SOPA WAS A SMOKESCREEN!

[iPwnNoobs]

Lamar Smith's H.R. 1981 = Orwell's 1984. Research it, read up on it, and spread the word.

Senator Lamar Smith, lead sponsor of the currently dead SOPA bill you’ve heard so much about, has another bill in the works that uses Child Pornography as a screen to push through an amendment that’ll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times. This bill is H.R. 1981 and will have more dire consequences than SOPA or PIPA ever had the potential to have.

What it does is to amend several rules that have to do with Child Pornography and preventing it, the bill itself called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” What it also does is to change the U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records to include a requirement that your internet service provider do the following:

" A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section. "

While it was legal for the government to issue a subpoena for the viewing of the information they speak about here before, it was not part of the law that internet service providers capture or retain that information at any point. In effect, while before the authorities would need to first find a reason for you to need to be watched to get the ISP to start collecting information from you, that information will already exist on file, effectively meaning you’re being watched and recorded even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t worry though, there’s an additional set of lines that should placate you because it’s so very kind of them to think of:

"(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and

(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records."

So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband. This bill has currently cleared its committee, this meaning that the next step is a full vote. This bill needs to be stopped, and if I might go one better, Lamar Smith needs to be stopped, for the good of the internet and YOUR privacy.

 

[Rage9]

I didn't read all of this, but uh duh. This is how the government works. I could point to the fact that online poker or gambling wasn't properly illegal until they amended a clause to a port security bill, even though it had nothing to do with port security.

Their goal is to put it in a bill that it would be politically suicidal to vote against. That's how these fucking douche bags work. Most of the time they slip it in last second so that no one can even read the provision, not that it matters.

 

[emperoryogi]

Just read about this. Can you Americans just storm Congress already and kick all of these idiots out? This is getting ridiculous and it's starting to affect the rest of the world.

 

[Kryt3n]

More info The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic

Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography. To combat it, legislators have brought through committee a poorly conceived, over-broad Congressional bill, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. It is arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties now under consideration in the United States. The potential victims: everyone who uses the Internet.

The good news? It hasn't gone before the full House yet.

The bad news: it already made it through committee. And history shows that in times of moral panic, overly broad legislation has a way of becoming law. In fact, a particular moment comes to mind.

In the early 20th Century, a different moral panic gripped the United States: a rural nation was rapidly moving to anonymous cities, sexual mores were changing, and Americans became convinced that an epidemic of white female slavery was sweeping the land. Thus a 1910 law that made it illegal to transport any person across state lines for prostitution "or for any other immoral purpose." Suddenly premarital sex and adultery had been criminalized, as scam artists would quickly figure out. "Women would lure male conventioneers across a state line, say from New York to Atlantic City, New Jersey," David Langum* explains, "and then threaten to expose them to the prosecutors for violation" unless paid off. Inveighing against the law, the New York Times noted that, though it was officially called the White Slave Traffic Act (aka The Mann Act), a more apt name would've been "the Encouragement of Blackmail Act."

That name is what brought the anecdote back to me. A better name for the child pornography bill would be The Encouragement of Blackmail by Law Enforcement Act. At issue is how to catch child pornographers. It's too hard now, say the bill's backers, and I can sympathize. It's their solution that appalls me: under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you've been assigned.

Tracking the private daily behavior of everyone in order to help catch a small number of child criminals is itself the noxious practice of police states. Said an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American." Even more troubling is what the government would need to do in order to access this trove of private information: ask for it.

I kid you not -- that's it.

As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 doesn't require that someone be under investigation on child pornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history -- being suspected of any crime is enough. (It may even be made available in civil matters like divorce trials or child custody battles.) Nor do police need probable cause to search this information. As Rep. James Sensenbrenner says, (R-Wisc.) "It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I'm not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children."

Among those risks: blackmail.

In Communist countries, where the ruling class routinely dug up embarrassing information on citizens as a bulwark against dissent, the secret police never dreamed of an information trove as perfect for targeting innocent people as a full Internet history. Phrases I've Googled in the course of researching this item include "moral panic about child pornography" and "blackmailing enemies with Internet history." For most people, it's easy enough to recall terms you've searched that could be taken out of context, and of course there are lots of Americans who do things online that are perfectly legal, but would be embarrassing if made public even with context: medical problems and adult pornography are only the beginning. How clueless do you have to be to mandate the creation of a huge database that includes that sort of information, especially in the age of Anonymous and Wikileaks? How naive do you have to be to give government unfettered access to it? Have the bill's 25 cosponsors never heard of J. Edgar Hoover?

You'd thing that Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who claims on his Web site to be "an outspoken defender of individual privacy rights," wouldn't lend his name to this bill. But he co-sponsored it! You'd think that the Justice Department of Eric Holder, who is supposed to be friendly to civil libertarians, would oppose this bill. Just the opposite. And you'd think that lots of tea partiers, with all their talk about overzealous government and intrusions on private industry, would object.

