Loss of Privacy

On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress that it should require Internet Service Providers to keep customer records because prosecutors need them to fight child pornography. Gonzales admits that there might be some concern for customer’s privacy but he’s only thinking of the children and child pornography is a growing threat on the Internet. He goes on to tell us that the government’s biggest obstacle to catching these freaks is because they have little or no access to customer data from ISPs. He wants to force ISPs to retain data, most likely for two years or more, so that the government can then return to that data after they have obtained the proper subpoenas and other legal qualifications. Most ISPs today only retain their data for a few days and sometimes up to one year.

While many ISPs fear legislation, they are also afraid of what could happen, especially after the Justice Department took Google to court earlier this year. Others, like Verizon, seeminly readily turned over their data to the government without warrants, prompting civil liberty groups to sue them.

There are several problems with this proposed new legislation. Gonzales wants this law now, not later. That means no studies, no committees, no sub-committees while we trample on and toss out the Constitution. It’s just a piece of paper after all, isn’t it? If this happens, we’ll be halfway down the slippery slope to fascism.

Now, before people get on the “I have nothing to hide” bandwagon, I want to state that, in general, I have nothing to hide. Sure, there’s things I don’t want people to know about my life. We all have things like that. This is not the point. What I do with my life is my business. The government doesn’t need to know that I read Slashdot ten times a day. They don’t need to know that I might feel the need to run down the street naked with green jello all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. If I’m not breaking the law, you don’t need access to any part of my life. Currently, you need a subpoena to search my home, my car, and my property. Making their job easier by leaving my surfing habits just lying around is not what government prosecutions should be about and can make me appear guilty even though I am not. If this becomes a law, I’ll be using a VPN network and they will never know what I do.

If this is passed into law, prepare to see several attacks on members of Congress via their email to prove a point. Under this law, to look at this perverted crap will automatically mean you’re guilty. Look up the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. Mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. The law doesn’t want to hear that you clicked on that picture on accident. You’re a pervert and your life is over. And I don’t want to hear the government is immune. If this is law, I want to see full disclosure of Gonzales’ search records. After all, he’s got nothing to hide, right?

This proposed law will have the same effect of the crackdown on the erotic binary newsgroups of the late 1990s. Instead of catching only the child pornographers who posted the photos, they caught many people who accidentally clicked on other things. Sure, they got some perverts but they also arrested many people who simply blindly clicked “download all new articles,” or “look at my car” type posts that were really porn. The government has proved many times before that they cannot distinguish between guilty and not-guilty-but-likes-to-look-at-naked-women.

This proposed law also cannot be verified currently because it is against the law to do research into how much child porn is really out there. The government has told us that new material keeps increasing while, on the other hand, they tell us that it’s the same stuff that’s been circulating for 20-30 years. The government also keeps their own stash of child porn and rigorously prosecutes anyone stupid enough to download from their caches. As of now, there is no way to accurately verify how much child pornography is out there and how much is new each month.

While I am all for catching the distributors of child porn and stringing them up by their balls, we all know that these freaks don’t download, masterbate, delete file. Child porn is hard to come by. I don’t know where to get it and I’ve never seen it other than what’s depicted on Law and Order: SVU. There’s no way these perverts are going to delete it once they do find it. You want to catch them? You don’t need this law! Get a court order and sniff their packets, look at their computers, and tap their phones. They are in constant need of a new fix. They aren’t going to be the people who accidentally downloaded this and deleted it. When the cops come to search their homes, they’ll find it on their computer, in the closet, under the bed, in the garage, etc., providing many more leads for more packet sniffing and more court orders. The authorities can also get court orders for the distributors and you will automatically have your lists for the perverts repeatedly downloading the child porn.

If the authorities did these things, then there would be no reason to continue to keep records as long as they claim they need them for. This is a cover story so that you will allow your own rights to be violated under the guise of protecting the children. If protecting the children were the real goal of this law, it would have been written solely to limit all searches of the subpoena to only child porn cases. They will name this law “Protecting the Children Act 2006” or something silly like that. No member of Congress will want to vote against it and be seen in their next re-election campaign as defending the rights of child pornographers. Think it can’t happen? Take a look at REAL-ID. Most in Washington had no idea what it was until it was too late. They thought they were voting for the military spending bill and didn’t know this was attached to it.

What it boils down to is that Gonzales wants to prosecute the people who download the child pornography and not the main distributors. The perverts looking at the child pornography are not the ones harming the children, the ones producing the content are. These are the people the government should be after! This proposed law is, simply, a way to continue the government’s data retention of its citizens and expand the already controversial domestic spying programs. It’s simply wrapped in a container that the common people can swallow. It already failed when he wrapped it in the terrorism pill and he now thinks the child porn pill is easier to take.

I want to know, will this law only ever be used just for child porn (it’s not written that way so how can we know) or will it be used in the future to harass people who don’t think like the current government in power? Is there hard data proving that ISP data retention will eliminate child pornography or result in serious prison terms for the offenders? Please prove to me why I should give up more of my rights under the Constitution to allow such a law to be passed?

