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U.S. Pressures ISPs on Data Retention

Posted by Zonk on Sat May 27, 2006 05:40 AM
from the because-they-needed-more-to-do dept.
United States Government The Internet Politics
packetmon writes "According to Wired's Declan McCullagh 'In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years ... A more extensive mandate would require companies to keep track of e-mail messages sent, Web pages visited and perhaps even instant-messaging correspondents.'"
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[+] Your Rights Online: U.S. Government Demands ISP Data Retention 355 comments
dlc3007 writes to mention an article in the New York Times discussing data privacy. The article expands on the U.S. Government's 'request' last Friday at a meeting between Robert S. Mueller III, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and the executives of several Internet Service Providers. The ISPs were required to retain data on users, for trials if subpoenaed. Right now they're asking companies to do this. The threat is that, if they don't comply, legislation will follow. From the article: "The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Mr. Roehrkasse said. While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms." We originally covered this last Sunday, but more details have been released on the meeting since then.
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  • wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joe 155 (937621) on Saturday May 27 2006, @05:45AM (#15415221) Journal
    that's a lot of data... I wonder how many hard drives it would take to keep that much. besides, it would be so much data that it would be really had to sort through it all in order to try and prevent any crimes (I'm assuming this is an anti-terrorist thing - as most crazy freedom reducing laws these days are)... all this would do is after someone had blown themselves up and you knew who they were you could say "so in this instance "flower" meant bomb... but because of the cellular nature of these groups we're no closer to stopping any other attack"
    • If yuo run a mid-sized network just get your router/firewall to log everything that goes past to gat an actual idea of how much this is. I tried it a while back on my home network (3 users, slightly above average on each) and got some stupidly large volume of data.

      • Preserving ALL of your data IS possible (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2006, @09:32AM (#15415783)
        I've worked at one startup which actually WILL preserve all of your data. You are misleading people by thinking that there's just too much data to capture. It just isn't so. Furthermore, the technology is here right now to report, in real time, what you are doing.

        If you don't believe me, just look at the technical specs of the device which AT&T is using for the NSA. Also look at packetmotion.com. And, from looking at the job openings at dice.com, there's at least another startup on it's way to do the same thing in this market.

        Right now, they can't keep all of your packet data for two years. But they CAN keep all of your connection data, and tell not only what sites you are connecting to, but also what type of connections you have. It's pretty useful for identifying Kazaa (et. al.) types of connections.

        If you don't believe me, just ask the IT staff at UC Berkeley. They actively pursue this type of snooping on both faculty and students. They, and other Universities, are a preferred testing ground, since they throw such a load at the devices.

        Now, why Universities encourage outside spying on the faculty and students is beyond me. But yes, this stuff is happening right now.

        The current goal for all of these companies is to preserve ALL data for at least two years. They aren't there yet, as the disk space required is extensive. But they CAN do it for shorter periods of time, if one spends the money on filers.

        What's more, it will only be a matter of time before they can preserve this data for at least two years, and longer. There are companies which make use of cheap fast SATA storage for about 1/5 the cost of a NetApp filer. 50 Terabytes is affordable; in 5 years, you're looking at affordable Petabyte storage.

        The point here is that the Government is ahead of the curve, as they know it's only a matter of time before the disk storage required to keep all data is afforable. So they want this snooping in there now, as it will be a lot easiler to mandate that ISP's keep ALL data once they have these hooks in place.

        So please quit misleading people into thinking that there's too much data. Snooping, reporting and storing this stuff is possible now, and is only going to get easier and cheaper in the near future.

    • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by jcupitt65 (68879)
      The UK (and now the EU, thanks T. Blair!) have data retention already in law (though not yet implemented AFAIK).

      They don't retain the data: the volume would be far too high (as you say). They just (!!) track who mails who, who IMs with whom, and the websites you visit. Just liike an itemised phone bill, but covering the internet. The websites thing is unclear: I don't know if they're planning to just keep www.mybank.com, or whether the whole mybank.com/transaction.php?cardno=234587634958349 8 will be ret

        • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

          by TheGavster (774657)
          The thing that scares me about the car logging isn't so much the logging (which is worrisome on its own), but the plan to automatically correlate that data with the movement of cars found to be involved in terrorist incidents after the fact. So if your car was near the terrorist car for 50 miles leading up to the attack, now you're a person of interest, all because you kept to the right and didn't pass.
    • "(I'm assuming this is an anti-terrorist thing - as most crazy freedom reducing laws these days are)"

      Honestly, how many terrorists are they going to catch? How many have they caught so far? How long do you think it will take them to find other uses for your information?

