New bill from the creator of SOPA

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it

And apparently complete morons can't read. Who knew?

This is like that moment in Star Trek when Data turns to Picard and says, "There are signs of sentient life," and the music swells as we cut to commercial.

Noting that sentience doesn't really imply much intelligence, would anyone else support me in the hypothesis that Lamar Smith may well be a sentient being, despite all previous evidence to the contrary?

 

[Something Amyss]

A new bills are entering the senate now that follow along the same lines as SOPA and PIPA, the first is H.R. 1981 which allows forces internet providers to let the government monitor your entire internet history constantly with no form of legal justification for their actions. It's receiving no media attention and is currently being called within the house the "protecting children from internet pornographers act" as a strong arming tactic. Spread the word:

http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-and-internet-advocates-wheres-your-hr-1981-outrage-2012-2
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.1981:

1. This is not a new bill. It's almost a year old now.

2. All it does is (regarding the internet) require ISPs to keep a record of what IP is assigned to who for a period of one year. This is not unreasonable.

3. Search bar is your friend.

The 'Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act' (I shit you not, that is the name) was formulated nearly the minute that SOPA lost all of its support on January 19th.

False, false, false, false, FREAKING FALSE.

From the LOC link in the first post:

(introduced 5/25/2011)

And:

Latest Major Action: 12/16/2011 Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 224.

Are you seriously telling me you think this was drafted after SOPA tanked on the 19th of January this year, when the LAST MAJOR ACTION was almost a month before?

I've heard a bit of it, read some news articles here and there over the past month about it.

It's a worse idea than SOPA, but the supposed point of the whole bill wants to guilt you into supporting it with the whole 'think of the children' BS.

I'm seriously curious as to what you think this bill actually does.

 

[Something Amyss]

they stopped actually producing "tin foil" in the early 1900s... it's all aluminum foil now bro... I hear it was the CIA's doing

Yeah, they knew tin foil was too effective.

 

[him over there]

Little, actually quite late to the party here man. Plus it really isn't that bad and most of the crazy over reactive "information" in the OP is wrong. It isn't a constant monitoring of your web history, it means that your isp must retain your ip address (something they probably already do for the sake of dmca charges etc.) so that a government entity can attain a court approved investigation warrant to investigate serious crime. It isn't going to just alert the fbi and cia to every single pirate in the US and somehow put millions of people in jail, it isn't some sort of 1984 big brother shit. Hell all it really is is the preservation of evidence so law enforcement and investigation can do what they already can do with your phone history.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Given how rare child pornography is compared to the rest of the traffic on the Internet (abhorrent as it is), this is quite an extreme measure to take. It'd be like installing cameras in EVERYONE'S house just to make sure they weren't raping and/or killing anyone.

So this is what we're going back to: J. Edgar Hoover-era Wire-taps, only instead of phones it's the Internet.
Given the depth of information they're requesting, it's only a matter of time before that information goes from "used strictly for law enforcement" to "social blackmail", even if the person in question hasn't actually done anything illegal.

In fact, considering that child pornographers (and pretty much anyone else who wants complete anonymity on the web) use TOR, it would be like installing cameras in everbody's house to make sure you aren't raping anyone, when the rapists all have a superpower that allows them to turn invisible during the act but keep a decoy doing innocuous things. This bill might help with plenty of other kinds of internet crime, but child pornography is going to be /way/ down the list of things it makes a difference in.

 

[Aidinthel]

...And here I thought Republicans were supposed to be all about small government? Any Americans (perhaps even Republicans) care to explain this to a filthy, unwashed Norwegian?

"Small government" is Republican code for "laissez faire". They don't mind intruding on citizens' personal lives to enforce their moral codes on everyone.

But that's an unrelated issue, and this bill doesn't do what the OP claims. Quoting myself:

As far as I can tell, all the controversy is about a previous version of the bill. I strongly encourage anyone concerned about this to read the thing yourself; it isn't long. You can find the full text here. However, only Section 4 is relevant to your concern. (Emphasis mine.)

Spoiler

SEC. 4. RETENTION OF CERTAIN RECORDS BY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.
(a) In General- Section 2703 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
'(h) Retention of Certain Records-
'(1) A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.
'(2) Access to a record or information required to be retained under this subsection may not be compelled by any person or other entity that is not a governmental entity.
'(3) The Attorney General shall make a study to determine the costs associated with compliance by providers with the requirement of paragraph (1). Such study shall include an assessment of all the types of costs, including for hardware, software, and personnel that are involved. Not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this paragraph, the Attorney General shall report to Congress the results of that study.
'(4) In this subsection--
'(A) the term 'commercial provider' means a provider of electronic communication service that offers Internet access capability for a fee to the public or to such classes of users as to be effectively available to the public, regardless of the facilities used; and
'(B) the term 'Internet' has the same meaning given that term in section 230(f) of the Communications Act of 1934.'.
(b) Sense of Congress- It is the sense of Congress--
(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and
(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.
(c) Transition Rule- The amendment made by this section shall not apply until 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act to a provider of an electronic communications service that does not, on that date of enactment, have in effect a system of retention of records that complies with the requirements of that amendment.
(d) Study-
(1) The Attorney General, not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, shall complete a study of providers affected by section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code.
(2) Such study shall include--
(A) the privacy standards and considerations implemented by those providers as they comply with the requirements of section 2703(h); and
(B) the frequency of any reported breaches of data retained pursuant to section 2703(h).
(3) The Attorney General shall, upon the completion of the study, report the results of the study to Congress.

So, far from being forced "to let the government monitor your entire internet history constantly with no form of legal justification for their actions" , the ISPs just need to keep track of what each person's IP address is. This information would be protected exactly the same as any other customer data, requiring a court order to access.

