Congress May Add Record Requirements to MySpace 343
An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that Congress may be working to extend the record retention requirements they're already working on for ISPs to social networking sites. Sites such as MySpace or FaceBook would be required to hold onto content access records for an unspecified length of time." From the article: "In those meetings, Justice Department representatives went beyond the argument that data retention was necessary to protect children--and claimed it would aid in terrorism investigations as well. During Wednesday's hearing, politicians also claimed that social-networking sites were not doing enough to verify that their users who claimed to be a certain age were telling the truth. (Recent news reports have said that sex predators are using MySpace and similar sites to meet up with teens.)"
Parents? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ingenious Idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Parents should be held accountable for their children and the reason parents don't care as much anymore about raising their kids pro
Re:Parents? (Score:2)
Re:Parents? (Score:2)
Re:Parents? (Score:2)
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean golly, who doesn't know that all the hip cool terrorists out there use MySpace to plan their attacks..
oh yeah, and let's pass laws cause uh, pedophiles also. yeah. (i wonder if there's a way they can sneak abortion into this issue as well..)
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Funny)
Won't someone think of the adults?! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's time we put a stop to these horrible predators.
Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's going to stop freedom terrorism happening in our country? Bullshit, like this, is eating at the highly regarded morals *I* hold which are being left the fuck alone to do whatever the fuck I like w/o having to wonder "am I a terrorist?!"
The "Republicans" are happy to erode our media's rights to disseminate important information being withheld and to chastise them using "their" news outlets while the rest of us sit here whining in near silence.
I've always said that I'm no better than anyone else as I'm sitting here whining to the Slashdot community and not doing anything but when are we going to stand up and tell the Government to go fuck itself?
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll keep spewing this BS to get what they want. In the cold war days, it was communism, now it's terrorism. I wonder what's next...
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:3, Interesting)
I vote for liberalism.
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:3, Funny)
I vote libertarian.
Oh, and for the record to the current regime:
FUCK YOU!
And yes, I do bear arms, am very well trained in gorilla combat, AND I'm willing to die for my freedoms.
----------------------
Cross that line sukka!
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
And the book "The Culture of Fear", which inspired Mike Moore to make "Bowling with Columbine", pretty much nails what's happened. America is ruled by fear, and fear makes money and power. Nothing new about that; people went to prison or were executed for being anarchists, atheists, sodomites, communists, socialists, jews, in one way or another, in the US for all its history. And let's not forget the biggest fear of all, used to manipulate us for over a hundred years: the dangerous blacks.
What's important is that the fear police have tools they've never had before, technological and legal. They've no laws to follow, so they can do what they like to us. And now with the internet and digital telephony and cheap surveillance and GPS, they can lock us into a prison that we can't escape. All for fear.
And none of those things will make us one bit "safer". There is no safety in life, and never will be. What we need is a rational ability to assign probabilty to risk, and fear accordingly. For instance, what are the odds of getting killed in your car opposed to being killed by "terrorists"? And why the discrepancy in response, other than stupidity on the part of the manipulated and cold calculated fear manipulation by those who will get infintite power and endless wealth making people "safe" from nearly nonexistent threats.
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
If Terrorist hate freedom and the Western way of life, it would be their political goal to reduce or remove our freedoms.
And out wonderful government, while attempting to fight against the terrorist have been slowly erroding our rights and freedoms.
So the harder our government fights, the more the terrorist win. Our government has done more to destroy our way of life than any terrorist organization ever could.
-Rick
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2, Insightful)
This does not immediately "disprove" your argument, but it does show your argument is a radical oversimplification, to the point where it has more rhetorical value than any sort of substantiative policy discrimination value.
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are a few other ways of looking at it:
Is the real freedom the administration of today want to take away is The Freedom To Not Have Conservative Christian Values?
