The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good | Hacker News Reader

The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good

theatlantic.com

247 pointsdimm72 comments

The article starts off on the wrong foot.

"Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography."

Wrong. The way child porn is defined, I do not necessarily abhor it. One 17-year-old in a legal relationship [in case anyone out there thinks age of consent is 18 everywhere, google age of consent; you're in for a shock], taking nude photos of him/herself and sending them to his/her partner, is classified as "child porn" under current federal law.

The average person, hearing "child porn", conjures images of minors being abducted and abused in some basement, or being abused by relatives. If only child porn laws were tailored that narrowly.

(I completely agree with the main premise of the article, but this bill is hardly a new phenomenon. Pedophilia (technically pre-pubescent minors), ephebophilia (post-pubescent minors) and/or child porn has been one of the four horsemen of the infocalypse[1] for many years.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyps...

What's worse is even depictions of minors can be considered child pornography. I recall reading of one guy who was arrested for a drawing of Bart and Lisa Simpson.

＼(^o^)／ - This emoticon could be illegal if it depicts a minor. (Disclaimer: the emoticon is over 18)

Interesting (for U.S. residents), considering SCOTUS' 2002 opinion in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which upheld depictions in cases where actual children were not involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coaliti...

IANAL, but digging around your Wikipedia link suggests that the litmus test here is whether or not the material is to be considered "obscene". The law struct down in the case you linked was worked around by introducing the PROTECT Act, which clarified it as "obscene depictions" of minors.

This so far has not been challenged, as apparently the guy I mentioned in the Simpsons' case just entered a plea bargain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cartoon_pornogr...

While I totally agree with your premise -- child pornography laws have been used in ridiculous ways, hurting teenagers in uncountable ways -- it's really tough to come up with a definition that's narrow enough to not be usable for ridiculous cases while still being able to go after the legitimately bad guys.

For instance, if you define that even if every other qualification in the law is met, it's not child pornography if it's one partner in a legal relationship sending another a nude photo, you still have a couple problems: 1) It's legal, as far as I know, for an adult to date a minor less than 4 years younger than him/her in PA, so you'd make it legal for a 14 year old to send nude photos to an 18 year old -- is this acceptable? 2) What about people that intercept the photos, or something of that sort?

This really isn't a cut-and-dry issue, I believe, but something needs to change.

If, by the people's consensus, it's legal for said 18-year old to have sex with said 14-year old, exactly why would it be illegal for said 18-year old to look at said 14-year old naked, in a photograph or otherwise[1]?

As to your second point, wiretapping laws already exist.

[1] I could actually see an argument along the lines of "the internet never forgets", "having nude photos of yourself online sucks", "14-year olds do stupid things and should be protected from themselves". However, it's not at all clear that destroying the 18-year old's life is the best way to "fix" this. (It's also quite possible to have different rules for supposedly private messages and public distribution.)

The law gets interpreted very strictly and very literally around this subject. In fact, there has actually been a case where a 15-year-old girl was arrested for taking nude photos of herself and sharing them with others via chatrooms. She was charged with trafficking in child pornography, which is somewhat understandable. But she was also charged with exploitation of a minor, which seems a bit silly in this case (unless she had a split personality doing the photography?).

> She was charged with trafficking in child pornography, which is somewhat understandable.

I'm not sure how. The intent (as I understand it) is to protect minors from predators and exploitation, not to give them a criminal record for their own actions - consider that the perpetrator and supposed victim are one and the same in this case. Had they charged others who viewed/shared the photos in the chatrooms, that would be understandable, even if they're minors themselves.

Whether she realized it or not, she became the initial vector for distribution of child pornography the second she shared the photos online. So there is a semi-reasonable argument to be made that she caused some degree of social harm in distributing the photos. I'm not sure which side of the fence I fall on, but at least I could entertain the argument with a straight face.

The exploitation charge, on the other hand, was patently ludicrous.

The social harm of distributing photos is that a minor was harmed.

Jailing a minor is harm!

What utter idiocy.

> So there is a semi-reasonable argument to be made that she caused some degree of social harm in distributing the photos.

Entertaining that argument, the harm though would be to herself. Why should she be essentially doubly punished with membership to the sex offender's list and a criminal record?

Why not go after child molestation directly? Child pornography used to be considered evidence of molestation, and it's been only recently a bad thing in its own right rather than a way of tracking down people who abuse and molest children.

