[lbryce]

As Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt recently had his head nearly handed to him as he blurted out that privacy on the internet is a thing of the past. While we pretend to believe privacy is still alive and well, the fact is it is becoming much less so with each passing day and any belief to the contrary is just not so.

[TribalPrincess2U]

A lot of people still don’t get it.

[Clump]

Yea I just assume the government will hear or see anything I do if it really wants to. We live behind digital bars my FRiend. No way around it best I can tell.

[Don Corleone]

Can you say, "1984?"

[apillar]

Wouldn't any reasonably intelligent Child Pornographer simply sit outside of one of the millions of restaurants, hotels, cafe etc. that offer free wireless internet or cruise around some residential area, until he finds some idiot who leaves their wireless connection open and unprotected (I can detect three like in my neighborhood right now). The provider might have to report it, but all the Government is going to learn is “some computer” connected to a wireless connection hosted by “Piere’s Coffee Shop” from 12:00AM to 12:45AM and uploaded child pornography.

[Zeppo]

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved an internet snooping bill that requires internet service providers (ISPs) to keep records of customer activity for a year so police can review them as needed.

The author of this article apparently doesn't understand the difference between a bill being voted out of a House Committee and a bill that "the US House of Representatives approved"...

Maybe somebody will be nice enough to buy the author a clue...

[Venturer]

Child pornography is the ruse used to obtain this law.

Who can argue against a law that seeks to stop child pornography?

This law will be used for a lot of other things besides child pornography, The IRS and States taxing purchases over the internet come to mind.

[FourPeas]

The author fails to mention that Tor already has a button implemented for FireFox. Besides, for anyone who values their privacy, using a Google product is antithetical.

[Enough is ENOUGH]

I once worked with a guy who along with his family lived in Czechoslovakia during WWII. His father was very outspoken against Hitler. One day the gestapo arrested his father and he was neither seen nor heard from again. A neighbor had reported his father to the local gestapo.

Now we have a collectivist government here.

[CdMGuy]

Just visit your friendly public library and use one of their PCs. From what I have read, I am not aware of any one of them that is blocking access to porn websites. I am aware of complaints by library users about men using the library PCs for porn use, and the library saying it can due nothing about it.

[Mike3689]

Too bad Tor is so slow. One way to secure data is to use TrueCrypt, though unfortunately that doesn’t do anything for data sent over the internet.

As an aside, how would your ISP get your financial information when any decent billing system uses SSL?

[GOP Poet]

Bookmark

[MNDude]

Could sure find dirt on a lot of people, that’s for sure. Imagine a politician’s records get subpoenad, they could point out anything that he checked out adult sites or that he was seeing a marriage counselor.

[IDFbunny]

The government lost the battle over encryption about 10 years ago. You know that is not going to sit for long. Since encryption also protects perverts it is already coming up again.

[VeniVidiVici]

The original bill only mandated tracking the temporary IP of each customer:

---

SEC. 4. RETENTION OF CERTAIN RECORDS BY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.

(a) In General- Section 2703 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).’.

(b) Sense of Congress- It is the sense of Congress that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.

---

If this report is true, about the committee changes to the bill on 28 July, I doubt it will have a chance of passing the House.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Remember “conservatives” bleating “the Constitution is not a suicide pact!” and Rush saying “There are no civil rights when you're dead!” and “Lincoln GOT it! / FDR GOT it!”.

How's that workin’ out for you?