      If you think it's ok for them to do this to 300,000,000 + Americans just to catch 5 or 6 terrorists, you deserve everything you get.

      It's not an anti-terrorist thing. It's an anti-American thing.

      Never forget that.

    • Hard Drives? Bah! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Greyfox (87712) on Saturday May 27 2006, @09:03AM (#15415693) Homepage Journal
      If they want that data, each packet should be printed out and mailed to them!

  • Why not just follow the formula in 1984? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mostly a lurker (634878) on Saturday May 27 2006, @05:50AM (#15415233)
    Rather than put all of the onus on spying on the population on third parties, such as telcos, credit card companies, ISPs and airlines, why not just implement the solution in 1984. You just install two-way TVs in everyone's homes and offices. That way you can efficiently monitor what everyone is doing in a centralised fashion. The data would be recorded for later playback if needed. As a safeguard, officials would only be able to examine the recordings if they obtained a court order (unless, of course, the President decided it was necessary to the fight against terror to waive the requirement for a court order). After all, if you are not doing anything wrong, why object to such a system?

    • Re:Why not just follow the formula in 1984? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BobSutan (467781) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:06AM (#15415258)
      Why not? Because they haven't boiled the frog slowly enough yet to get away with it.

      • Laugh (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mark_MF-WN (678030)
        I swear, it's a laugh a day with the Americans. Never was there a people more accepting of their oppression. Even Iranians stage riots. What's America got? Disgruntled forum posts.

        Admittedly it would be a lot funnier if I didn't live a stone's throw from the US (I checked once, and the local transit system goes to within 300 metres of the US border... although there is no border crossing at that location). It would be funnier still if I wasn't aware that Canada's latest batch of census data is being

    • There's no difference. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by twitter (104583) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:34AM (#15415296) Homepage Journal
      They are talking about taking Carnivore out of the secret room. The "records" of everything you do will be available without warrent already. New laws will do away those pesky constitutional concerns. Sooner or later the collection machinery will be specified and owned by the feds, though still payed for by the ISP. The "evidence" will stand up better in court when someone decides to dissapear you with kiddie porn or some other disgraceful crime. The currently proposed system will eliminate the "stove pipes" in the current corporate owned spy network. You private papers and personal effects are owned more effectively than Eric Blair imagined they would be.

  • Do they realize the scope? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mentatultima (926841) on Saturday May 27 2006, @05:55AM (#15415241)
    Considering that more email is generated every year then snail mail; nevermind that just logs alone can overflow hard drives (happened to quite a few systems I encountered). Not even counting the privacy considerations this will create traffic jams and increased costs for internet usage (The extra hard drive space has to come from somewhere).

    Not to mention that all that extra has to be pored through. The FBI had gotten information on a case from homeland security, unfortunately they did not parse it down and the FBI agents lamented that they spent a majority of time chasing down pizza deliverys instead of spending more time on the actual case.

    Image the uproar when (not if) a cracker gets into the database and abuses all that information.

    The information gathered from users can also be used(abused) for blackmailing.

    You might be asked to testify against someone, if not then well your employer and spouse might accidently find out about your surfing habits.

    All in all, this sounds like a lose-lose situation for almost all involved.

  • conflicting goals (Score:5, Insightful)

    by runlevel 5 (977409) <g.p.patnude@NOSpam.gmail.com> on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:04AM (#15415253)
    FTA

    "I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."

    Privacy rights and citizen-snooping mix worse than water and oil.

  • Simple Solution (Score:4, Informative)

    by massivefoot (922746) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:13AM (#15415271)
    Is this not exactly the sort of problem public key cryptography is well-suited to combatting?
    • Do you want to explain to me exactly how you encrypt an http GET command? They're talking about tracking what sites you visit - just like China. At least we know they can count on Google for help.
      • Maybe you could use a new technology called HTTPS to ecrypt your HTTP Get command. Sure they could track which server you connect to, but not which pages are requested, nor the data that is sent back. A proxy system that did the requests for you would hide who was getting which pages.

    • Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by houghi (78078) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:48AM (#15415326) Homepage
      No. They talk about the information. e.g. that I connected to http://politics.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] not the fact that I actually wrote this.

      Compare it to the fact that phone companies keep records of whom you called when. Not what you said on that phonecall.

      That is another department. Oh and no matter if it is the ISP or the governement who is paying, you are going to pay for it. Either by taxes or by price increase.

      • No. They talk about the information. e.g. that I connected to http://politics.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] not the fact that I actually wrote this.

        So you are a politically interested terrorist^Wcitizen, hmss? Slashdot... give us the user id corresponding to IP address w.x.y.z on 12:48 PM EST, CST or WST. Oh, here's the court order. How did we find the IP? Oh... we didn't need to tap anyone for that, ya... see... it's lawfull to snoop on all citizens, ya see?...

      • You're incorrect about what they actually want... The government hasn't made clear what information they want retained. They're not sure if they want entire sessions of just session information. I wonder if the government is going to subsidize monies for companies to build their infrastructures to accomodate the information the government is soliciting. If I were a small business and did not have the money in my budget to fill this task should I be fined?
    • While it may seem to be the solution, how long before companies are pressured to place something on the operating system level, say a keylogger? Wouldn't be the first time the government went this route (Google FBI +Magic Lantern). As a whole I would think too much crypto usage would create a boon in cybercriminals using crypto for malice thereby giving the government justification for passing laws to ban cryptos. Akin to gun laws... Guns don't kill people...

      This two-part article series looks at how crypt

  • Constitutional Amendments? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Threni (635302) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:23AM (#15415279)
    Sadly I'm not American, but this seems like the sort of thing that would be pretty early on in the list of rights you guys have - freedom of speech, not incriminate yourselfs in court etc - so is there any possibility that you could have a new amendment - the right to have private communication with people without having to tell - or without the carrier having to tell - the government? It sounds a bit much to me.

    Also, from a technical point of view, why isn't Linux and other Open Source software using encryption by default? If emails are hard to encrypt as a matter of course, perhaps it's time for another system which handles messages strongly encrypted. I've heard about TOR from the EFF, and I remember the short-lived Triangle Boy system - it really sounds like this sort of thing needs to be made up and running sooner rather than later.
    • Happily, I'm not American. = )

      But I do live in the US. From what I can gather, they want to create big nets or maps of people. Who contacts whom. They don't particularly care what people say initially. That comes later if something strikes their fancy. There was a story once where they ID'd some 911 people on a big chart using this info, but they did not keep the info; the military was not allowed. Now the legislation is catching up with the technology...Nevermind that the 911 person was only fingere

  • It's lifted from the TFA but I guess this is supposed to mean 'instant messaging correspondence' (...in addition to logging the correspondents)?

  • log size (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alzoron (210577) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:25AM (#15415283) Homepage Journal
    Based on logs i've seen of similar information 2 years of logs would easilly be 26 gbs for a single person. That's just a conservitive number for the types that check their email a few times a week and look at the Lost forums every now and then.

    Multiply that by 100s of thousands of users and you're looking at warehouses full of tapes and/or hard drives. That's if you're conservitive.
    • I work at a small WISP. Wireless Internet is secondary to our primary business, so anything to do with the Internet gets put on hold when a primary job comes up. The practical result of that is, we barely have a spare minute to work on the network side of the WISP (the result is also crappy customer service, but that is a different post).

      Should something like this actually happen, it would take not only a large amount of space, but for us, probably a full time person just to manage backing up the logs. For

  • Data Storage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LordLucless (582312) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:27AM (#15415286)
    I'm sure the ISPs wouldn't mind - as long as the government provides the data storage center and pipe to the same. I just don't want to be the poor sucker that's expected to develop an algorithm to efficiently search the steaming pile of crap that results from that sort of requirement.