You can't prove molestation by stealing somebody's computer. Similarly, I'm looking for my keys over here, because the light is better.

There's a conflict between the age of criminal culpability and the age of consent. Why aren't these the same ages?

But that's not the issue being debated. The issue is tracking the communications of people we disagree with. Let's be crystal clear about that. They're trying to bury the intent in another issue to confuse people and get what they want. The bill will help no child.

You know what harms/kills waaaaaaaay more children?

Cars.

Maybe we should ban pictures of those.

Wow. You hit the nail on the head. Now for the reality. Reality is that human death is ok as long as there is a value to society. Traveling quickly saves time and creates a huge value to people and the government. IE people make more money and pay more taxes than if there were no cars.

This is why speed limits went up awhile back. It's a balancing act. Human life is worth a certain amount to the government but isn't priceless. So, not only will they not ban cars, but not lower speed limits too much.

Imagine the lives saved if there were discriminators on cars that made it so they would not go over 55mph. Lives saved, yes, but productivity lost..

Privacy and global communication networks create tremendous value for society. Unfortunetly people want to throw those out for the sake of incidences that negatively effect an astronomically small number of people.

>"Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography."

Every right-thinking person abhors what they consider to be child pornography.

"Every right-thinking..." <--- The author is just covering his/her ass. Sort of like Descarte putting God in his meditation work.... he knows it is BS but he does not want to get hanged for his work.

Nowadays they're using child pornography as an excuse to verify or monitor just about everything. But there's always a hidden agenda behind it. Plus, I'm sure the music and movie labels gave their full support for this one, because they truly care about child porn - oh, and that other little detail that they can more easily use this law to catch "copyright infringers" later on.

EDIT: And I really think they're "boiling the frog" here. They steadily take away our rights to privacy so there are only a few people mad about it at a time, until they have full control.

But we need to step back a little and think about what they're really doing. They're trying to have full access to everything you're doing online, while the Internet is becoming more and more our main communication method. Then how is this much different from communism where the Government wants to monitor the whole population - "so there are no crimes or anything". It's a very slippery slope, and it has started a while ago. Take a step back and look at everything: Patriot Act, TSA, and now this and other similar laws. What's the end-goal here? 100% complete security - therefore no liberties?

Child pornography is one of those bugbears -- much like terrorism -- that is so theoretically abhorrent to a lot of people that anyone trying to push legislation or regulation through the system can summon its specter for an instant veneer of credibility and legitimacy.

"If you don't support X, then you're leaving people vulnerable to Y!" has long been a cheap scare tactic trotted out in service of agendas on all sides of all aisles, pretty much since the dawn of time.

I hate that tactic in general, and I hate it here specifically. Not just because it's intellectually dishonest, but because it cheapens the actual victims of child pornography and exploitation -- using them as little more than rhetorical chess pieces.

In the UK, BT (The biggest ISP) introduced CleanFeed[0] and "strongly encouraged" (read forced) to be used by the government. It was claimed that it would only ever be used for blocking child sexual abuse imagery.

Recently a judge has ruled that BT must use the same system to block a website used to share links. [1]

The list of blacklist sites itself can only be edited by a small group (iirc 4 people) of unelected and unaccountable people at the IWF[2]

Cleanfeed is also pretty flawed, doesn't work with HTTPS, can be interrogated to get a list of blocked content (using TTLs) and misleadingly returns 404 for blocked content.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_s... [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/british-tele... [2] http://www.iwf.org.uk/ [3] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/cleanfeed.pdf

Not only that, but it makes requests for non-blocked pages on the target server look like they're coming from a small group of proxies (I guess just one in practice). This plays havoc with other assumptions around load balancing and anti-abuse that don't assume entire countries are funneled through single proxies.

In Finland the government encourages the ISP's to filter a list of sites. The list is secret and managed by the police to filter out child porn. One of the sites included in that list is a site which is criticizing the filtering.

http://lapsiporno.info/english-2008-02-15.html

Frogs get a bad rap. If you put them in a pan and turn it up, they jump out. Perhaps we should acknowledge this is a widespread human trait, rather than casually slandering amphibians!

This isn't boiling the frog. This is eating the cooked corpse.

I really dont want the government to have knowledge of my preference for midget donkey porn. That is my business, not theirs.

