Another Internet privacy issue to ponder

[TE999]

Law enforcement officials are urging the federal government to enact legislation mandating that all ISP's maintain logs on their customers web activities for a period of 18 months. Ostensibly, this will enable law enforcement to get the goods on child pornographers, but the records could be used to indict persons for other crimes as well.

Chances of passage are slim, but even the contemplation of such a measure is reminicent of a totalitarian police state.

Here's the article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078653-281/police-internet-providers-must-keep-user-logs/

 

[sr71plt]

Yeah, we certainly wouldn't want to catch up with those other criminals.

I'm not wild about the possibility of that law--but not to hide any criminal activity.

 

[podga]

If I have nothing to hide, of course I'm going to say that monitoring my Internet activity is no problem and that human life outweighs privacy issues, but it's not that simple. I was a child during the military dictatorship in Greece, and I remember my parents hiding books and records they'd purchased before 1967, in case the police were to enter our home (which they had a right to do and even if they didn't nobody could stop them) and decide that those books and records were signs of leftist leanings and hence culpability of crimes against the state punishable by exile. And we're not talking leftist revolutionary tracts, mind you, but plays by Chekhov or records by Theodorakis. And neighbors had faced an extremely hard time for possessing those very same items, which were hardly unheard of in an urban middle-class home.

So on the whole I'm going to say that I'd prefer if my online activity left no record, even though I know that's impossible. And that, in this instance, perhaps the authorities should be challenged to figure out a different method to discovering and nailing criminal activity, including child pornography, than to have providers maintain records on millions of completely innocent citizens.

 

[Handley_Page]

Another nail in the coffin of "liberty".
Next thing you know, they'll be wanting our purchasing records for e-Bay or Amazon, to make sure we are not stocking up on Un-British, (OK, Un-American) items.
And what then ?.

All users should protest against this insidious erosion of our freedoms.

 

[oggbashan]

Another nail in the coffin of "liberty".
Next thing you know, they'll be wanting our purchasing records for e-Bay or Amazon, to make sure we are not stocking up on Un-British, (OK, Un-American) items.
And what then ?.

All users should protest against this insidious erosion of our freedoms.

eBay.UK is already blocking bidding on many items that have 'military' connections such as badges and military mementos such as a WWII Admiralty Chart 'because of legal restrictions'!

 

[Handley_Page]

eBay.UK is already blocking bidding on many items that have 'military' connections such as badges and military mementos such as a WWII Admiralty Chart 'because of legal restrictions'!

really ?.
How stupid can they get ?