FBI wants records kept of (all) Web sites visited

[Newsjock]

Source: CNet

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.

FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

... Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both practical and privacy objections.

"We're not set up to keep URL information anywhere in the network," said Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance.

And, Arena added, "if you were do to deep packet inspection to see all the URLs, you would arguably violate the Wiretap Act."


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10448060-38.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

[ohiodemocratic]

1. 1984 n/t

[global1]

12. Yep - And Big Brother Is Sitting Right On Your Desk.....nt

[IndianaGreen]

21. Report to Room 101 in the Ministry of Love at once!

Who will protect us from those charged with our protection?

[laylah]

2. Oh FFS! What next? nt

[LiberalFighter]

3. There are ways to visit sites to avoid tracking.

[yava]

72. LiberalFighter: with gov overlook on your home and receiving servers

you are transparent.

[mac56]

4. Same tune, different verse.

How many gazillion times has this scare story been trotted out over the years?

Run in circles, scream and shout.

Yawn.

[No Elephants]

54. You doubt that the FBI is pressing for this? LOL

[DrDan]

5. this story would get much more attentiona around here during a GOP administration

now? probably not so much . . .

[Goldstein1984]

11. Nope. Everything's good.

Wouldn't change a thing.

The lesser of two evils--that's my ideal state of affairs.

[DrDan]

53. must be nice to have flexible positions on the issues

[BootinUp]

6. Me and my father and many other like minded citizens

won't stand for such an intrusion.

[No Elephants]

55. So, I assume that is your last post?

[Tim01]

66. That's good, but what can you actually do about it? Stop using the internet?

That's about it.

[JDPriestly]

7. Whatever happened to freedom of association.

Why can't they just track visits to illegal sites?

They don't need to know whether I am visiting the New York Times or DU? Those are perfectly legal sites. It's none of the FBI's business as long as I am not visiting some illegal site.

And what if you land on an illegal site by accident? You click on some small lettering under an article you are reading and land in unknown territory without really wanting to be there. That happens to the less well coordinated among us.

[Goldstein1984]

14. And what if you visit and al Qaeda website?

You could be considered in communication and in association, then targeted for extrajudicial execution for being a threat the the citizens of the United States.

The slippery slope is quickly becoming a 90-degree vertical drop.

[Mithreal]

24. Same problem monitoring people's library access.

Do they still do that?

The issue of guilt by association is something the knuckledraggers can't seem to process.

I still hear folks say if you are doing nothing wrong you shouldn't worry.

[Goldstein1984]

28. When I hear someone say...

"If you're doing nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about," I really worry about that.

I shocked a friend of ours once. He was a firefighter, then decided to become a police officer. The power went to his head. He once told me that citizens didn't need firearms because they had people in uniform, police and military, to carry them for them.

He was visibly shaken when I said, "Greg, just look around the world and into our own history. I can easily imagine a scenario where the people in uniform are the ones that armed citizens should be shooting at."

[No Elephants]

56. What if you like reading at al Jazeera?

[tomp]

57. excellent point, pointing out the corrupt nature of the fbi intent. nt

[L. Coyote]

63. Are there "illegal sites" on the web?

And, do you have those URLs?

[Gman]

65. What's illegal somewhere is legal somewhere else

It's called the World Wide Web because it's a web of the entire world. Tienanmen Square pictures that are illegal in China are legal elsewhere. Everything's legal in Somalia because there are no laws. It depends on where you're at.

[Jamastiene]

8. Fine. Reading two years worth of the web sites I visit and they'll all become total pervs...

or go crazy. I don't really care which. I am both.

[sandyj999]

9. They will die of boredom if the follow me LOL!

[CoffeeCat]

43. They'll know how to....

...get $200 worth of groceries for about $30 by using coupons--if they follow me!

[sandyj999]

70. That's great! Maybe I should follow you. :)

[bemildred]

10. Teh stupid, it burns.

Either Mueller is a moron or this is an attempt to intimidate web users, because there is diddly squat that one could do with such a database that would be useful. Your average web user these days does not even know that he/she is visting 90% of the sites that this system would record them as visiting. There are good reasons that it is called "the Web".

