The Washington Post runs an article today about police tracing online criminals–mostly pedophiles–to a physical address only to find an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot and not the criminal. The good news in the article is that the police seem to understand that just because something illegal happened over your IP address, it doesn’t mean you did it. The bad news is the “there oughta be a law” implication present in the article. Here’s how the reporter, not a quoted source, describes Wi-Fi:
Open wireless signals are akin to leaving your front door wide open all day–and returning home to find that someone has stolen your belongings and left a mess that needs cleaning.
One way to combat it is for people to secure their wireless networks by making them password-protected. But, authorities said, businesses and cities that offer free connections need some way to track the users, such as filtering measures that could scan to see who is accessing the network.
I don’t get the “stolen belonging” analogy, and the “mess that needs cleaning” is a stretch. I’ll let our resident piggybacking expert explain why. Police should be supported in their pursuit of criminals, but there are a lot more innocent people using coffee shop hot spots than pedophiles.
I’ve got a new article up on the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act. (Internet SAFETY. Get it?) This is part of the GOP’s “law and order” agenda, which they think will play well with voters in 2008.
The legislation would require mandatory labeling of pornographic websites and increase the already-draconian penalties for various offenses related to child pornography. But here’s the really scary part:
The bill requires that e-mail and Internet service providers retain records about their customers’ online activities for use in law enforcement activities. Failure to comply with regulations issued by the attorney general will get you a year in the slammer.
The legislation gives the executive branch essentially unlimited discretion to determine what data must be retained, and for how long. Indeed, the bill appears to open the door to requirements that ISPs retain records of their customers’ activities indefinitely. That raises serious privacy concerns, because once the records are available, there will inevitably be pressure to increase the number of people who have access to them. For example, the movie and recording industries would undoubtedly love to get their hands on the traffic records of those suspected of illicit file trading. Indeed, one member of Congress, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) was so concerned about the dangers of mandatory data retention last year that he proposed legislation requiring ISPs to delete personal data within “a reasonable period of time.”
Such regulations could be especially burdensome to small organizations and individuals. The law appears to apply to anyone running a web or e-mail server on the public Internet, even an individual running a server in his basement. The law is too open-ended to predict how burdensome the resulting regulations would be, but it would certainly upset many Ars readers if they were required to hire a lawyer to verify that their log rotation policies wouldn’t land them in jail.
As far as I can tell, the bill gives the AG totally unlimited discretion in dictating what information ISPs would have to retain. So if he wants them to retain records of every website their customers visit, and every email they send and receive, and keep them forever, he can issue regulations requiring that. I’m not sure how common it is for Congress to give the executive branch this kind of unbridled discretion, but I kind of thought the whole purpose of the separation of powers was to ensure that the people who write the laws are not also the ones who will be interpreting them.
Turner Broadcasting is paying Boston $2 million to compensate them for the costs of Boston having idiotic public officials. Although of course they have to emphasize publicly how sorry they are for the incidient, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company is privately thrilled with the outcome. Adult Swim’s target audience is precisely the sort of people who will be amused rather than appalled by the incident. And the national news coverage they received brought the show to the attention of millions of people (including me) who otherwise never would have heard of the show. It will be very interesting to see if they get a ratings spike as a result.
And via Radley, here’s a video of the perpetrators making the media look silly:
http://www.youtube.com/v/zx2ytr2Oyv4
The news story above says their case hasn’t been dismissed yet, but I expect (hope?) that will happen soon.
Via Bruce Schneier, Wired has an analysis of the legality of the great Light Brite Terrorist Plot:
Intent, in essence, is the entire substance of the charge: if Beredovsky meant to cause a panic (somehow psychically being able to foresee the abject hysteria that would grip the officials of Boston in response to a picture of a cartoon character giving onlookers the finger), he’s guilty. If he didn’t–and it’s pretty obvious he didn’t–he’s innocent.
The word, though, that everyone keeps on throwing around is that his Mooninite Boxes were ‘hoaxes.’ What exactly does the state of Massachusetts mean when they claim a bunch of stray Lite-Brites were hoax devices?
