Free Republic

Illinois State Police have launched an investigation into why police in Park Forest shot a 95-year-old man with a bean bag round, leading to the man’s death. WBBM Newsradio’s John Waelti reports World War II veteran John Wrana met his demise at the hands of Park Forest police officers last week, after allegedly threatening nursing home staff and paramedics with a cane, butcher knife, and shoehorn at the Victory Centre assisted living center. But Wrana family attorney Nicholas Grapsas denied Wrana ever wielded a knife, and questioned why police needed to use force on an elderly man, when the staff...

CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom "port reader" software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software. The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts. FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI's legal position during these discussions is that the software's real-time interception...

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. Here's what this bill means for you and what you can do about it. What Is This Internet Snooping Bill, Exactly, and Why Is It Bad? The lovingly titled Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCFIPA of 2011) requires ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses. It's a record of your personal information...

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses,...

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-10 for H.R. 1981, a data-retention bill that will require your ISP to spy on everything you do online and save records of it for 12 months. California Rep Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill, called it a “data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.”

ISPs begrudgingly accept their conscriptmentCopyright enforcement is a big headache. It's a big headache for the media industry as it's a money-losing proposition. It's a big headache for the U.S. Senate who had nearly 10 percent of their collective campaign expenses paid by media lobbyists. It seems neither the federal government or big media wants to pay themselves for the massive cost of copyright enforcement, so they've cooked up a clever plan -- force internet service providers to become copyright cops and police the internet. > The plan was inspired by similar plans proposed in other nations (most of which...

Instapaper and Curbed Network are among the sites hit, though the cause of the raid is unknown The F.B.I. seized Web servers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline. The raid happened at 1:15 a.m. at a hosting facility in Reston, Va., used by DigitalOne, which is based in Switzerland, the company said. The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid. In an e-mail to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon, a DigitalOne employee,...

As a new Senate privacy panel considers the data collected by iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys, the Department of Justice is reminding lawmakers that it needs Internet providers to store more data about their users to help with federal investigations.Current law doesn't require those Internet service providers to "retain any data for any particular length of time," although some already do, said Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ's Criminal Division. And many wireless companies — which must collect some data — also "do not retain records that would enable law enforcement to identify a suspect's smartphone based on...

FBI Partially Lifts Gag Order In ACLU Case The FBI has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties Union client Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing to anyone that he received a national security letter (NSL) demanding private customer records. Merrill, who received the NSL as the president of an Internet service provider (ISP), can now reveal his identity and speak about his experience for the first time since receiving the NSL. The ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the NSL statute and the gag order on behalf of...

The Australian Federal Court has found an Aussie ISP not responsible for copyright offences committed by its customers. The Australian Federation against Copyright Theft claimed that iiNet authorised copyright theft by its customers. Judge J Cowdroy accepted that iiNet users had used BitTorrent to infringe copyright, but that the number was far less than alleged by AFCT and that iiNet in no way authorised the infringements. The judge found that providing the means to infringement, internet access, was not the same as authorising infringement - BitTorrent was. In summary the judge said: the key question is: Did iiNet authorise copyright...

I have recently switched to DSL and need to cancel my dial-up service (MSN). I've researched and researched, but I can't find a definitive answer to this question: When I cancel my dial-up service, what happens to my email account (msn.com address)? Will I still be able to access my old email account via Hotmail? How to proceed? Recommendations?

Communications firms warn of unprecedented extension of state powers Wednesday, August 5, 2009 A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms is fighting back against the British government’s plans to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide. The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which represents some 330 companies, including BT, Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, says that the government is misleading the public about the extent to which it plans to monitor their communications and internet activity. LINX has described the Government’s surveillance proposals as an “unwarranted” invasion of people’s privacy. A statement from the group to...

WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials will announce rules Wednesday for handing out $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, but some companies already are raising concerns about how long it could take to award the money. Officials are expected to detail how they plan to distribute $4.7 billion in broadband money from the Commerce Department in grants and $2.5 billion from the Agriculture Department in grants or loans.

WebWithout provides safe online protection for your family or workplace. It is done by providing a free, simple and easy to use service that filters out the less desirable aspects of the Internet. Once you use the WebWithout service, you can be confident in the knowledge that your user experience will be free of items such as pornography, Phishing, violence, racial hatred and such like.

An anonymous reader writes "What happens when a new ISP is started somewhere in the United States that completely blows out of the water all the other ISPs in the area, in terms of price and performance? Apparently, that question is being answered in North Carolina, where Greenlight Inc., a company started by a city government, is trying to offer faster, more reliable, and cheaper Internet service to the local residents. Time Warner and Embarq can't compete. So they are not only lobbying the state government to destroy the upstart competition, but are now using push polling methods to gain...

Broadband operator Bahnhof is continuing to destroy the IP address details of its customers in an open and fully legal bid to undermine Sweden's new anti-file sharing laws. Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on April 1st, has said he is determined to protect the company's clients. The new file sharing law is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file sharers. As such, the law enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain...

Will your ISP block your Internet if you are accused of file sharing?That is exactly what the Recording Industry Association of America has asked Internet providers to do. Apparently, some are willing to cooperate. Under this plan, if the RIAA accuses you of illegal file sharing, you will have your Internet service terminated after receiving warnings. This practice is already underway in some other countries. Illegal file sharing is wrong, but having the RIAA as the judge and jury is a violation of American's rights. This plan would only be fair if businesses in the music industry have their Internet...

Under pressure from the big record labels, several countries around the world are cracking down hard on illegal file-sharers with a "three strikes, you're out" policy — and the United States may be next. The basics are simple: Get caught three times sharing files illegally, and your Internet access gets cut off. But in a day and age when Internet access is almost as essential as a cell phone or electricity, should the music industry or Internet service providers [ISPs] have the power to determine who can and can't get online, particularly without criminal charges being filed? And what if...

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations. The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. "While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and...

US Senator Dianne Feinstein hopes to update President Barack Obama's $838bn economic stimulus package so that American ISPs can deter child pornography, copyright infringement, and other unlawful activity by way of "reasonable network management." Clearly, a lobbyist whispering in Feinstein's ear has taken Comcast's now famous euphemism even further into the realm of nonsense. According to Public Knowledge, Feinstein's network management amendment did not find a home in the stimulus bill that landed on the Senate floor. But lobbyists speaking with the Washington DC-based internet watchdog said that California's senior Senator is now hoping to insert this language via conference...