[Mithreal]

16. +1

[EFerrari]

48. The last I heard, FBI couldn't even manage their own computer system.

Remember that?

lol

[Solly Mack]

13. k/r

[Mithreal]

15. What a colossal waste of time and resources

Our FBI Chief Is As Internet Savvy As Your Grandparents

FBI Director Robert Mueller revealed himself as an internet newbie yesterday when he admitted to nearly being duped by an email phishing scam.

He told Commonwealth Club of California forum attendees that he recently responded to an email that appeared to come from his bank, stopping only when he was asked for his password. Using his experience as an example, he went on to speak about the ever increasing threat of cybercrime. One smart-ass citizen responded to his warnings thusly:

"I'm not worried about a teenage hacker reading my e-mail. I'm worried about you reading it."

Ballsy—I'll give him that. But it appears that we have little to worry about as far as Muller is concerned. He's too busy reading every email in his inbox that's from Zimbabwe or in all caps.

http://gizmodo.com/5377261/our-fbi-chief-is-as-internet-savvy-as-your-grandparents
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/08/BA061A2HG7.DTL&tsp=1

No offense to tech savvy oldsters.

All your Civil Right are belong to us.

[L0oniX]

17. Define "illegal site".

[No Elephants]

59. I was wondering about that one myself.

[47of74]

18. The FBI is another Federal agency that needs to be slapped down hard by Congress

But Congress having the political will to do that probably wouldn't happen.

And to any government agent reading this, I say this;

[No Elephants]

58. Congress? LOL. Congress passed the Patriot Act that even a Republican Scotus

decided was unconstitutional (at least the parts that have been tested in that Court).

[pleah]

19. K&R

[TrogL]

20. So if somebody hits me with a malware that deluges me in pron sites?

...off a perfectly innocuous-looking google hit, I guess I'm screwed for life (pun intended), right?

They're called porn bombs.

[Mithreal]

22. Better make sure your porn bomb only contains images of consenting adults too

When I worked for a company that makes internet security software, one particular developer got his kicks hitting the testers with these porn bombs. We tested malware regularly and without a doubt many people's computers are infected.

If you wanted to ruin someone's life, it is not particularly difficult. When I see stories about folks busted for images in their caches or elsewhere on their hard drive, I always have my doubts.

[truth2power]

33. Last summer my computer got infected with a slew of viruses, spyware, trojans etc...

One of them even ate my anti-virus software.

I recovered and re-installed and recovered on and on. One morning I fired up my computer and there were three porn site icons on my desktop. One or more could have been kiddie porn for all I know.

I don't trust the FBI to do anything right. They'd fsck this up, too, and innocent people would go to jail. They should go look for terrorists.

Oh, wait......they can't even do that.

[fascisthunter]

23. "paranoia self destroyahhhhhhhhhhhhh"

when I think of the FBI I think of pervs playing peek-a-boo

[endless october]

25. more big brother bullshit.

they always include that it's for some kind of sex crime to make people ashamed to oppose the invasion of their privacy.

and then they use the new powers for anything they want.

fuck that.

[Iowa]

37. +1

[Matariki]

26. Um, why not shut down sites with illegal material?

Rather than track people who visit them? Entrapment? Will/does the FBI maintain sites with child pornography, etc?

[RedSock]

27. i 'm going to "heyfbi-fuckyou.com" right now (eom)

[Bonhomme Richard]

29. Rut roh n/t

[FarCenter]

30. Would they have to store all the URLs to all the ads that pages call up?

There can be a whole bunch of URLs in every page that you display, which call up pictures, ads, etc. from a whole variety of sites.

Stupid idea.

[boppers]

31. Good luck with inspecting port 443 traffic.

SSL was designed to *prevent* moronic fishing expeditions (and information theft) at the ISP level (among other things).

IP tracking would be much easier, and is more analogous to the national current phone record "tapping" that currently exists.

[DCBob]

51. 443 just encrypts the content not the destination url or originating IP..

You can spoof yourself by going trough a proxy but the proxy server could also get and store the real information if it wanted to.