Again, according to the law:
For the purposes of this section, the term “hoax device” shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine. For the purposes of this section, the term “infernal machine” shall mean any device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion, whether or not contrived to ignite or explode automatically. For the purposes of this section, the words “hoax substance” shall mean any substance that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such substance is a harmful chemical or biological agent, a poison, a harmful radioactive substance or any other substance for causing serious bodily injury, endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both.
The million dollar term here? “Reasonably believe.” Could a bunch of light-up boxes advertising a cartoon really be reasonably mistaken for an infernal device? I guess it depends what you mean by reasonably. In my book, someone being reasonable presumes they aren’t a hysterical moron, but I’m not really sure the state of Massachusetts shares my definition.
Some people seem to think that this was outrageous. Others think it’s funny. Put me in the latter category:
Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards “bomblike” devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.
Judge Paul K. Leary told Grossman that, according to law, the suspects must intend to create a panic to be charged with placing hoax devices.
It appears the suspects had no such intent, the judge said, but the question should be discussed in a later hearing.
Continue reading →
Julian thinks that the president’s announcement that he’ll suddenly start running his NSA wiretapping program by the book smells fishy:
But as Orin Kerr notes there’s a big honking ambiguity in this new oversight: Justice department officials won’t clarify whether that means FISA will be ordering the familiar sort of case-by-case warrant based on individualized suspicion or some kind of blanket approval of the old TSP as a whole. Because if it’s the latter, that’s not oversight. That’s writ of assistance. It’s hard to read this transcript and not come away with that conclusion, and equally hard for me to fathom how such a general clarification could somehow be perilous to national security. The only reason I hesitate is that it seems odd that a FISA judge would sign off on so dramatic a departure from the normal rules of the game.
Quite a bit about this doesn’t smell right, actually. Suppose we are talking about real, case-by-case oversight. We were supposed to believe that the ordinary FISA process was too slow and cumbersome to allow intelligence agencies to hunt terrorists effectively, and for some reason it wasn’t possible to remedy this by normal legislative means–say, by asking Congress to extend the 72-hour window within which agencies can conduct emergency taps before securing retroactive approval. As Mark Moller notes, that seems still more dubious in light of this new announcement: How much can actually have changed in the process without any legislative action? Why would it take five years to make those changes, requiring the creation of a separate program in the interim?
Excellent questions. Given that the administration refused to even disclose the existence of this program until the press got wind of it, and given that they’ve suddenly become interested in following the rules once there’s a Democratic Congress around to provide real oversight, it would be crazy to take the White House at its word as to what the new procedure is. Congress needs to demand a full, public disclosure of exactly how this new FISA approval process works so we can judge for ourselves if the White House is playing fast and loose with the law.
As usual, my co-bloggers are falling down on the job when it comes to tooting their own horns. First, James Gattuso has an interesting article over at The American on AT&T’s concessions in the BellSouth merger:
Even those who favor net neutrality should be upset that this rule was imposed through the backdoor of the FCC, after failing to gain acceptance through Congress’s front door. Backdoor policymaking hurts the public, as the checks and balances of the normal policymaking process are short-circuited. More directly, hijacking merger reviews to alter policy hurts firms and their customers–instead of a fair review on the merits, transactions are held hostage to political whims. Will this become a precedent for future FCC reviews? Perhaps not–this case may be unique. But don’t count on it.
And on Cato’s website, here’s an MP3 of Jim Harper discussing his recent paper on data mining and government surveillance. If you haven’t had time to read the paper, here’s a chance to get a 5-minute summary in podcast format.
I’ve just finished reading Cato’s new paper on predictive data mining as an anti-terrorism strategy, which co-author Jim Harper discussed last week. It is excellent, and I encourage you to read it. I found this part particularly interesting:
The terrorists not only operated in plain sight, they were interconnected. They lived together, shared P.O. boxes and frequent flyer numbers, used the same credit card numbers to make airline travel reservations, and made reservations using common addresses and contact phone numbers. For example, al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi lived together in San Diego. Hamza al-Ghamdi and Mohand al-Shehri rented Box 260 at a Mail Boxes Etc. for a year in Delray Beach, Florida. Hani Hanjour and Majed Moqed rented an apartment together at 486 Union Avenue, Patterson, New Jersey. Atta stayed with Marwan al-Shehhi at the Hamlet Country Club in Delray Beach, Florida. Later, they checked into the Panther Inn in Deerfield Beach together.
Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.