Or is the administration themselves a terrorist threat as they use the threat of violence against individuals or property to intimidate society to achieve political objectives? True, they themselves are not perpetrating the violence, but they are saying things along the line of "vote for us, or there will be bloodshed." Sure, they wrap it up a little more pleasantly with things like, "Other political parties are pansies, only our political party care for your safety." But that sounds an awful lot like a protection racket coming from a neighborhood gang. "The police can't keep your store from burning down, only the Crazy 88s can protect you."
-Rick
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorists don't care about "civil liberties" as such. They claim to care about creating the Islamic Caliphate, and taking it one step further, one can assume that they believe they will of course be running it, being Chosen by Allah and all that.
This is pretty close to objective truth, unless you really think that the Muslim terrorists really do just want to take your free speech away, and are willing to murder, kill, and even die just to strip of your civil liberties and for no other reason. If that's "flamebait", frankly that says more about the community or the moderator than me.
Thus, the argument is over-simplified and not really useful for thinking. The argument that "If our enemies want X, we must not give them X" (which is what this is trying for) is always oversimplified; to use that logic is to concede far too much control to the enemy. The question of whether or not a given civil liberty must be modified somehow is one that must be considered independently from whether "the terrorists" want it.
A couple of you lept to the conclusion that this therefore implies that I think civil liberty must be curtailed. That's even weaker thinking than the original argument; that an argument is bad does not imply that the conclusion is false! Plus I have an established history of being on the side of civil liberties; I ran a website about it for years. That means I want to see good arguments used all the more, and I dislike bad arguments that lead to conclusion I agree with all the more. There are good reasons not to curtail civil liberties. We don't need bad ones!
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:3, Insightful)
Except, the problem with that is that you're extrapolating the intentions of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement. They could give two shits about converting or ruling Christian, Jewish, or secular westerners. They don't want to create an Islamic theocracy in the U.S., Denmark, Russia, or Argen
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:3, Interesting)
However:
"The two "freedoms" are not the same thing." and "the freedom to not be Muslim, to live under something other than the Islamic Caliphate"
I'm sure you will find that many of the freedoms (civil liberties) we take for granted are pretty well opposed to under Islamic Caliphate. The diff
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
And DAMN MySpace for aiding them in the intimidation and upheaval of our government!
Oh, and the children. Won't someone think of them too, when you get a chance.
Hey - any takers on what the next big rally cry will be? It's been:
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:3, Informative)
Well put.
Incidentally, there is a good manual for terrorists, that everyone should read: Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare [kimsoft.com]. It was written by the CIA for use by the Contras in Nicaragua; it really makes you think who the real terrorists fighting against the US population are.
An analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
You just never know if, or when he will shoot. Same with the government. They have the power to detain you at the drop of the hat. The question I have for you is, do you wait until the gun man starts shooting to take his gun away? Do you wait for the government to start abusing there power before you place limits on them?
-Rick
You americans are being silenced by perpetual war (Score:2)
Clearly, that's the point of the "war" on terrorism - to silence critics. That's why the "war" will never be ended. That's why the gov't will never attempt to end it.
Your gov't has totally taken advantage of your collective love of martial metaphors (war on poverty, drugs, sports doping, whatever).
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
Now DeGette and some of her colleagues in the House of Representatives are suggesting that social-networking sites should be required to do the same thing."
From your post: The "Republicans" are happy to erode our media's rights to disseminate important in
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of it, and I'm saving up to leave.
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
I had no idea the government was being that honest. What does Cheney think about them calling him that?
Double standard (Score:2)
You realy don't want to be left alone, you want immunity from causing someone else harm. There is a different. Be honest.
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:2)
I never said the Democrats were good. I don't believe that the New Aged GOP (aka the "Republicans") or the Democrats are doing anything positive for this country.
Open your eyes and get a clue before spouting off like an uninformed 12 year old.
Terrorism? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Terrorism? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Terrorism? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes [brokennewz.com]
Re:Terrorism? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Terrorism? (Score:2)
That's some serious camouflage. I mean, think about it: given the typical MySpace user, who would think to look!
Though you might be able to classify some of the website layouts you find on MySpace as terrorist weapons themselves, capable of crashing thousands of browsers worldwide.
