FBI Wants ISPs To Maintain Records Of Every Website You Visit

• February 10, 2010

How far should law enforcement officals be allowed to encroach on your privacy in the fight against crime? What if the crime was child pornography? What if the measure being sought would force ISPs to maintain records of every site you’ve visited for two years?

The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

On the one hand, I think child pornographers are some of the lowest of the low. At the very least I think they should be locked away for a long, long time, and I’m more than willing to entertain notions of much worse punishment. I’m generally inclined to do whatever it takes to help law enforcement catch these people. But there’s another part of me that wonders if we should be so quick to let the FBI or any other law enforcement agency have so much access to our private lives. In cases like this, access can easily lead to control.
I know that some may argue that if one isn’t visting sites one shouldn’t be visiting, one’s got nothing to worry about. My problem with that argument has always been, who decides what sites one shouldn’t be visiting? Certainly, it’s easy to argue one shouldn’t be visiting child porn sites. That’s an easy one. But what happens when those in power push for other sites to be added to the list. Adult porn. Marijuana legalization sites. There are those here who would be okay with even that. But what about Christian sites? Couldn’t an argument be made to restrict religious websites in places where they might offend someone? Public college campuses, for example?
Perhaps you think my slope is less slippery and more fanciful. Maybe, but I don’t generally trust other people with my data easily. It’s far too easy for the controllers to change the rules of the game after I’ve surrendered my privacy. There’s no reason to believe that a law allowing law enforcement to look at a record of your website visits to see if you’ve been looking at child porn won’t one day be used in other ways. It may be too late to take it back by then.
What do you think? Is the measure being pushed by the FBI worth the tradeoff in privacy?

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http://Array brenarlo

This intimidation is something that the Gestapo and KGB would do… not the federal government. Of course, our willingness to let the government do whatever it wants in the name of “catching the bad guys” is turning the FBI into something that could eventually turn into something like the Gestapo and KGB.
sayanything-42

pussycat the soi dissant “jd” and “veteran” asks:

For all of you who used to support the Patriot Act, how is this different than allowing the FBI knowledge of every phone call you make?

Really, “counselor”?

The TSP (not to be confused with the Patriot Act) was the NSA gathering SIGINT (as opposed to COMIMNT, which came after SIGINT analysis) on traffic to KNOWN terrorists. Thus only those who were calling, or being called by, KNOWN terrorists tripped the first flag and were subject to SIGINT. If the SIGINT suggested a meaningful correlation, a warrant was sought before the the FIS Court to conduct COMMINT (if the target was a United States Person). Even the NSA doesn’t have the processing power to scan all phone and IP traffic, and thus has to selectively choose which communications to perform SIGINT upon.

Are there any other subjects you care to demonstrate profound ignorance of tonight, “counselor”?
sayanything-1321

Here comes Big Brother. This is totally politically motivated and intended to convince a few paranoid souls that the government is protecting their precious kids from the mean old internet bullies. These same people don’t want to pay taxes. But they expect the government to expand its operations to protect them. It’s time these crybabies grew up and showed some responsibility for the actions of their offspring. Spare the rod. Spoil the child.
lioncourt

Maybe, but they still wouldn’t be able to access it without a warrant, right?

Depends who owns the data.

BTW, haven’t you argued that the government can get access to phone records?
pete_fgo

Step 1) Swamp the ISPs with an almost impossible requirement.

Step 2 ) ISPs fail while attempting to meet the silly requirement or are shut down for non – compliance.

Step 3) Hello the Federally mandated Big Brother ISP. (To Save You From Yourself).
lioncourt

Only morons could complain about illegal data being collected and than the data being destroyed, but not the record of the collection.
sayanything-2

Anonymize yourselves, anonymize.
lioncourt

That should read “No, what is moronic is that they complain that they kept…’
sayanything-342

We are Montag in Fahrenheit 451
lioncourt

For all of you who used to support the Patriot Act, how is this different than allowing the FBI knowledge of every phone call you make?
sayanything-42

As is card check, and the whole will go down in flames.
sayanything-106

Ollie-B get back to work.
lioncourt

The TSP (not to be confused with the Patriot Act) was the NSA gathering SIGINT (as opposed to COMIMNT, which came after SIGINT analysis) on traffic to KNOWN terrorists. Thus only those who were calling, or being called by, KNOWN terrorists tripped the first flag and were subject to SIGINT. If the SIGINT suggested a meaningful correlation, a warrant was sought before the the FIS Court to conduct COMMINT (if the target was a United States Person). Even the NSA doesn’t have the processing power to scan all phone and IP traffic, and thus has to selectively choose which communications to perform SIGINT upon.

They could still get a record of who you called without any of that.

Wait, wait. So if the police illegally go into a house, it’s “moronic” to complain about the record of the illegal search being destroyed?

No, what is moronic is that they kept the record of the illegal search, or you wouldn’t know about it, they just didn’t keep the data that was illegal to keep. They destroyed the data that they weren’t allowed to have.
sayanything-342

It’s also a huge waste of taxpayer money because you know somehow we will front the bill for this boondogle.
sayanything-4744

That’s a very good point. This policy, if it is inacted by ISPs, presents the distinct possibility of putting people in situations where they are forced to prove they didn’t visit certain sites or download certain files.
sayanything-4744

A warrant is only as hard to get as a judge willing to sign one. Ideally, yes, you’re right, this would only be used for good and would come with all the requisite checks on power. The problem as I see it is that as time goes by, it’s easy enough and all too common for those checks to get eroded in the name of security, “saving the children” or other exigencies.
sayanything-1317

Gotcha. It’s bad to complain about illegal searches.