But they haven't.

As Julian Sanchez recently wrote on a related subject, "In an era in which an unprecedented quantity of information about our daily activities is stored electronically and is retrievable with a mouse click, internal checks on the government's power to comb those digital databases are more important than ever... If we aren't willing to say enough is enough, our privacy will slip away one tweak at a time."

 

[dmnEPC]

why do you support child pornography?

 

[KeyserSoze]

This is so messed up. Feeling pretty good about living north of the border right about now.

 

[Instrumentalist]

why do you support child pornography?

sir kindly i hope trolling you are

good luck bro

 

[Insomniac]

Whats with the misinformation OP. You quoted the following:

" A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section. "

However you claim:

" an amendment that’ll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times"

First off, what you quoted states that your ISP should keep a long term record of all the IP's and login times. THAT IS NOT UNREASONABLE. I'm honestly surprised that ISP's aren't keeping login logs going back 18 months voluntarily anyway.

Second, you stated this makes your ISP track your financial transactions and search history. Last I checked, my bank, Google, and Facebook, all use SSL for everything. How the fuck do you propose your ISP decrypts any of that?

Fucken idiot OP. Fuck off or get some real facts.

 

[lukep]

Just read about this. Can you Americans just storm Congress already and kick all of these idiots out? This is getting ridiculous and it's starting to affect the rest of the world.

Sorry, I think we've already lost our fight. We're all fully enslaved now.

It's up to you Canadians now to invade and take over Washington. Good luck.


Seriously, why does every new policy we have conflict with the whole planet's freedoms? Why doesn't some other country ever make a policy that the rest of the world can't live with?

 

[jeffrey]

Sorry, I think we've already lost our fight. We're all fully enslaved now.

It's up to you Canadians now to invade and take over Washington. Good luck.


Seriously, why does every new policy we have conflict with the whole planet's freedoms? Why doesn't some other country ever make a policy that the rest of the world can't live with?

I've always found it odd that our "leaders" find it necessary to police the world. Actually, I don't, because I'm sure they are pocketing large amounts of money from corporations.

 

[Fiver]

sir kindly i hope trolling you are

good luck bro

I think he's playing the part of the average American idiot who be asking you this question when you tell them to oppose this bill.

I knew this shit was coming because what person in this country doesn't abhor child pornography since they're brainwashed into thinking that it's all over the Internet and getting worse. Only makes sense that they'd make the next SOPA bill under the guise of protecting children.

 

[shayne54]

Kryt3n you are a fucking doucher to the highest degree

 

[stickyicky]

Second, you stated this makes your ISP track your financial transactions and search history. Last I checked, my bank, Google, and Facebook, all use SSL for everything. How the fuck do you propose your ISP decrypts any of that?

That's kind of what I was thinking. Also, how can they prove anyone in particular did anything with some logs. What if there's 10 people sharing a connection? Or 100? What if your connection isn't secured and other people can easily jump on?

 

[crackp0t]

That's kind of what I was thinking. Also, how can they prove anyone in particular did anything with some logs. What if there's 10 people sharing a connection? Or 100? What if your connection isn't secured and other people can easily jump on?

They arrest you, seize all of your equipment, and the let the courts sort it out.

 

[dmnEPC]

sir kindly i hope trolling you are

good luck bro

So here is how the call's to your representative is going to go.

You: Hi I wanted to call in to find out if the Congressman supports or is opposed to the Child Pr0n act?

Assistant: Whats your name and address?

You: Its ....

Assistant: So you want us to vote to kill this bill and allow this child abuse to continue? We are sorry we are in complete support of this bill. Its for the children. BTW we will forward your info regarding perpetuating Child Pr0n to the proper authorities.

You: But they are going to kill the internet

Assistant: Why is it so important for you to continue to have this available online? Do you like watching little kids?

you: but they want to track people

Assistant: Wouldnt you want to track child Predators?

You: I suppose your right I support this please vote in favor

 

[ShadowCaster]

So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband. This bill has currently cleared its committee, this meaning that the next step is a full vote. This bill needs to be stopped, and if I might go one better, Lamar Smith needs to be stopped, for the good of the internet and YOUR privacy.

 

[rgk_rgk]

It looks like this bill has not passed yet, so let's all do our research and contact our congresspeople before we devolve into unhealthy paranoia.

See Lamar Smith's HR 1981 bill status here:
Bill Summary & Status - 112th Congress (2011 - 2012) - H.R.1981 - THOMAS (Library of Congress)
(this is not ghey pr0n)

 

[lukep]

^Hey moron, haven't you learned anything this week?

You don't contact your congressman anymore... You contact google, wikipedia, facebook, Reddit, Amazon... etc.

 

[mimoza3]

one way or the other they will try and get what they want.
and whatever they try and force on us, it usually leads to them getting more money.

 

[Jmart285]

This shit isnt going away, they're going to keep coming bill after bill