Land of the free... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly. They didn't win. They hated us for our freedom, and we showed 'em good by doing away with it. Problem solved!
Re:Land of the free... (Score:2)
But they still "won" (certainly they can't hate us anymore since we have no freedom, right?).
Its one of those lovely "win-win" situations, now isn't it?
Re:Land of the free... (Score:2)
Anyone else should have grown up by now, and have better things to do, like talk to your kids and keep them off sites like myspace!
Re:Land of the free... (Score:2)
Damn straight! For godsake grow up and get on
Who needs an online community of like minded people with persistent presence, the ability to track friends and enemies, and keep a running log of your musings and conversations. Foolishness I tell you!
Nothing to do with terrorists. (Score:2)
You can't blame this on terrorists, or the neocons, or the Bush administration. This is something that the people of this country ask, and beg for, and the government is only all to happy to comply.
Are they asking for it or are they led to ask? (Score:2)
People are gullible. Especially in the so called free world, people believe what they see on TV and read in the news. Polls have shown that (aside of advertising, which is generally believed to be false) people do actually believe that news show them the truth or at least a generally correct view of events.
People ask what you want them to ask for, if you play your cards right. Play on their fears,
Re:Land of the free... (Score:2)
Re:Land of the free... (Score:2)
We can't even manage to vote a known corrupt government out of office, much less really do something about whats going on.
Its pathetic. We not only lost, we lost, and then locked ourselves up in a a prison of our own making, abused ourselves, then bowed down and asked for more.
oh c'mon (Score:5, Funny)
guys, you KNOW you're only required to use one of those. EITHER think of the children OR terrorists
this is over the top. someone might notice your tactics!
Re:oh c'mon (Score:2)
Citizen with an IQ above room temperature: MySpace isn't a weapon.
Congressional Asshat: But terrorists could use it to hurt children! See!! Dual Use!11
Re:oh c'mon (Score:2)
In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news:
I hear there's also a bill pending that will make posting fingerpaintings in kindergarten classrooms illegal, and that the Department of Homeland Security will be investigating all reports of graffiti for possible terrorist links.
I just thank god that all of this is making us so much safer and that we can rest assured that we'll never be attacked again. Those weird concepts such as freedom and liberty and privacy have always been overrated anyway.
Re:In a related story... (Score:2)
The Dept. of Justice has recently adjusted their tactics to deal with the serious issue of kindergarten fingerpainting. Instead of a ban, it will be asking Congress to require that schools retain all fingerpaintings indefinitely to aid the permanent war on terrorism. There is a gold mine of finger print and psychological data in these paintings which will serve the future generations of American
I'm certain, there will NEVER be another attack (Score:2)
What's the goal a terrorist wants? He wants to create terror (hence the name).
(I suddenly feel like creating a Photoshop pic of Osama under a "Mission Accomplished" banner...)
Think... (Score:2)
Responsibility for your own actions people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are you going?
Who are you going with?
Who is going to be there?
What are you going to be doing?
Do I know these people? (If the parent doesn't know them, then they probably shouldn't let their kids hang out with them unsupervised!)
I mean what the hell people! It's not a website's responsibility to keep your kids away from predators, IT'S YOURS!
Re:Responsibility for your own actions people! (Score:2)
The irony here is that, when it comes to the "protect the kids" aspect, it's whole "It Takes A Village"-soccer-mom brigade that's most interested in the Nanny State. Talk to any high school staffer about the pressure to (while remaining entirely politically correct, of course), find some completely inoffensive way to diffuse every argument or make sure a kid doesn't go home having to think f
Bless their hearts. (Score:5, Insightful)
..I'm referring, of course, to the damn fool parents groups and lawmakers.
Re:Bless their hearts. (Score:3, Insightful)
Verifying age? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how politicians expect MySpace to verify a person's age. Perhaps they're going to force them to use the age verification that was used on those OLD Leisure Suit Larry games. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the old Leisure Suit Larry games (I'm talking 286 era) used to ask general knowledge questions b
Re:Verifying age? (Score:3, Interesting)
So if you're 14(?), and want people to find your profile, you lie and say you're older.
