Your ISP as Net watchdog

CNET News.com ^ | 6/16/2005 | Declan McCullagh

[rattrap]

The Minsitry of Truth, err... The DOJ wants to take away a little more of your privacy. Of course it's going to help fight terrorism, so don't worry about it.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison

[stuartcr]

If you don't want anyone to be able to find out who you are, just go to a free wireless area with a laptop.

[sure_fine]

If you don't want anyone to be able to find out who you are, just go to a free wireless area with a laptop





do you mean like the actual terrorists do?

[Huck]

[rattrap]

There's still an ISP providing the connection to the hotspot. There's a log with your MAC (not Macintosh for those who don't know, it's a hardware address) address.

[holymoly]

just go to a free wireless area with a laptop.

Not everyone lives in the big city.

[stuartcr]

Probably

[stuartcr]

Just because someone knows your MAC, doesn't mean they know who you are. Lots of people buy wi-fi cards with cash.

[stuartcr]

I guess, if you wanted to do bad stuff, without getting caught, you'd probably move, or at least travel a little.

[rattrap]

So what you're saying is this wouldn't even help catch the people it's aimed at?

[Codeograph]

Plus tehre are certain wi-fi cards that can be spoofed ( give it a phony MAC address for a session so there is no trace back to the actual card ) with software available on the Internet.

[stuartcr]

If both ends were anonymous, I don't see how.

[stuartcr]

Easily done.

[Hardastarboard]

I just heard yesterday that President Bush has signed an executive order mandating that all states issue digitized driver's licenses. What federal statute or article of the Constitution gives him the right to do that? I was furious to hear that. It sounds like the kind of over-reaching that Bill Clinton would have done in his heyday.

[WoofDog123]

"So what you're saying is this wouldn't even help catch the people it's aimed at?"

Only if you believe it is aimed at terrorists. I, for one, don't.

[Dallas59]

I this goes thru ...and a Demo-rat wins in 2008....

[rattrap]

I don't either.

[NoClones]

have worked for several isps...

this kind of record keeping has been going on for a number of years...

...beginning in the 'surprise, surprise' komrade krintoon administration!

[rattrap]

But it's not required by law unless a law enforcement agency requests the info from the ISP. Even then, it's only 90 days. Now Comrade Bush's administration could be providing this power for the next Comrade Clinton administration.

[KarlInOhio]

Maybe some one needs to come up with a program which will constantly use your internet capacity at 100%. Send mail to dead addresses, visit websites at random, google for random topics, etc. That way the federales will not be able to separate that chaff from the grain of what you really do on the web. Imagine the ISP having to keep a 100MB log of web activity for each user each day.