FBI Head Wants Strong Data Retention Rules 256
KevHead writes "Speaking at a conference of international police chiefs, FBI Director Robert Mueller called for strict data retention guidelines for US ISPs. Echoing DHS head Michael Cherthoff's assertion that the Internet was enabling terrorists to telecommute to work, Mueller went further and said that the US needs stricter data retention guidelines. '"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. The solution? Forcing ISPs to retain data for set periods of time.' If that happens, how long before the MPAA and RIAA start asking to take a peek at the data too, as they have in Europe?"
Data Retention... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Supplying free SAN's to ISP's as well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine an OC-3, you are talking about a lot of storage space.
why? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the AT&Ts "collaboration" with the NSA, and CARNIVORE, one would think the government already has all the tools they need. Are they now saying that's not enough? That's kind of pathetic, don't you think?
Psychological warfare (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't what the actual US government doing, with its war on terra'? Bush and the terrorists, same combat.
Wouldn't it be cool.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It will never be "enough". (Score:5, Insightful)
When every search / posting / IM / etc from you is available to elected officials (and may be accidentally "leaked"), they hope that most people will self-censor their activities to only items that would be "appropriate".
Should you ever take a stand against the elected officials, they will have access to your records
It's all about maintaining power and control.
Helps after an attack has already happened (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the terrorists will be using encrypted messages or coded messages which don't appear to be anything special (you know those -1 Slashdot comments are for something), this will help retrace the terrorist's online activities after people have died in a terrorist attack. My guess: lots of porn and a few messages to E-mail accounts which no longer exist.
It's just that there are so many disposable E-mail accounts available and the easy access to Internet cafes. If someone is using a disposable E-mail account and an Internet terminal which is paid for in loose change (usually used in airports), how are you going to track that person down one month later? What if the terminal is outside the United States?
Not to mention free Linksys brand wireless Internet access which is available in most areas.
Any government fighting terrorists needs to setup its own terrorist propaganda websites which make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer's many vulnerabilities. Spyware for the spies. Microsoft's poor security practices not only hurt you, they also hurt the terrorists. Of course terrorists using Firefox screws us all.
Hats off to the modern spy state (Score:5, Insightful)
So the EU enacted its spy state law last year, while people said, "even the states does not go that far". The EU Data Retention Directive wants (it needs to be ratified by individual countries) to track every phone call made, every email sent, every web site visited, every cell phone location, and hold this data for over a decade. The data would be available to non-governmental organisations (private firms). Anonymous internet usage would be banned. Anonymous prepaid mobile phone cards would be banned. All this, of course, to save us from terrorism and organised crime.
And the UK has constructed a surveillance system that beats anything ever built by the soviet spy states. Every public urban space is monitored, recorded, tracked. The only privacy you have is in your home, where you are safely under house arrest, unable to do anything to damage the interests of the state.
It was just a matter of time before the FBI asked for the same powers. What police force would not? It's a copper's wet dream. Every one of us stinking criminals-in-waiting tracked like cockroaches in a pen. No more crime. No more disorder. No more rebellion.
On Liberty: (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 2 questions, really:
If you're looking for a guess, I don't have it. All I know is that it bothers me when the government's fear of people they can't even identify is enough reason for them to start "monitoring" the 300 million people in our country that they can identify. I don't know how much liberty one has if they are aware that everything they type, or every call they make, is "monitored". Is that liberty? Does that make anyone feel safer?
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ugh.... (Score:0, Insightful)
The only thing the government seems remotely capable of securing is specific locations with limited interaction with the public. Everything else is vaporware and an excuse to award fat contracts for feel good theatre props. If half the money pissed away on that inane "war on drugs" was spent on securing utilities and vital public services, and this money was properly managed,(Proper managment of these resources would be localised with rigorous pen testing. It's vague. blow me. pay me as a consultant and I'll put some effort in to the sollution) it might be possible to put something real in place of all the expensive theatrics. This would have twice the impact because 90% of all financial incentive to rape our nation's security originates from drug prohibition. (if you want a real number compare human traffiking profit estimates to drug traffiking profit estimates)
Illegal immigration is a headache in itself that needs to be delt with. That's one of the most difficult problems because it originates from overpopulation which is deliberately encouraged by those with financial sway to drive down cost of labor. Good luck getting control of those strings let alone solving the problem in the near future short of mass murder. As far as long term solutions go, you could try encouraging responsible population managment but good luck distracting the religious wack jobs long enough to pull that one off. I'll throw you a bone and suggest liberal use of shiny homosexuals.