And if you're an adult, and you only want friends to be able to see your profile, you lie and say you're younger.
This could be easily solved by simply making publ
lol, parental responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
did anyone ever sue a mall for being the place in which their child was abducted/abused/etc?
I whole heartedly agree (Score:4, Funny)
My EYES!
In France... (Score:2)
In the US I don't see this being a problem as long as a warrant is required so there is some police oversight. I do, however, hate to see more regulations. But as long as all the data isn't being fed direct
Its So Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution this is NOT a function of the US Congress.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
And according to the 10th Amendment, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:2)
"The Congress shall have power
Sadly it's pretty much accepted that internet == commerce.
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:2)
The Net was largely setup with public funds and research (think DARPA/ARPA and universities). But more specifically, the issue is that the telco providers have a government granted monopoly on a large portion of the backbone. Therefore the infrastructure of the Net is not really in the "free market" unfortunately. This GREATLY complicates things and whenever the government gets involved, you can be sure that the general public is usually getting the shaft and sp
What do you expect? (Score:2)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badnarik [wikipedia.org]
Legislation should be tied to Art 1 Sec 8 (Score:2)
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:2)
Not that I necessarily agree with the Court's interpretation over the years, but you can't just cherry-pick a few lines out
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Again, not that I necessarily agree with the Court's decisions, but that's the reality.
Right to anonymity (Score:3, Interesting)
Errr, didn't you get the memo? The 10th amendment is moot in light of the commerce clause.
Seriously though, while I think much of the reaction to this is a tad melodramatic, the potential for legislation like this to be enacted is exactly why it's important to help privacy-enhancing technologies reach critical mass -- e.g. Freenet [sourceforge.net], darknets, and Onion Routers [eff.org].
Eventually, one's right to anonymity will only be secured by technological means, since governments will increasingly come together to counter it,
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since 1933 and since the FDR era's broad interpretation of the commerce clause, you might as well pretend that the 10th Amendment doesn't exist.
What ever happened to the small government that Democrats and Republicans once supported back in the founding days? Oh, wait....
Re:Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:3, Interesting)
But even Lincoln violated the Constitution by not allowing the Southern states to secede from the Union. There are other instances of this prior to that I am sure (think national bank) but can't off the top of my head recall any of them.
But, just because the government has a
Sometimes things work Sometimes they don't. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why we have the court system to hash this out. Should someone take this up and go to trail over it they can have experts / witnesses / employees / vendors to try to settle this out and show that it's a crazy request that really should have never passed.
I hope it doesn't get that far, but I still have faith in the "system" in order to right this. The reason I say that is, this is the government asking for something to be implimented, not private business asking for something to be implimented. If it were private businesses they would lobby and spend money to make it happen.
Terrorism on myspace? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Terrorism on myspace? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you verify 'under-18' (Score:3, Insightful)
Under-18 though... there's no common ID in use. Which means that anyone over-18 can pretend to be under-18 at will. SO you can cut off access to adult services from kids... BUT you can't cut off access to kids services from adults.
Without further compromising the privacy and security via obscurity of the children in question.... through elaborate cross checking of credentials... there's no way to verify that a child is a child and not an adult pretending to be a child.
Modest Proposal (Score:2, Informative)
It seems obvious to me that there is significantly more malfeasance happening within corporate governence and 'coporate' government than is happening at MySpace.
I'd like to have earlier known about Enron, Cheney's secret energy task force meetings, Halliburton's war profiteering, etc.
Going after MySpace for terrorists & pedophiles is mis-directed force.
Re:Modest Proposal (Score:2)
Just yesterday, there was a story on Slashdot about a family in New Hampshire arrested for videotaping poli
Won't somebody please think of the barely legals! (Score:2)
So this means (Score:3, Interesting)
scary...
panic is creating a lot of stupid ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
It said that age verfication was a top priority for them and that the Connecticut AG said something like "if we could put someone on the moon, we can surely age verify users."