From everything I've been able to read[1], this bill requires ISPs to track IPs that they've assigned to users, but does not require storage of all Internet traffic. This hardly seems like it would "kill Internet privacy for good."

[1] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-1981&...

Indeed. I already assume that my ISP knows what IP address I've had for at least the last 18 months.

Where did this FUD about recording IP traffic history come from?

IIRC there were data retention proposals in Europe that included URLs and email headers, so when someone says "data retention" in the US people connect the dots. Even if they're the wrong dots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...

I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I read it too. Also, the amended code talks about requiring a warrant, so really all this would do (if I read it correctly) would be to require ISPs to keep assigned IP logs for longer than are currently required to.

If this is not the case, the original article should explain why a straightforward reading of the bill is not correct.

And if it was the bill introduced two months ago that would be fine. Govtrack, as great a resource as it is, is often days to weeks behind. According to the cnet article linked from the Atlantic article a few changes were made by the committee:

"A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."

Has anyone actually seen the text of this "last-minute rewrite"? I'm skeptical, because I've been seeing this fear broadcast about this bill since day one. Maybe I'm naive, but it seems like a pretty large leap from temporary ip addresses to bank account numbers, names, phone numbers, etc. Every reference I can find to this bill still only contains the text for the initial retention of ip addresses.

Would love to see verification of the broader scope.

So far information is only coming from interviews with congress-critters on the committee that passed the bill(19-10). It takes awhile for Thomas (and from there GovTrack) to get updated with the revised text.

I don't feel this bill could even serve the purpose it was originally designed for. I would imagine that the perverts who haven't been caught yet, probably employ a decent amount of security in terms of encryption and proxies.

Oh, USA... what are you doing?

Silly child, thinking that this bill actually has anything to do with stopping child pornography.

So, the actual criminals will just continue to use Tor or an overseas VPN and continue to be untrackable, and the common citizen is the one that pays the price here.

Don't think for one second that this is about child porn. "For the children" rings so hollow here, it's ridiculous.

  In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only
  crime is getting caught.
    — Hunter S. Thompson

This is a good quote generally, but not when discussing child porn and the sexual exploitation of children. In this context, everybody is not guilty.

Well the quote relates more to the whole spying on your every online activity. There's a lot more to this than catching child pornographers.

The quote is still good, I think your interpretation given the context is flawed.

We might all be guilty of something as defined through law, however that doesn't mean you are not innocent ethically speaking.

That's why we need everything to become encrypted. Any time a new project, a new startup is created, one of the first feature implemented should be full encryption, end to end.

Wouldn't the gov't simply demand the logs be unencrypted? And wouldn't companies simply roll over like they do now?

Instead of freaking out, why not go and read the bill in question? Here's what it says:

`(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'.

That's it, that's all there is to it - DHCP assignment log preservation. My Comcast DHCP-assigned IP address did not change in over a year, chances are most people's addresses are not changing over the discussed 18-month period at all. The law changes nothing for most people.

For the government to know if you visited certain site they would still have to get the traffic logs from that site.

One step at a time. Get history first, data second. With history they can then force web site operators to retain their data for the same period of time.

It's likely someone can poke holes in my premise, but as a general rubric any law that mandates turning over personal information to law enforcement for the mere asking is highly suspect.

You're quoting from the bill as drafted at the end of May. The uproar is over a last-minute re-write that changed the retention requirement to include names, banking information, etc and a vote that rejected an amendment to overturn that change.

So, yes, there's not much to freak out about in the May 25th draft. Which is why there wasn't a story until the middle of June when the DoJ started shopping around a proposal to expand the logs: http://news.cnet.com/Your-ISP-as-Net-watchdog/2100-1028_3-57...

And people didn't get really fired up about this particular bill, until it was amended to include some of DOJ's wishlist, and made it out of committee with those changes intact: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20084939-281/house-panel-a...

I can't find the amended text on Thomas, but what you've quoted is not what has everyone worked up.

I got this quote by clicking through the article. And pretty much every single article I have seen before links to the same place. No one has the new wording, yet everyone is freaking out about it.

But fine, even if they collect CC and other information pertaining to the person... Again Comcast and Verizon already do retain all billing information anyway. This requirement changes nothing for the vast majority of the people.

Of note, no edition of the bill proposes tracking the browsing history, yet it seems to me that most people discussing the subject assume that it does.

Really, really bad news travels oh so fast.

> "This requirement changes nothing for the vast majority of the people."

