Gonzales Wants ISP Data Retention To Curb Child Porn 454
$RANDOMLUSER writes, "The AP is reporting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Banking Committee today and called for Congress to require ISPs to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography. 'This is a problem that requires federal legislation,' Gonzales said. He called the government's lack of access to customer data the biggest obstacle to deterring child porn. 'We respect civil liberties but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information,' he said." Gonzales added that he agrees with a letter sent to Congress in June by 49 state attorneys general, requesting federal legislation to require ISPs to hold onto customer data longer.
"Harmonize" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:1, Interesting)
not that I think thats wrong (downloading intertubes, that is), but shouldn't google be in trouble under current law?
(oh, I was looking for a particular boxing video game. stumbled on a bunch of nekkid kids wearing boxing gloves.)
The Four Horsemen must be stopped! (Score:2, Interesting)
It Takes A Village to raise a Prisoner (Score:4, Interesting)
- Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
Number 6: Where am I?
Number 2: In the Village.
Number 6: What do you want?
Number 2: We want information.
Number 6: Whose side are you on?
Number 2: That would be telling.
We want information... information... information.
Number 6: You won't get it.
Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.
Come to think of it...
Number Six: Everybody votes for a dictator.
Chessmaster: "You must be new here. In time, most of us join the enemy - against ourselves."
I guess it takes a village to raise a Prisoner as well as a Child.
The thing I miss most about the Republican wing of the Party is the wing that asked questions like "What would the Democrat wing of the Party do with these powers?"
I just wonder how long the Democrat wing of the Party that's currently asking these sorts of questions will last when they're handed power in 2008?
Protection tools? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are there any tools that can be used to mask real browsing habits by randomly sampling and following links from sites like Google News or Wikipedia? It would be nice to have something like that going 24/7 so that your actual traffic would be drowned in a sea of noise. It would also considerably raise the cost of the invasion, required by law or not. I don't like my ISP looking over my shoulder to begin with. That big brother wants to share the view is disturbing but not much different from the existing corporate invasion.
How about think of the childrens (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Protection tools? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:4, Interesting)
Strange but true: In the UK, it's legal to shag a 17 year old, but now as soon as you take a photo, you're guilty of making and possessing child porn (the 2003 Sexual Offences Act bizarrely raised the age for appearing in photos from 16 to 18, despite the age of consent remaining at 16 where it as always been).
New law (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, it's not as if Gonzales has anything to hide, right?
Re:Please, think of the children!! (Score:3, Interesting)
We all know, that these cameras should be used responsibly, and not to abuse kids, so how exactly do we stop the abuse of kids if we record everything on the internet but nothing about the camera?
I'm pretty sure, that every picture on the internet has some sorta tracking information, it should have tracking information, if it does not then I'd be surprised. If each camera puts personal information about the computer you are on, when you upload pictures to windows, whenever you distribute it, it should know exactly which computer it originated from, the time and date it was taken, maybe even name and email type information along with computer ID, this way you can simply track any picture back to the founder. This would do more to solve the kiddie porn problem than anything else. It should also be illegal to distribute it, so no websites or trading it back and forth. If you get the ISP's involved, what for? Data retention, would likely contain everything you did, every site you visited etc, and have nothing to do with child porn. Sure it might help if thousands of people are going to a child porn website, or are in some sorta criminal distribution ring, otherwise I don't see how it will do any good. If it's a newsgroup, it should be obvious who uploaded it regardless of if they tried to do it annonymously or not.
*What* child porn? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. I'm all for catching the scumbags who exploit children.
However, there's a question that keeps nagging me every time I see mentions of this so-called "child porn" in the internet. What's exactly that "child porn" people keep mentioning? I get hundreds of unwanted emails every day. I have lost count of all the pornography I have seen in the internet. Yet I never saw one single picture of a child engaged in sex!
Well, I have seen plenty of images that some people call "child porn", but those are merely pictures of young women who could be of any age between 15 and 30 with shaved pubic hair and small breasts. Anorexic women who have their pictures taken when they are 25 years old do not count as "child porn" in my book.
Here's one simple rather provoking concept: what if the true perverts are smart enough to avoid putting the images of their acts on the internet? How many videos of bank robberies and drug sales get published in the internet? What makes you feel that paedophiles would be more stupid than other criminals?
I think the police would be more successful in catching perverts if they tried to investigate the typical acts of perverts instead of insisting on that rather sickly curiosity about the acts of honest internet citizens...
Re:Any time you hear... (Score:3, Interesting)
"No disrespect intended, but" means someone is about to get disrespected.
"No offense, but" means something offensive is about to follow.
"I'm not a racist, but" means something racist is about to be said.
"we respect civil liberties, but" means some civil liberties are about to be disrespected.
Is file sharing good or bad for content creators? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your point #1 is in fact what "they" are after, the reasoning behind going after the consumers as well as the producers, is that demand creates supply, and cutting off the demand for child pornography will lower the incentives to produce it (whether or not money is directly involved).