  • Private Meeting? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by badlikeacobra (903612) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:30AM (#15415290) Homepage
    I wonder if they have some privacy issues about the content of their private meetings showing up on the internet?

  • Distraction? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m1ndrape (971736) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:33AM (#15415295) Homepage
    are we sure this story isn't just to distract us from the AT&T + NSA snooping headlines? if they need to ask ISP's to retain all this data, then surely the NSA isn't doing what everything thinks they are doing.

    • if they need to ask ISP's to retain all this data, then surely the NSA isn't doing what everything thinks they are doing.

      From what I remember this isn't quite true... The NSA + AT&T case is about real time data mining, not blind storage of details of every connection made by an user. The case presented in this article enables investigators to get data about the past, even if nothing suspicious was detected at that time.

  • Freedom and Cost (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sqreater (895148) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:36AM (#15415299)

    The cost of freedom and rights is paid not just on the battlefields of the wars we fight, but in our everyday lives. When we become so weak that we cannot accept that cost, then we cannot have rights and freedoms.

    In Massachusetts, USA, we now have State Police on television, threatening the citizens of the State over seatbelt use. In the mad desire to save the last life, our government and police oppress and threaten not murderers or rapists, not armed robbers or burglars, but citizens commuting to work, mothers doing shopping, and old people on the way to bingo.

    You can be sure that the requirement to hold all ISP information on individuals will extend from 2 years to 5 to 10. Then there will be a lifetime requirement on all communication by an individual.

    They justify these incroachments on rights and freedoms by saying they are fighting crime and saving lives. We have to be strong enough to accept the consequences of our freedom to chose in our lives and tell them we are not mere cells in the body of society. We must tell them that we are not all "uncaught criminals" who must be monitored and spied upon by the government for our own good. We must tell them to go to hell.

    • The parent poster is dead correct. Not being spied on and continually asked "Your papers comrade" was supposed to be one of the touchstones of American citizenship. When I was growing up, I was often told that not enduring such things and NOT TOLERATING them was one of the many things that made us better than the Russians. People used to care enough about that citizenship to even brook contemplating the traitorous ideas Gonzales and the rest of the Bush administration keep coming up with.

      The people in ch

      • If you don't wear it, the cops have a legit reason to pull you over.

        Your argument that this law is just because I can negatively affect others through non-use of a seatbelt is a bit reaching, don't you think?

        • At least he didn't trot out the "your injuries will raise my health insurance premiums and the government will have to care for you or your widow" argument. Seatbelt and helmet laws are just one symptom of the outrageous disregard for freedom that allows this once great country to stomach the passage of laws regulating conduct that affects only oneself.

          • Seatbelt and helmet laws are just one symptom of the outrageous disregard for freedom that allows this once great country to stomach the passage of laws regulating conduct that affects only oneself.

            Natural selection of idiots who don't wear seatbelts should not be allowed to run it's course because it impact upon others - from the children in the care of idiots to other road users. When it gets down to it, laws are there for the good of the state and luckily the state is at least theoretically there in a d

      • By wearing your seatbelt, you drive more safely and in control and you are performing a public good

        How does this make any sense? I would think that someone who is more likely to be injured in a crash, to drive more safely. If there is a 100% chance that you will die in an accident, you had better make sure that you don't get in an accident. However, if there is a 100% chance that you won't get injured, then why would you even worry about whether or not you got in an accident.
      • people *do* value money over their own safety, because 99.9% of people dont have a grip on probability. Thats why people play roulette and buy lottery tickets. People never think a car crash will happen to them.
        I wouldnt drem of driving a car without a seatbelt, I simply wouldn't feel safe doing that. For the same reason, I wouldnt ride a motorbike without a crash helmet. Is that a freedom issue too?
        I was part of a 4 car shunt once (i was stationary, some drunken loon went into the car behind me). Without a
      • The seatbelt legislation is to save the insurance companies money.

        On what basis can you make such a statement? Surely the insurance companies just pass their costs on to the policy holders. The costs of not wearing seatbelts is much more widespread than just the insurance companies (which is unlikely anyway). It drives up everyone's insurance rates. For children it is surely a case of parental neglect to put them in a car unrestrained. There is also a societal cost associated with carnage on the highways. O
  • ...between ISPs and their users, the users said they would jump ship the moment they thought their ISPs were helping to spy/keep tabs on them. The users also read a statement into the record proposing that the Justice Department, quote, "go fuck themselves", and, further, that the DOJ heads would, quote, "hit the bricks as soon as we have fired their elected masters".

