US DoJ zeroes in on image sites
p2pnet.net news:- George W. Bush has much in common with the entertainment and software cartels.
Both think members of the general public are potential terrorists, in Bush’s case, and criminals and thieves, in the case of the music, movie and software companies.
The outgoing Bush administration has, “accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate,” says CNET News.
This came to light Wednesday, “in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and A second purpose was to ask ISPs how much it would cost to record details on their subscribers for two years and, “At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address,” CNET continues.
“Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. ‘There’s a PR concern with including the libraries, so we’re not going to include them,’ the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. ‘We know we’re going to get a pushback, so we’re not going to do that’.”
The post also includes an interesting ISP snooping time-line
June 2005: Justice Department officials quietly propose data retention rules.
December 2005: European Parliament votes for data retention of up to two years.
April 14, 2006: Data retention proposals surface in Colorado and the U.S. Congress.
April 20, 2006: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says data retention “must be addressed.”
April 28, 2006: Democrat proposes data retention amendment, followed by a Republican.
May 26, 2006: Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller pressure Internet and telecom companies.
September 26, 2006: Politicians suggest that Web hosts and registrars might have to comply. Search engines are also mentioned.
January 18, 2007: Gonzales says administration will ask Congress for new laws.
February 6, 2007: Republicans introduce mandatory data retention “Safety Act.”
“Because the Justice Department did not circulate a written proposal at the private meeting, it’s difficult to gauge the effects on Web sites that would be forced to record information on image uploads for two years,” says CNET.
Meeting participants said that Justice officials, including assistant attorney general Rachel Brand, the assistant attorney general for legal policy and a former White House attorney, didn’t answer questions about anonymously posted content and whether text comments on a blog would qualify for retention, it adds.
Also See:
CNET News – Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites, March 2, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Think forward 5, 10, 15 years….. in your head, imagine a 13 year old male, coming of age and the typical thoughts of said young men…
He goes to his room, wanting to know how to communicate with the fairer gender and tells his computer to ‘open google’ and wall display comes on and his computer goes to google for guidance… he tells his computer to search “Junior Highschool girl relationship” and after a few ad’s related to relationship groups in his town wiz by on his display he receives a list of books he can buy and sites offering suggestions on what to read. He doesn’t feel the first search that came up were really what he wanted to know and tells his computer to search “how to kiss a Junior Highschool girl” and a few more ad’s fly by on the display… outside he can hear screeching of tires from multiple vehicles but discounts it as the teenagers next-door having a party.. the list comes up about various sites discussing teenage dating and families talking about the damage from youth’s dating too young…. but before he can even make a selection, he hears yelling outside his home and then the front door being broken down… before he can even get off his bed that he’d sat down on while reading, they entered his room, guns drawn, pushing him to the ground…. his parents in the background crying as they wonder what crimes he’s committed not having had time to read the insta-warrent that was auto-generated and sent to the local police driving in the area when he searched for combinations of words that implied relations with young girls… While in his room they found photocopies of a few copy written photos (photos out of a year book) and that he’d ripped the ‘do not remove tag’ off his bed… then they showed the insta-warrent to his parents and the line that said they could inspect the entire house and anything on the property… they then went through every data storage unit until they found a home movie from 20 years ago that you could hear a copy written song playing in the background… then a few scattered mp3’s that didn’t have embedded drm… The crimes were im’d to the local judge, who determined the entire family was in violation of copyright infringement and piracy.. a minute or two later the judge im’d the officers notifying them the criminal family was to be taken immediately to prison for a 20 year sentence each. Their home and items were sold and the monies sent to the media companies to compensate for their losses do to the act’s of infringement.
What a pleasant future we have to look forward to.
Just my 10 cents,
_-Jile-_
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:55 am
LOL
Seriously though, won’t happen. Too many people in this country (US) are against data retention. I’m one of them. If you live in America, bug your reps and tell them that you do *NOT* want data retention laws because that is a violation of one’s personal liberties. Tell them that with these laws, we just might as well change our name to Little China.
Anonymous Political Speech
Garunteed by the US First Amendment…for now.