Wait just a second. By downloading it without paying for it, aren't you ... stealing it. You know, robbing the 'artists' that produce this 'intellectual property.' I mean, that's what Alberto Gonzales has been touring America to tell school children on behalf of the MPAA. Downloading without paying for it... that destroys the supply side, and ultimately destroy the art form itself. Now you're telling me that downloading child porn creates supply... So which is it? When it's a Hollywood movie, it's insuring the death of the industry. Yet when it's footage of a fifteen year old being naughty on her webcam, it's creating supply to purchase... How can that be?
Re:Moo (Score:1, Interesting)
How about another worst thing?
My great-great-grandparents married at 12. The human race has evolved very little in the past 150 years.
My view of the worst thing is: passing a law that criminalizes sexually ready humans from participating in sex.
Then, criminalize viewing it.
Ayn Rand said it well:
A note to Mike Hatch, who's running for Gov of MN (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear Attorney General Hatch,
I'd like to thank you for not adding your name to this letter:
(From AP) "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.
"This is a problem that requires federal legislation," Gonzales told the Senate Banking Committee. "We need information. Information helps us makes cases."
"We respect civil liberties but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information," he said. " "
Child porn is just an excuse. If protecting children was really the point, the letter proposing legislation would limit all subpoenas of data retained under this law to child porn cases. This proposition doesn't do that, so Mr. Gonzales obviously wants to 'legitimize' the domestic spying program, gain unlimited access to private info with no oversight, and should be condemned for his co-opting a 'hot button' issue to garner support for a lie.
I appreciate the rather singular gesture you have made by not signing this letter, and showing Minnesotans and Americans that privacy and the fourth amendment are as important to you as they are to us.
Abusing children is a horrible crime, abusing them for more political power is worse.
Thanks, and good luck in November; you will have my vote.
Re:Child Porn My Behind (Score:2, Interesting)
They think they can just throw around the "protect the children" meme and we'll all just line up like good Christian Soldiers.
Because thus far, every time they throw around the "protect the children" meme we have all just lined up like good Christian Soldiers.
They pick child pornography specifically because it is so hard to disagree with measures like this without somebody going "you're defending child pornographers!!!!" That would be bad enough for you or me; for a politician, that ad running in the next election cycle is political suicide. Nobody is likely to even stop to hear your explanation once you've been leveled with that accusation.
And really, there's nobody to blame for that but ourselves. If we continue to let tactics like that sway us, they will continue to be employed.
Am I sick of it? Hell yeah, and I'll talk politics with whomever will listen to try to stamp out these sorts of idiocies--but it's not enough.
Re:Moo (Score:1, Interesting)
The funny thing about pedophiles (according to psychologist friend) really, really want to be normal. They don't want to commit a crime or hurt the children. They are caught in a hard place where they have these thoughts but can't act upon them or make them go away. Most people (including them) seem to think that they simply shouldn't have those thoughts, but they do, and as a result, the thought itself is coming closer and closer to being illegal.
That's what I've always thought. We do these pedophiles no justice if we can't let them express their sexuality some way. Come to think of it, shouldn't the same thing apply to video game violence?
Did you know that homosexuality was once defined the same way?
Disclaimer: I am NOT a pedophile. I simply have a sympathy for people who are persecuted for things they cannot change.
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Child Porn My Behind (Score:5, Interesting)
They usually have numbers. They should be referred to only by their number. Slapping a name on a bill is a dishonest labelling for the purpose of marketing.
Re:want to find it (Score:3, Interesting)
I have viewed child porn - not only that, but repeatedly and semi-deliberately: I'm sure they could lock me up if they felt like it for what I've seen, and therefore had on my computer.
Of course, the reason I saw it was because I was looking at an experiment in a major news site where they were trialling wikis as a method of responding to editorials. It was linked here on Slashdot, the trolls descended, and one particularly persistent one decided that his vandalism of choice was to post nude pictures of children. I tried to help clean it up, but eventually got sufficiently revolted that I just left - the admins had gone to sleep for the night, and I wasn't going to win this battle.
Thus, I saw child pornography from viewing a mainstream news site. Clearly, with sufficient power and sufficiently stringent laws they'll be able to get anyone they feel like - it really wouldn't be hard to anonymously plant things, if nothing else.
Wonderful world, eh?
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone committed a crime, verified by a lawyer, and the evidence was encrypted and emailed to the Home Secretary. He now was in possesion of evidence of a crime that was encrypted and he didn't know the decryption key.
Unfortunately, he wasn't arrested and put in prison!
It seems it's one rule for politicians and another for the rest of us!
Re:Privacy for the Incidental (Score:2, Interesting)
These are also the same guys who say "Our spying is only for terrorism", then, the moment the law is passed start using it for other things, saying, "What? What? The law doesn't specify what crimes, so it can be used for any!"