The failures at life who find that offensive, but are evenly remotely educated enough to appreciate the rest of this post win the prize for managing to get that far in life and still believe in fairy tales. In short: Blow me. Go ahead. I drew first blood. Start a flamewar you useless pieces of shit. Use your hard earned debate skills to discredit me and my ideas. After all, I started it. Contribute to the problem. I am because I don't give a shit. I dream for an oppurtunity to bend every last one of you meddling fucks over a table and financially ass/skull fuck you till you're bleeding money all the way to the retirement home to die. I couldn't give two shits if you never get your security pony. I watch my own ass. I expect nothing. Wannabe comedians can crack some lame ass joke to dance around the issue John Stewart style(I have nothing but respect for John Stewart) about me taking myself too seriously. Watch. These jerkoffs will post "You take yourself too seriously." 10 times in a row just because I said that. Predictable fucking clown shoes.
Reasons why none of this will ever happen: Why the fuck would anyone waste time and energy actually protecting all of your useless asses? All the people making decisions have the best security for themselves money can buy. Nobody is going to give you anything in life. Beggars can't be choosers and your beggar filth asses will take what is given to you and you will like it. You are a dime a dozen and if you don't like it tough shit.
Security? You think the cop uniform makes the guy with a gun any less of a threat to your unarmed ass? That's prison bitch mentality. Suck off the man, pay your taxes, the legbreakers won't throw you in prison with the lions. We have 6.5 billion people on this planet thanks to cunts like the pope. 1 in 6.5 billion is cut throat odds. If you don't like that, please off yourself so I can get my piece that much more easily. What the fuck am I talking about, if you ever pulled your head out your ass in the first place, you put it back in to the sand before you got this far. In conclusion: fuck off, blow me, and die you useless cunts.
And who is going to pay for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I am not going to waste my resources storing every email every one of my customers has received from now until kingdom come. Unlike Google, I don't have the spare cash sitting around for that kind of storage space. Make it a law and I bet you see a surge of ISPs basing their servers offshore to protect their investment (customer privacy mainly).
Secondly, the privacy concern
So the FBI reading my sarcastic emails to friends and family is going to help us catch a bunch of terrorists who, last I heard, had one webmaster who was stupid enough to get himself arrested in Germany? I've got news for you guys: Teenagers, CEOs, and computer enthusiasts coordinate things through the internet. I imagine terrorists prefer suicide bombing training camps or mountain hideaways for their secret conferences. Besides, we haven't heard anything of Al Qaeda declaring Jihad on Microsoft over Netmeeting or even MSN Messenger, so it is highly doubtful that they have tried to use them.
As far as 'terrorist websites' go, the FBI just needs to get some of their buds at the CIA to break into the server and plant a basic hit reporter. Figure out who is logging in and making changes, and you've got your man.
Re:Please read the article before quoting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say, for instance, that the logs for my telephone show a number of calls to a satellite phone in Afghanistan. Suddenly, I'm a suspect the next time a bomb goes off within about 150 miles of me. What am I saying to this person in Afghanistan? Well, actually, it's my sister who went over there as part of a red cross relief effort, but the local police don't know that and while they're holding me to confirm it, my employer is asking questions.
Questions like "What sort of a person is this who was arrested last week and hasn't been heard from since? Best replace him."
After that happens, it's rather hard to get another job. A common interview question is "Why did you leave your last job?" and the honest answer ("I was arrested and held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act owing to poor evidence") tends to put off prospective employers - chances are they stopped listening after the word "arrested" and now just want me off the premises as quickly as possible.
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the police can keep up a steady trickle of arrests of people like this, the "war on terror" can be kept going indefinitely.
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
They already have a lot of data, but that's not what it's all about:
"Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday."
