, unless they’re Free Republic or other oases of common sense in a mad world. Then they get FR classified as a “hate” site. Then they demand the names and address of visitors. Then you get fired from your job.
LPing
Give a Fed a fish and he gets a felony conviction. Teach a Fed to fish and everyone is a felon.
Federal Fishing Expeditions are going to get a whole lot easier...
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” - Ayn Rand
“Question, Bob,” asked Michael Shanks. “After we go through the Black Water list… I mean, these guys aren’t going to stand around waiting in line for us, not after tonight…they’re going to take off, they’re going to run. Who are we going after next, after them?”
“First of all,” replied Bullard, “it’s great for us when they do take off. They always keep using their cell phones, and then we can just scoop them up like we’re going to get Gittis tonight. And no one misses them, because they’re already on the run. If they head way out in the boondocks where these hunter types always go, that’s even better, because then there’s nobody around if it gets noisy, and we can rearrange the scene any way we want.
“And after we do finish up with this Black Water list, we’ll go to work on the contacts we pull out of them next door on the water board. And if that secondary contact list runs dry before all this militia terrorism crap is stamped out, well, then that’s Half Ass’ department. Right Joe?
“You mean…the predictive programs?”
“Right, that’s it. Tell the boys about it. It’s okay; they’re as cleared for it as anybody ever will be.”
Silvari shot him an “are you sure?” look, and Bullard nodded back a “yes.” The predictive programs were way out in “need to know basis” territory. Until now, only Malvone, Bullard, Silvari and one of Silvari’s computer geeks had known about them.
“Okay, well, this is pretty sensitive stuff,” began Silvari. “Not the theory, but what we’re going to do with it. This is not to leave this room, okay? The fact is we’re already making our next lists from our own predictive programs.
“These were originally dreamed up on Madison Avenue to tell advertisers what people wanted, before they even know it. It works so well, it’s almost scary! Computers mine all of the data bases you can imagine, and then some. They check your credit card purchases back for years, they see where you’ve lived and where you go on vacation, the kind of car you buy, the food you eat, ten thousand things that add up to ‘you’. Then they compare that ‘you’ to everybody else, and then they see what folks like ‘you’ just bought.
“Did you ever call a catalog company to make an order, and at the end they ask if you want to hear their list of ‘specials’? Their computer just cranked out the list of specials it thinks you’ll want. Before data mining and predictive programs, they used to average about a ten percent hit-rate on the ‘specials’. Now they get over 80% sales! Think about it; the computer can guess what you’ll want to buy next, 80% of the time!
“Everybody who found out about this got very excited, as you can imagine. CIA, FBI, NSA, everybody. Then after 9-11, there was a big push to use the predictive programs for catching Muslim terrorists, to find the sleepers by their credit cards, their movements, memberships, phone usage patterns, everything. “Brilliant” data mining at its finest: that’s the essence of the “Terrorist Information Awareness” program. And let me tell you, it works. They get a lot of false hits, but they catch a lot of bad guys with it too. A lot of them, more than are ever reported in the media.”
“Anyway, Malvone got access to some of the predictive program algorithms, and my number one computer geek Charles changed the parameters. Now we can tap into the TIA program and use it for finding our own home-grown terrorists, based on the ones we’ve already busted and jailed over the years. The program looks at the vehicles they drive, the magazines they read, the websites they surf…and of course their credit cards. With gun nuts that’s especially useful, because they buy so much from catalogs and on the internet. I mean, if somebody ordered five thousand rounds of AK-47 ammo in 1999, it’s pretty obvious what kind of weapons he has!
“So we’ll just aim our own version of the predictive program at a zip code or a town, and it’ll spit out the most dangerous right wing nut jobs. It’ll bird-dog the next Shiffletts or McVeighs, the ones who are really out on the edge.
“So that’s where our next list of targets is going to come from, from our own in-house predictive programs. And since we’re not in the business of building court cases, it doesn’t really matter if they’ve technically broken the law yet or not. And anyway, with these gun nuts, you can always find something! You know, a gun they bought in one jurisdiction that they failed to register properly when they moved somewhere else, or a barrel that’s too long or too short…
“And no matter what happens to the guy, you can always make it a ‘gun accident’ or a ‘premature bomb’, and there’ll be enough incriminating evidence in his house to make it fly in the press. So that part’s easy. But if by some miracle a guy on the list actually turns out to be squeaky clean, well, we still have the militia ‘drop guns’ that Malvone gave us, just in case...”
The STU Team leaders were silent, absorbing the meaning of what they’d just heard. The cutting-edge STU Team was going to smoke out the most dangerous gun nuts and Constitution fanatics using an advanced computer program, and the TIA data bases. This was just about as “proactive” as it could get! No more waiting around until after the bomb went off, or the politician was assassinated.
“Way cool,” said Hollywood Tim Jaeger.
“I like it. I really like it,” said Michael Shanks.
(From my first novel, Enemies Foreign And Domestic, 2003.)
Our government was never to have such power over us. It is out of control if it can do as it pleases and we can only hope they please to please.
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