Frankly, I'm a little tired of this fear-mongering. It only serves to de-legitimize our response to actual threats.

 

[Something Amyss]

So this is what we're going back to: J. Edgar Hoover-era Wire-taps, only instead of phones it's the Internet.

That's not what this bill does at all.

Given the depth of information they're requesting,

They're not really requesting any information. They're requiring ISPs to keep a record of temporary IP assignments of their customers, which can only be accessed with a proper warrant.

it's only a matter of time before that information goes from "used strictly for law enforcement" to "social blackmail", even if the person in question hasn't actually done anything illegal.

Just like with any other information that's already collected for law enforcement purposes.

Slippery slope fallacies are bad enough, but when they're based on false information and have existing parallels to demonstrate their inanity, they're just ridiculous.

I suggest you take a look at the actual bill and educate yourself. If, once you read it, you still disagree with it, we'll talk about why. But if you're against the bill because of parallels to Hoover-era wire taps, you're against it for the wrong reasons, since it's not remotely true.

 

[Something Amyss]

...And here I thought Republicans were supposed to be all about small government? Any Americans (perhaps even Republicans) care to explain this to a filthy, unwashed Norwegian?

"Small government" is Republican code for "laissez faire". They don't mind intruding on citizens' personal lives to enforce their moral codes on everyone.

I think it goes beyond laissez faire. The Republican party line seems to be "small government for me, large government for you." I mean, it'd be one thing if they were enforcing morality, but they're only enforcing it on others. Examples include marital fidelity (and with Gingrich running, this is a big one), family values, homosexuality (I condemn your gay lifestyle, but will continue having gay sex right up until I'm caught), privacy (many Republican candidates who preach invasive measures whine about their privacy).

But more to the point, from your quote of yourself:

As far as I can tell, all the controversy is about a previous version of the bill.

I think that might be partially true, but from looking at the bill's history, about 90% of the claims are not in there in any way, shape or form. Possibly more. That's the big problem. A lot of this not only isn't true now, but was never true.

 

[lRookiel]

Well, I'm off to go hunt me a Lamar Smith.

 

[Talannas]

if this goes through I wonder how many programs could be created to save absolutely no history from websites, I already use 2

 

[Atmos Duality]

That's not what this bill does at all.

Then what does it do? From what I can find, it adds more penalties to sentencing Child Pornographers, and it inflicts this upon us.

'(1) A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

Enables identification. In order to know how that's relevant requires that you know something about how the Internet and the court systems work.

Monitoring that sort of traffic would require a backlog of that IP's history, if it is to be of any use in court. An IP address on its own is utterly worthless in a criminal investigation unless it is being tied to some sort of activity.
(if they're trying to link the IPs to illicit sites accessed, they would need to monitor either the offender's traffic, or the illicit site's too)

Without that information, the logic goes something like this:

"This is an IP address belong to Bob during the period of . We tracked it."
"So it is."
"Yup. I wonder how that's relevant to this case?"
"We don't know, because we didn't establish the connection between the IP address and the crime! For all we know, this IP address has no significance to anything!"

And if they DID go from the other way around:
"This website was accessed by that IP address at this time, but we could only know that for certain if we tapped into and monitored the illicit website during that time, since it's not going to keep track of connections it no longer has."
(this is illegal, by the way, unless they're establishing a sting and setup their own fake website)

So if they aren't tracking that IP/user's browsing history, then what the fuck are they doing with it? What CAN they do with it?

It's that "what" that I'm scratching my head over here.
I re-read the bill in its entirety, and it doesn't make any sense to issue that clause above.

Perhaps I jumped to conclusions, but this is still something that bothers me, because it's a precursor to the exact kind of legislation that would enable internet phone tapping.

 

[ScoopMeister]

Is this guy a friggin' retard, or a massive troll?

usually those 2 things are mutually exclusive

Correction: all trolls are retards, but not all retards are trolls.

 

[Something Amyss]

Then what does it do? From what I can find, it adds more penalties to sentencing Child Pornographers, and it inflicts this upon us.

That's what it does. That's not remotely what you said.

Monitoring that sort of traffic would require a backlog of that IP's history, if it is to be of any use in court.

Which is why they require it to be kept for at least a year. So the data can be subpoaenad in appropriate circumstances. This is in no way setting up the government tracking us.

"This is an IP address belong to Bob during the period of . We tracked it."

Of course, that's kind of where it breaks down. First sentence. They need cause to get a court order. This information is otherwise protected. They can't really know it's "Bob's" corresponding IP without some due cause.

You could argue this is potentially prone to abuse, but only in the sense that any private held information is.

therefore, the rest of your scenario doesn't really work or fit.

Perhaps I jumped to conclusions, but this is still something that bothers me, because it's a precursor to the exact kind of legislation that would enable internet phone tapping.

So you're still sticking with the slippery slope fallacy.

 

[ElPatron]

they stopped actually producing "tin foil" in the early 1900s... it's all aluminum foil now bro... I hear it was the CIA's doing

Aluminium foil hats are still called "tinfoil hats". I don't really call the shots on these things.

 

[Terminate421]

This will lift peoples spirits:

He's such an asshat.

 

[ElPatron]

they stopped actually producing "tin foil" in the early 1900s... it's all aluminum foil now bro... I hear it was the CIA's doing

Aluminium foil hats are still called "tinfoil hats". I don't really call the shots on these things.

don't you see that is all part of our shapeshifting reptilian overlords plan... they replaced the working tinfoil with aluminum which doesn't work then but keeep the misnomer of "tinfoil" so we are none the wiser

ask David Icke he knows what's up

Are they putting mind control chemicals on our shampoo?

Because all the conspiracy theorists have really crappy hygiene.