Republican Calls For Email And IM Monitoring

VUNet ^ | 2/9/07 | Iain Thomson

[steve-b]

bill introduced to the US House of Representatives would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely.

The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on ISPs which failed to keep full records....

[Strategerist]

The original article is somewhat exaggerated, as tends to happen in these sorts of cases, but the bill is quite vague on some important details.

[TomGuy]

How much does this type of setup slow one's surfing?

Many factors and variables are involved. The slowdown can be insigificant to very obvious. It depends on your ISP speed, the ISP speed of the receptor, Internet traffic, etc.

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

Right. And Google should serve only registered users with verified addresses and log every query.

[CarryaBigStick]

@#$%*!!!, this wasn't a spoof!!? My head is going to explode...

[VeniVidiVici]

The original article is somewhat exaggerated, as tends to happen in these sorts of cases, but the bill is quite vague on some important details.

Thank you! Geez, some left-wingnut writes an online article about a bill a (R) introduces and 50 replies go by excoriating the (R) without even a peek at what the hell all the commotion is about.

Didn't anyone even wonder why he didn't even publish the bill number?

[GovernmentShrinker]

Yep, and look for the storage costs to be passed on to ISP customers, probably in the form of pay-by-the-megabyte fees rather than the current all-you-can-eat monthly fees.

[taxcontrol]

Classic networking answer ... depends.

It can be bad sometimes. Many times it is not so bad, or you can switch to a different server and improve connectivity. A lot depends on the connectivity and use by the SOCKS server in your path.

[raftguide]

Thanks! Guess the best way to keep what you say in places like FR from biting you in the rear if you ever run for politics will be to use Internet cafes and put ISP accounts in the names of fictitious businesses.

[cryptical]

From your ISP? Why be mysterious? Share the knowledge.

Check out Torpark:
Torpark (Wikipedia)

[traviskicks]

Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.

[jackieaxe]

It's getting harder and harder to vote republican. I don't go to those sites but it's unsettling to think someone is monitoring my activities. Like Big Brother.

[gracesdad]

I feel safer already.

Not.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

He could save himself time and trouble by just recording all our votes.

[jjm2111]

Party of smaller government my anus. The GOP sucks!

[miliantnutcase]

I think NSA has had their supercomputers sifting through everybody's phone calls and most ISP's emails since the klint0n years. This should be nothing new, just the next step for them once they have enough processing power is to start logging our instant messages.

[zeugma]

I see that not too many people are surprised at a member of the "party of smaller government" pushing for expansion of the surveillance state.

[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

Even the Bushbots have stopped saying "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about."

Eerie.

[zeugma]

Sorting through them, even with cause, would take an army of people with computers loaded with data mining software.

They are looking forward to this... 

 Intel details teraflops-capable chip

[jess35]

There'll be no revolt in this country - ever.

There has been a revolt over the last few decades. The problem is, the leftists are winning it because we've sat back and cowered while they demonized us.

[zeugma]

start logging our instant messages.

LOL. You think the 'carnivore' boxes sitting in AOL's data center isn't already doing that?