How can you be so certain when we don't have the amended text?

Is this clearer?

even if they collect CC and other information pertaining to the person... [] This requirement changes nothing []

This is bad news for everyone. It is also unlikely to achieve its intended goal due to proxies and encrypted networks.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." --Benjamin Franklin

I think this, like the Patriot Act and countless others, is indicative of a problem with the way in which we name our bills. No politician wants to be the guy that voted against the "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011", when that can be taken out of context of the actual text of the bill and used as a political weapon against him/her. Haven't we realized that our current system of naming bills leads to a system in which our representatives are politically pressured to vote for or against a bill based upon a sensationalist and misleading name?

I totally agree, but who is there to stop the practice? Everybody wants their own bills passed, so everybody put names on them to encourage (extort) passing.

EU has already similar data retention laws for ISPs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...

I'm not sure how well they work in practice in individual member countries. I recall some ISP guys complaining about how this required Denmark to essentially save all netflow data which would be a huge data storage requirement, but maybe it got relaxed. I can't say I exactly have heard of it being the base of any arrests.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court invalidated a law that required ISPs to store the internet history and phone calls (who called whom and location they were made from in case of cell phones) for 6 months.

Afaik there are constitutional issues in several countries with the data retention laws the EU tries to enforce.

Just as much as the proverbial yelling `Fire!' in a crowded theater is not exercise of free speech, perhaps fueling moral panic shouldn't be? </random musing>

No search warrant should also mean you don't need probable cause or be constrained to search what the warrant covers.

This sounds great to me, anyone who wants to run for public office or is in public office can have the internet activity of themselves and all of their associates continually reviewed. Internet activity of course also encompassing a large segment of what is done on your mobile phone too. So its kind of like an open wiretap on everyone.

This would bring a swift end to idiots that can't even figure out how they accidentally tweeted a picture of their crotch to the whole world. Everyone else with half a brain will finally begin using end to end encryption for all of their online communication.

This is, among other reasons, is why we created Social Fortress. We posted a Show HN earlier today about it[1].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837142

You can send a form letter about this to your congressperson from here, via the EFF: https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=Us...

"Child porn" happened in germany 1 or 2 years ago (for some stupid dns-censorship law).

The nice thing about "child porn" is, "normal people" do not easily understand why a law against "child porn" could possibly be bad. Really, they do not easily listen to arguments. Unless you talk to them for at least 30 minutes. Even when they understand, they are often not comfortable fighting "anti child porn"-stuff.

Lets just hope the law gets crazy amounts of negative mass media press. Otherwise, I do not believe, you stand a chance.

What a short-term thought process. Creating laws that pertain to the current conditions only is a zero-sum game.

Child porn (nothing to do with this bill) will soon find its way into bitcoin-level undetectability, along with many other illegal things that society doesn't like. There are elements of life that just can't be controlled.

How is this bill going to solve future technological advances, like when we're able to augment 3D with models of real people (ie: children)? Will society prevent this? Will this bill prevent anything like this? Unlikely.

It would be nice if politicians considered the snowballing, exponential effect of technology innovations and realize that any laws they pass are temporarily effective at best.

The bill is a pure lie. They worry about anonymous dissidents, not pornagraphers. They use the word "child" to promote fear and confusion they can hide behide. Nothing new, WE HAVE SEEN THEIR KIND BEFORE. And on it goes.

Here's the same article, without the ads and other cruft: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/print/2011/08/the-legisl...

The Atlantic is a publication that makes money through ads, IIRC.

Making money is so old media.

using CP as a reason is useful because the media does not rely on logic but rather sensationalism to judge the worthiness of something. Instead of focusing on the logic of the stuff in the bill, the authors can just say "you must love CP!!!" instead and then the argument is already destroyed. 2ndly, noone wants to be labled as a cp lover so they are more likely to shut up even though they hate the bill.

Isn't Canada doing this right now? The new Harper government promised something like this.

Soon the guilty will have more rights because the innocent will have none.

"H.R. 1981: Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011"

I really wish that bills were named for their function, not their intent.

I do too, but it wouldn't matter if we had good men as lawmakers. That's the problem, we are led by fools.

I wish there was a way to hold legislators accountable/liable for badly written laws. Our statute books are overflowing with junk. It is like we have a mammoth code base with no source control and no one even trying to clean it up. Just a stream of special interest patches being thrown on top.

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