I’ll remember that next time.

/sarcasm
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Sure, but it’s not just the FBI. This information would eventually be made available to local law enforcement (the article alludes to such agencies adding their voice to call for this sort of measure). Once in hand, I can easily see local law enforcement using this information for purposes other than that which is prescribed.

Maybe, but they still wouldn’t be able to access it without a warrant, right?

All they’re doing is requiring that ISP’s hold the information. They’re not giving themselves, or any local agency, the ability to access it at will.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Well, hold on. I’m not sure this is justified policy from the FBI, but they don’t want access to two years of data. They want ISP’s to maintain it.

Sort of like how we’re required to keep receipts, etc. for our tax returns.

I’m not defending it as policy, but the comparisons to the KGB seem a little premature.
sayanything-3598

But but “It’s for the Children!!!1!” the liberal rallying cry.

/agree Suite this is all a ploy to further infringe upon our privacy.

W.
sayanything-4808

“Maybe, but they still wouldn’t be able to access it without a warrant, right?

All they’re doing is requiring that ISP’s hold the information. They’re not giving themselves, or any local agency, the ability to access it at will.”

Everyone who believes this, stand on your head.

AT&T was exposed over a year ago for having done a fiber dupe splice to an NSA signal intelligence operation where raw Internet feed was copied real-time optically, and they had everything that was flowing through a major AT&T interconnect center. Under zero constitutional grounds did the NSA have any right to ask for such a thing. They could have picked out IP addresses, done packet analysis, and simply sifted out of the stream anything that passed through, without a warrant.

Do you really think that warrants will stop them?
bikebubba

More ominously, what happens when an innocent person gets a virus that starts visiting child porn sites (or, say, Al Qaida’s sites) without that person even knowing? There is a reason that probable cause is required to require collection of data, and this is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment
sayanything-31589

Speaking of the Patriot Act, did you happen to see that an extension for the P.A. was stuck in this 80 Billion dollar jobs bill that leaked today???
sayanything-1317

Wait, wait. So if the police illegally go into a house, it’s “moronic” to complain about the record of the illegal search being destroyed?

You’re just being contentious now. And contentious =/= intelligent.
sayanything-4744

Sure, but it’s not just the FBI. This information would eventually be made available to local law enforcement (the article alludes to such agencies adding their voice to call for this sort of measure). Once in hand, I can easily see local law enforcement using this information for purposes other than that which is prescribed.

How hard would it be for a local politician to exert influence to gain information on the porn sites a rival visits, or for anonymous leaks to the local press. I agree with you that it’s premature to start making comparisons to the KGB, but it’s a system that would beg to be misused.
sayanything-4808

The technical requirements for this are beyond absurd. Congress would have to pass a law, and this gestapo sh*t would get canned long before it got to an open vote in either side of congress. They’re asking Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Level 3, and a lot more multi BILLION dollar corporations to spend their entire wad of cash each year on an impossible task that will alienate their entire customer base over night AND grind their network to a halt as the flow of traffic is in the multi-gigabit range in most major NAPs. @Home’s forced proxy system DID NOT work, and the cable providers found it out all over again when they tried it. No DSL provider I am aware of proxies either.

AND it would be rendered absolutely useless by chained proxy systems you can set up with point and click simplicity already. Google ‘Vidalia bundle’.

The professional traffickers and terrorists they claim to be after already use even more exotic multi-layered systems so this is just a fishing expedition for the common person to build profiles to go after. DO NOT think that warrants would be needed. It’s not paranoia when I say that it takes very little for the information to be gotten of outside of legal channels, and used as the basis for investigations, the genesis of which will be unknown to the court to have been entirely unconstitutional.

On top of this, they are fixing to become the part-time private subsidiary of the RIAA and MPAA and enforce copyright infringement with criminal charges. Don’t for a minute think they aren’t. They’ve made it clear that they think pirating movies and music is a crime on par with child abuse and rape. They really don’t see it as a matter of technology changing the paradigms of how entertainment can and will be distributed in the future. If it was not for MP3 piracy, the music industry never would have cried uncle and negotiated per-song pricing. In fact, if it wasn’t for video piracy, you’d never have seen new movie releases come down from $169 to $29.95 and then see a sale within a month.

You might think it wrong, but the media industry knows damn well that there’s an aspect of addiction like drugs to entertainment in general and milked it shamelessly for decades. When the people had the ability to circumvent the artificially high costs, the media industry could either adapt their prices down to the point that piracy had no real point, or they could go out of business.

I own over 200 paid for songs on my cell phone alone. I have Netflix. If it weren’t for the piracy by the common ordinary citizen, there would be no such things as iTunes, Rhapsody, Netflix, or Hulu.

I’m not even touching the international rights violations that this would entail as the people who host websites overseas can be said to have a privacy interest with regard to who visits them. Or the way this turns you into presumed guilty until proven innocent (and you never will with such laws).

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