Posted on 02/12/2007 9:19:55 PM PST by The Watcher
BTW, many of you may not have noticed. But as of March 14, 2007, EVERY means of access to the internet, except for dialup, will be REQUIRED by the federal government to be tap and record the use by ANY specific user.
Yes, your VOIP phone. Yes, your MSN Messenger chats. Yes, your email. Yes, the content of any website you may visit... OR ANY SOMEONE WHO USES YOUR CONNECTION may visit.
What else is going on? Guess who has to pay for this? The feds? Nope. Your ISP, your phone company, your company (yes, if your company has a network that connects you to the internet, IT TOO HAS TO COMPLY! ).
Scattered across the country, are scores of thousands of small ventures. Some of them are informal arrangements to bring fast internet to a remote neighborhood, some of them are "free" networks brought into existence by computer geeks. Some of them are small ventures where "broadband" (any connection faster than 5X dialup speed) must comply a long list of federal regulations, from registering with the FCC to be "counted" for reporting to industry and Congress, and to comply with a complex set of rules for compliance with wiretapping.
The first federal deadline is tomorrow, Feb 12. On that date, you have to file "compliance" statements. Either you are (and how you are) or if you aren't, how you are going to.
You are expected to list your network topology, equipment manufacturers and methodology for compliance.
Yet, most ISP's have no idea yet how they intend to comply. Few can.
A few companies offer the data sorting and extraction services remotely... The estimated cost for the device alone is $100,000 for that kind of service.
The program is called CALEA, or Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Agencies.
The federal goverment is taking the stance that they demand what they want, and industry is left to define how to do it - to create standards on their own.
Guess who creates the standards? The big guys. Cisco, Telephone companies, network providers. Guess who they want to put out of business? Small providers.
Internet services was the bright star of our economy. ANyone could become an ISP. Countless small companies have created a serves and data revolution that has fueled our economic engine for the last few years.
We may not know it yet. We may not have noticed it yet. But the ISP business is dead. It has been usurped by the federal government, taken over. Network design and operations are now controlled by Big Brother. Technologies and operational techniques are now mandated by federal desires to NOT HAVE TO DO ANY WORK to spy on you.
I have devoted the last 4 years of my life to building, from NOTHING a broadband business, to bring services to areas that will never get them otherwise. I have yet to earn a paycheck. Every dime I have been able to get through sales has been reinvested in this venture.
And I am seriously considering writing my customers letters tomorrow, explaining that as of a short time from now, they will have to find a new provider, as I will have to abandon the business, as I have no money with which to fund "compliance".
One more example of runamok government.
It's nice to live in an area with no traffic cameras or tollbooths, huh?
What a staggering list. Someone's going to have to write a software utility that suggests replacement phrases and words to conveniently avoid triggering review by a spook. Bloggers are going to need to write like Jonathan Swift whenever they want to criticize a politician or his/her policies.
(A) Terrorists
(B)Loss of Freedom by a Government
Guess you are forgeting that under Clinton and Reno local Law Enforcement Agencys were instructed by the feds to look for white people who had bibles, could quote the constitution and owned firearms.
So, which is the bigger threat?
(A) Foreign terrorists that have to enter our country to attack us or,
(B) A Government that can evaluate your threat level without a warrant? (especially since the criteria for your threat level are based on an ever-changing combination of legal activities which are cherry-picked by the whims of morons that don't understand the Constitution who also don't mind imposing their world-view of acceptable thought and activities on everyone around them)
What you and a number of other posters are forgetting is that Amdendments IV and V are there for a purpose, and it isn't to give safe harbor to the bogeyman but rather to give us safe harbor from the government.
Don't anyone even attempt to attack this assertion, as I was privy to the teletypes regarding these types of people as possible domestic terrorists - and they made for lively discussions amongst the white, christian, firearm-owning police officers.
Tough. I can't stand scumbags or lazy bums. There ain't no regulation and the nut bags are running crazy. I want some rules. The ISPs need to be held to some account. Right now they are a bunch of reckless idiots.
That was just one month before the Gingrich Revolution and the Contract With America.
It's funny how it was one of the last things passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress, and one of the first things implemented after Democrats retake Congress.
-PJ
So you will sacrifice your, and my, constitutional protections against unwarranted government invasion of privacy because you have a hair up your ass?
Real intelligent. Do you break your nose when your knee jerks?
Do you know how newspapers got started? Anyone that could afford a printing press could start a paper and did.
Would you have required similar regulations of them when they first started up?
Same principle and eventually most of this trash will get overturned by the Courts, but not before the Gov. compiles all sorts of illegal databases that they never could have created through legal means.
No, I want the ISPs accountable. They own the tracks. I travel on the tracks. They don't get to play with my life just because they are the engineers.
Screw them I want the power. I want to be able to vote for control of the lines. Not some stupid bunch of liberals in San Jose.....
And can you have the power without compromising my privacy?
and why do you need the power?
And the ISPs should have it? No way.
if you can't have the power without compromising my privacy rights, or if you don't care about my privacy rights, then you don't deserve the power.
power to do what?
ISP have no responsibility..... so I'm for it.
>>It's nice to live in an area with no traffic cameras or tollbooths, huh?<<
Yeah. I hate Chicago!
Also, we still only have the cameras on freeways
I was told that my satellite connection is totally secure because a hacker would have to park in my driveway to get access, and I live in the middle of 15 acres, with a lake on one side. Is that true?
When was it, again, that there was ever a communications system in the U.S. that government agencies could not access?
The wild west wasn't tamed, it was beaten into submission.
Every keystroke must be recorded the way I see this.
Laws are etiologic-ally the equivalents of cancer; they grow over time to dis-incorporate all they invade.
Purity and paranoia sleep in the same bed.
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