How long before regular pornography, eroticism and those naked photos of me as a baby are deemed illegal as well? Child pornography is not a good enough cause to render the entire Internet under surveillance. It’s a fine line on that slippery slope and we should take heed when walking it.

Back in 2002, Robert Cusack decided it was a good idea to try to smuggle Slow Loris Pygmy Monkeys in his underwear. All was going well for Robert, until the rare birds he had hidden in his luggage got out and flew around the Customs Agents at LAX. It was then that Mr Cusack decided he had to come clean stating, “I have monkeys in my pants.” Cusack ended up spending 5 1/2 months in prison and paid an $1,100 fine. His friend was a little bit more lucky, eluding the law for four years.

Chris Molloy was Cusack’s traveling companion on the same flight but managed to get through customs with two newborn Asian leopard cats in his carryon luggage. He promptly ran to a hotel and called his sister for help in getting rid of the cats. After four years of investigating, authorities arrested Molloy on Monday in Palm Springs.

Molloy is being charged with receiving, concealing and transporting wildlife, four counts of illegally importing wildlife, and making false statements to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and will be arraigned sometime next week. If convicted, he faces up to twenty years in prison.

Molloy’s sister, Darlah, wasn’t arrested but was named in connection with the crime, including witness tampering, obstruction of justice and two counts of illegally receiving, concealing, and transporting wildlife.

As for the animals, all of the birds that Cusack smuggled died. The Lorises are in the Los Angeles County Zoo. One leopard cat is with the girlfriend of Darlah Molloy’s son, who reports that it is skittish and the authorities don’t want to bother it more than necessary until they can find a proper home for it. The other leopard cat ended up in Texas with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where it is in a proper facility.

What I want to know is, why I can’t take a cup of coffee onto a plane but these men can put pygmy monkeys and leopard cats into their pants, with no one the wiser. If Cusack was a real man, he would have put normal size monkeys in his pants.

That’s right, a Serbian man, who was suffering from premature ejaculation listened to his local witch doctor’s advice that having sex with a porcupine would cure his ills. Unfortunately, he ended up in the emergency room when the porcupine wisely decided this was not a good idea.

Although the porcupine was unhurt in the incident, the man was not so lucky. Hospital personnel had to repair his penis after the porcupine extended its quills into the man.

The Daily Telegraph is reporting today that airline passengers’ conversations and movements could be monitored in an attempt to thwart terrorism.  Are you kidding me?

Researchers in Britain and Europe are looking at technology that would see a comprehensive network of microphones and cameras installed throughout the aircraft, including the lavatory, which would be linked to a computer.

Oh yeah, this is going to go over well.  First, it’s absolutely ridiculous because people are going to go nuts crying it violates their privacy rights.  They’re right, of course, but, you know, we have to think of the children and we can save you from terrorism by recording your grunts and groans while taking a crap.  It’s assinine.  No one wants a camera watching them take a dump, go pee, or do certain feminine hygiene type activities.  Some people wouldn’t mind you seeing them join the mile high club but, well, that’s a different story.

Second, what good is it to record a terrorist making a bomb in the toilet when no one is going to be watching it unless an “incident” occurs?  Did watching me take a shit pleasure you because it certainly isn’t going to stop a terrorist from assembling anything unless you have someone watching the toilet-cam the entire flight, which brings us back to point number one.

The article suggests that we should feel better because a machine will be monitoring all this activity instead of a human.  Well, anyone who has worked with computers knows that AI isn’t developed far enough to tell the difference between two kids fighting and someone getting stabbed.  It also is horrible at picking out suspicous behavior on a consistant basis.  I’m not even going to mention the pranksters, drunken idiots and stupid people who will find ways to mess with this system.  It’s simply not going to work.

”We are always looking at new initiatives that would enhance security,” a British Airways spokesman said. “BA already has CCTV which monitors activity outside the reinforced cockpit door. But we believe it is robust ground security which is the key to safety in the air.”

Well, there ya go.  BA already admits that ground security is far more important than this piece of crap.  Why don’t they listen to themselves and try tackling that issue (which they currently fail miserably at).

Even before the aircraft takes off, passengers could be swept with an “electric nose” a hand-held device which could tell if they had had any contact with explosives.

Good luck to all you farmers who work with chemicals as well as you government workers, university professors, and researchers working in labs.  We know that you don’t always get all traces off of you despite several showers.  You’re all now suspected terrorists.

Work is already in hand to examine putting electronic chips on luggage that would match ones embedded in the boarding pass. They would make it easier to link passengers to their bags or, more importantly, find them when they are separated.

Nice, five years later and you still don’t have this in place?  Who’s been sitting with their collective thumbs up their asses instead of ensuring this system is already in place?  As much as I hate RFID in my personal items, this type of system would make it far easier to track people’s luggage and decrease the risk of mysterious luggage being loaded.

Despite what the airlines say, there is no way to make flying 100% safe.  Every deterrent they think of, someone will find a way to break.  There are only two safe ways to fly:  Don’t fly at all or require people to stand and fly naked, with their luggage on a seperate plane.  Now THAT would be a flight worth taking!