TriggerFinger points us to a rather troubling development in once-Great Britain:
All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.
Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.
They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.
Every phone company, ISP, and wireless company in the United Kingdom will now have to monitor and track your every movement online, phone call, and button-push, and then make that information freely and immediately available to any schmuck with a badge who requests it. No oversight. No warrants. No extensive paperwork chain. Just some civil servant with a bright idea asking their boss to run with it.
Lest you console yourself that such a thing could never transpire here, the chinks in the walls of personal privacy are already growing:
In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Be careful where or how you browse – if this subpoena is upheld, any website could be forced to give over their server logs, providing federal entities information on your internet-wandering habits.
The article you linked to is a little misleading. This wasn’t some fishing expedition designed to chill speech, this was a legitimate criminal investigation aimed at stopping the next mass shooting. The reason for the subpoena was a person posted threats on the website’s comment page. Threats that the website should have forwarded to the police themselves. Here is an excerpt of what was said:
If you do not head this warning, we look forward to seeing you again. Next time perhaps we will go to your homes, childrens daycares, churches or wherever else you may happen to turn your
back. We’ll be watching you. We are fighting for our lives while you are greedily gaining dollar bills and further domination and exploitation.
Today in Evansville, Indiana, resistance is growing to fight against the capitalist wet dream called I69. We visited the office of Bernardin- Lockmueller and Associates, who are responsible for planning the entire supposed route for the interstate. Seeing as they’ve been targeted before, we attempted to enter with a nicely dressed decoy. However, their fear took hold of them and they immediatly pushed our comrade out and locked the doors. So we
banged on windows, and shouted at them through the intercom. In the commotion a window was smashed. Which is nothing compared to the
destruction that i-69 will cause, but perhaps gave our enemy a taste of the terror they force daily on the earth.
The incriminating post is here:
http://indymedia.us/en/2008/06/32113.shtml
It sounds like a wanna-be domestic terrorist to me, and if the reason for such a subpoena of records is an investigation into some sort of wanna-be terrorist whackjob, and not just a fishing expedition, I am not sure I see the problem here.
So I will be honest – I did not go and dig up the comment in question, which I will 100% admit to being my bust. Should have, did not, I was wrong.
That said, if the feds had subpoena’d information for that particular comment, then I agree – I would have little to no problem about it. But a broad-spectrum request for all information on all comments made on that day, and then a gag order on the webpage in question? That hardly seems appropriate.
As a person who has been involved with criminal investigations, I can tell you that such a narrow subpoena would be torn up by the defense. They would make claims that the incriminating post was taken out of context, that the defendant was baited into making the comment, or even that the prosecution has the wrong man, and the comment was made under your name by an impersonator. The easiest and most effective way to prevent this is to get the comments and IP logs to ensure that there is as little room to perform such legal maneuvers as possible.
Remember that an investigator only gets one shot to collect all evidence needed. There is no going back to the crime scene later, as any evidence gotten later is not admissible, even when that crime scene is in cyberspace. (as an aside, that is one of the reasons I call BS on shows like CSI, where the investigators return to the crime scene days later to look for more evidence, as once the crime scene is no longer under your control, any evidence recovered later is going to be easy for a defender to shoot holes in)
Linoge, trace the IP address this comment was made from. My physical location at this moment is in Redmond, Washington. Can your logs determine that I’m even in the proper state?
Proxies and/or Remote Desktop are your friend. I can easily leave comments that appear from numerous places in the U.S. in a matter of seconds. Give me a couple days and I can set up a presence in other countries and bounce among them as well as the U.S. at will.
And to make it even more problematic for law enforcement if you have Wi-Fi at your home someone can be stealing your bandwidth and leave tracks that appear to be yours at terroistsRus.com without you knowing it.
I get that, Joe, except how is it that violating the privacy of hundreds of other individuals (who have done no wrong, committed no crime that we are aware of, and who are charged with no offenses) actually helps in narrowing down the identity of the commenter we are searching out?
Is that not the kind of nonsense we are attempting to combat on a daily basis, just within the narrow scope Second Amendment alone? Or is registration ok for First Amendment issues, but not Second?
Hell, in the course of your comment, you pretty effectively argued against this kind of data-mining, simply because the information generated is very likely to be quite useless.
Yeah. I didn’t spell it out.
It is a violation that only catch the unsophisticated and those who were framed.
Bruce Schneier describes the problem as the law and ethics not being caught up with the technology. He says we need new laws to protect many of these sort of conversations.
I fear that the use of these logs and records are too powerful of a tool for government to give up without some serious encouragement. Perhaps framing a few politicians with visits to child porn sites from their IP address would get the idea across…
Ah, I misunderstood which side of the debate you were coming from. My mistake.
Not really your mistake. I wasn’t at all clear about it.
I am pro-active in making log files less than reliable and unavailable as a means of determining location (in ways far more reaching than hinted at here). The more people that do this the less likely IP addresses can be used as evidence of location in court.
Anonymity of speech and location is very important to me.
See also Locational Privacy.