  • we analyzed your e-behavior... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SlashSquatch (928150) on Saturday May 27 2006, @06:49AM (#15415329) Homepage

    ...and we found a probability of > .5 that you have engaged in illegal activity in the past two years.
    How do you plea?

  • ... harddisk and other mass storage companies.

    If nobody listens when we object on privacy grounds, at least object on environmental grounds... how many kw is it going to take to power the systems to record this data?

    Oh well... at least somebody is backing up my data, even if it's not me :)
    (Not that i'm in the US, but i'm sure my government can't be far behind)

  • My Contribution (Score:4, Funny)

    by SQL Error (16383) on Saturday May 27 2006, @07:20AM (#15415392)
    I get 3 million trackback spams a month. They can have those if they want them.

  • How you can you not think Bush is Evil? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marcybots (473417) on Saturday May 27 2006, @08:33AM (#15415596)
    This administration is doing everything it can to erode our privacy rights, take away due process and legal protections, increase governmental secrecy and decrease governmental accountability. All this ironically in the name of our saftey and freedom.
            The Bush administration is eroding our privacy rights through warantless wiretapping of American Citizens phone calls, and we dont know if its only international phone calls because there has been no investigation of this, we only have the people who are violating the FISA statue's word on this. FISA was set up for exactly this purpose. Not only that, they have a database of nearly every phonecall made in America, and they are using it to monitor phonecalls made by reporters to find leaks in their own administration without warrants.
    http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=83880 [thenation.com]
          As for our legal protections, this administration wants to be able to detain indefinitely without trial anyone suspected of terrorism, Jose Paddilla is a American born citizen and though he will now be tried as a criminal due to the threat of his case going to the supreme court. This administration wished to detain him indefinitely without trial prior to that threat. That is scary and unprecedented. Were not talking about legal resident aliens, or people who illegal gained entry into the country, this guy was born here as a citizen and under the constitution he deserves a trial, every citizen deserves a trial, thats a fundamental right.
            As for increased government secrecy and decreased accountability we have documents being reclassified under the freedom of information act, and non-compliance for freedom of informaiton act requests. Its not just security related concerns, but corrupt things like whether a power plant is up to code and is likely to have an accident, hand outs to his industrialist buddies. Another nice tidbit hidden from the public for a long time by Bush's rewritting of the Freedom of Information act is a memo from Exxon mobil to the Bush white house demonstrating the influence of oil companies on this administration's global warming policy's. All of this having nothing to do with national security but being withheld from the public just because it protects monied interests or can embarrass elected officials.

  • Watch For Follow-Up Laws To Ban Things Like... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BlueStrat (756137) on Saturday May 27 2006, @01:05PM (#15416611)
    ..Anonym.OS http://kaos.to/cms/content/view/14/32/ [kaos.to]

    Until then, consider contributing to these kinds of projects, as they soon may be the only things standing between you and governments being able to track and parse every communication you make.

    Does anyone else find it ironic that some of the most "free" countries are some of the former Soviet Unions' 'client' states?

    Cheers!

    Strat

    • Re:Whos going to pay for this dumb idea? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They're actually trying this in the EU, where it has already been agreed that data retention should be implemented for at least 6 months or so.

      Personally I don't see little that can be really achieved with this approach to actually prevent terrorist, since there are dozens of ways that can be used to circumvent this data mining approach.. and even a 12-year old can think of them.

      I think one might only be able to do something with when something has actually happened, parsing these amounts of data in rea

      • Until Gonzales' speech, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol providers, top [American] administration officials began talking about the practice more favorably.

        I hate to say "I told you so," but this is just another example of legal harmonization.

        Push push push for laws in

    • So you want to pay for it? Even if you dont use a spying ISP?

      Goverment rips all that money in the form of taxes... everyone pays.

      If ISPs paid for this themselves, then only the customers of those ISPs would pay.

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