[jmowreader]

32. I see a future in anonymizers

How come it is, every time the government comes up with some kind of crazy shit the first thing they drop is the phrase "child pornography"? Besides, wouldn't an ISP need at least as many computers to record all the browsing histories as it does to serve websites?

[Mithreal]

47. Fear enables any power grab.

[GeorgeGist]

34. Herr Mueller beliefs ...

are consistent with fascism.

[MilesColtrane]

35. Why don't those guys in the FBI just take a little trip north to Fort Meade?

I'm sure the NSA has any information they could possibly want to conduct an investigation.

[Alias Dictus Tyrant]

36. I spend all of my time at www.CuteOverload.com! There, now they know.

[Mithreal]

46. alQaeda front group, don't deny it

[DallasNE]

38. Damn Bush Holdover

Mueller's disregard for the law should get him fired pronto.

[Mithreal]

45. He serves at the President's whim, pleasure.

What makes you think he isn't doing exactly what the President would have him do?

[RedCloud]

39. Many moons ago a professor recommended a book on IG FARBEN. My phone was crackling for weeks.

This was before the Internet! So there may have been ways. The very nerve of me trying to find out who were Nazi sympathizers and collaborators within our US of A!

[MadMaddie]

40. The FBI and other government organizations

throught the illegal wire tapping of Americans cannot keep up with the volume of calls made in America. How would they analyze ALL website visits? Would they target Liberal websites more than the racist websites? You see it becomes a slippery slope depending on who is in office.

This is bad policy if this is their plan.

[True_Blue]

41. I don't see how they can really do that

Especially with the all open wireless connections that are available.

[havocmom]

42. Too many folks are ignoring MSM and doing their own investigative work

The Powers That Be must scare them back into the proper propaganda channels.

[Mithreal]

44. Think you may be onto something there.

[TexasObserver]

49. They want capabilities the KGB only dreamed of having.

[Occulus]

50. And about twenty minutes after such a law goes into effect

those same companies will be offering up the user histories to the highest bidder, forbidden by law or not. It's just too lucrative a prospect for that information to remain confidential and inaccessible.

[damyank913]

73. That's right!! Just look at China ...

if you wanna see Laissez-faire capitalism in action. It takes pure profit to motivate any entity towards total control.

[pipoman]

52. Yea, and the patriot act is all about catching terrorists...

[24601]

60. I hereby authorize the FBI to keep this - for their computers only. n/t

[DisgustedInMN]

61. How long till Obama signs this in..

.. by Executive Order? Judging from what he's done to protect our rights and privacy so far, don't kid yourself that he would not do it.

[L. Coyote]

62. I have an old list of my grade school books, if that will help

:rofl:

Just one little problem with this complete ASSHOLE's idea, the CONSTITUTION!

[Gman]

64. Besides the fact this is none of their business

they don't even offer reimbursement so that the ISP's can cover the costs of retaining massive amounts of information that they might never need. Or, maybe at best the ISP's would have to produce an infinitesimally small amount of the total information retained for investigations. That is, other than to make us pay for something that's none of the FBI's business and that nobody else wants, not even the ISP's.

[Tim01]

67. Blame it on Bush.

In spite of Obama and the democrats having control of the government.

[The Sushi Bandit]

68. SORRY: NOT LBN - POSTED YESTERDAY

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7649684

[TomClash]

69. Bush may have actually been right

There may have to be at least two "internets" - one for the FBI and one for the rest of us.

[TrogL]

71. When searches first came out I was helping my little daughter with her pony project

First website that came up...

(P.O.N.Y.) Prostitutes of New York

...complete with some veeeerrrry interesting pictures.

[provis99]

74. Link, please?

:P

[Akoto]

75. There's always someone after this. It won't happen.

If not for reasons of ethics, then for reasons of practicality. A database of every user's IP and destinations would be tremendous. Millions of individuals visit millions of sites, and the info needing to be stored only continues to accumulate on a daily basis. That's not even addressing the costs, nor the manual effort required to skim the information in search of crimes. After all, you can't rely upon a computer's judgment to determine whether an image depicts something illegal.

I think McCain or John Walsh (maybe both?) was after something similar in '08 or '09, and it went nowhere.