So, it's not just Terrorists (TM) anymore, it's the "disaffected" they're after.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2574462
Re:Answer to unwanted data retention is poisoning (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is the deal (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the guy from the FBIs job to demand that our freedoms be observered and monitored. It is his job to lobby politians to pass laws to make his job easier and minimize the tax burden of his department. Its the politians job to take him seriously, concider the facts and then tell him bollocks. If he fails to do this it is your job to make it very clear that this is unacceptable, and then not vote for him in the next elections. If he gets in, then thats democracy, and the freedom that you thought was important, was clearly not that important to your fellow countryman.
Its perfectly possible that, despite living in a liberal democracy at the moment what the people want is to live under the rule of a paternal dictatorship - people are stupid. If thats the case, then democracy will let that happen. All you can do then is either raise a militia or leave. I guess you could always try and educate people, but thats never worked in the past
And in other News (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, ObL *is* laughing is ass off... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. make some attacks to high-profile targets in US and its allies
2. see how those people will (slowly but surely) erode their civil liberties and transform _their_ countries in the same kind of totalitarian theocracies as Taliban-Afghanistan
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
PS. too bad those intelligent, enlightened, Spanish people saw right thru our plan and threw Aznar off.
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Fifth Wave* (Score:5, Insightful)
We're all very glad of that over in the UK, by the way. Otherwise, just imagine how much money the IRA would have been able to raise from American donations! Fortunately, the US government always took a very hard line on this and made sure that their citizens were not responsible for funding a terror campaign against their own allies.
Re:Answer to unwanted data retention is poisoning (Score:2, Insightful)
It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Spin, not security (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about control of disaffected people [reuters.com] not fighting real terrorism.
And what's with the comment about not needing to "speak with anybody else" - are the FBI scared of shut-ins [wikipedia.org] now?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
How long? (Score:3, Insightful)
So the ISPs are retaining the info, but not long enough for the Feds to do their job right, so they are asking for them to keep them longer. Well how long? Why are the Feds so slow? Will they want to extend the retention length again if the time table they recommended isn't long enough?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Data Retention... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Billions of dollars. . . . aw, hell, you get the idea
Citizens might be losing their rights, but that's only a byproduct of the real effort. The only purpose for the war on terror is to shove as much of your tax dollars into their pockets as they can.Re:DUDE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you're not with us, you're "disaffected."
KFG
1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the progression.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DUDE! (Score:5, Insightful)
No no - just drugs and terror.
See, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, pollution, hunger, disease - and those you didn't mention like genocide, etc., are too hot politically to be fought, for they provide no gain to the government.
Drugs and terror... and let's go ahead and add child porn... allow the government a "war" that can be used to justify reductions in personal privacy, massive amounts of data collection, and emboldening of the Executive.
Those other "wars" are just hippie rally-cries. Duh.
Re:ugh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I must challenge this constant assumption of cell of killers surrounding you and plotting your deaths.
WHERE ARE THEY? It's been five years, for chissakes. On 9-11 itself, they could only get enough manpower to take 4 planes instead of the 12 they wanted. And they can't ever pull that trick again.
Occam's razor, kids. They aren't there. There are no "terror cells" full of brown people saturating the country. It's a truthy crock. The "terrorists" we've kidnapped gave us nothing but lies under torture, which gave us endless terror warnings.
They ain't there. Stop snivelling! BUSH IS LYING. He has no intel at all. We have no humint in these groups, the people we're torturing are nonentities or innocents that we've used as proxies for our anger. All the "facts" Bush has sold us on, from the "terraist cells" to the Iraq terror to Iran to Korea were garbage. We got hit with a simple trick on 9-11. That's it. We don't have to stop the planet to find the evildoers. They are DEAD. We however are making millions of people who hate our guts on a daily basis in Iraq, so I guess it's a goddamned self-fulfilling prophecy after all.
Re:ugh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Convert to Islam
Implement Sharia, abolish the separation of church and state, etc.
Cut off the Jews
There are, of course, other demands.
Comply with their demands, or they will try to destroy the US.
They have sought religous permission to kill four million Americans [nationalreview.com] and render more homeless. They think that they are the ones that caused the Soviet Union to fall, and they think they can do the same to the US. They also have designs on Europe.
We don't delete for no reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)