Just to show the collective brains of the people running the panic-show, they entertained using social security number verification for age verification purposes (the Time article said that the problem with that was the large quantity of non-US users, and that apparently nixed the idea.)
Nevertheless, requiring SSNs to open a Myspace or Xanga account would be a disaster on biblical grounds. Though I have a lot more faith in 14 year olds than the average person, I think having them interact with their SSN at all and needing to take responsibility for it would be problematic...not to mention, SSNs of minors is a phishers dream come true--just think about how many emails you'll get from "myspace" and "xanga" saying you need to verify your age to keep your account, so log in here and enter in your SSN and DOB.
Well if I had to follow all these requirements or (Score:2)
There are many countries that would probably be jumping for joy to get the tax revenue that myspace generates.
My favorite part of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, politicians proposed a slew of related measures this week, including blocking access to off-color Web sites for all Americans, dispatching "search and destroy" bots that would seek out illegal content, regulating search engines and targeting peer-to-peer networks.
Oh, great. That will work out well. Internet censorship ala China, here we come!
Re:My favorite part of the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is what I would like to do: set up a giant network of systems using peer-to-peer communication. Have the flows be extremely encrypted, obfuscated, and misleading. Make it look like we're going to great lengths to hide something that must be horribly, terribly awful, but leave a trail just noticeable enough to attract the attention of these folks who would like to "seek out illegal conten
Ownership (Score:2)
This goes back to MySpace and the other sites having ownership of what's posted there. If I post something, and it's mine, and I want it removed later, they shouldn't be allowed to keep it. Is this hard to understand Mr. Congressman? You don't own it either. I do, and nobody else when it's original content.
Insensitive Clods (Score:2)
In all of these posts, I do not see a single one considering the horrific plight of the average (and I mean that literally) American Congress-critter. Let's take Diana DeGette for example. She has previously attempted to legislate that ISPs retain logs of their customers' IPs and who they connected to. Now she wants content providers to do the same - log IPs of people connecting to them.
Clearly everyone is overlooking the obvious. Diana DeGette has Missing Brain Syndrome (MBS). In fact, if you look at the
Chilling (Score:3, Insightful)
The commercial operators will find it worth their time to install logging software and find a way to make it convenient for the government to issue warrantless Patriot Act information seizures. But I can't imagine how Jill BulletinBoard and her quilting group will cope. They'll have to close, along with boards espousing minor political views -- anything that doesn't make enough money to justify the record-keeping, or where the operators lack technical expertise to make it happen.
So this law sucks. We all agree understand that child pornography and sexual predators are a problem on the Internet, but sweeping, First Amendment-smashing stuff like this is a bad answer.
Your govt at work (Score:2)
Re:Something good to retain information on. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about responsible teens? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't so much the predators, as it is the teens who have been shielded by their parents, and otherwise kept from learning about responsibility. For the most part, nobody forces them to give out personal information on the Internet. If they do, it's likely something they did completely on their own. If they then proceed to meet up with somebody who isn't a very nice person, that's again something they likely arranged on their own. The only way to stop such activity is to get the teens to smarted up, and to not provide their address to strangers, and to not agree to meet them in alleyways.
In the 1970s, we were always told in school not to get into a car with a stranger. And for the most part, it worked. There were a few stupid fucks who didn't heed such advice, of course. But in general, if you're open and honest with children and teens, they often will understand your concern. It's when you treat them like fools that they truly become fools, as we so often see in extremely restrictive places like Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and so forth. They won't learn responsibility in such an environment. And passing numerous data retention laws won't have any beneficial effect at all, because the root problem of stupid/ignorant/irresponsible teens is not being addressed.
Re:Something good to retain information on. (Score:2)
Re:Something good to retain information on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Something good to retain information on. HASHES (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's illegal content, nothing happens until somebody sees it and reports it. That person should have saved a copy as part of the report.
I'd be happier if, for evidence reasons only, MySpace saved hashes of pages, which could then be used to prove that a saved page by someone else was actually on their site at a given time, without saving the
Re:Something good to retain information on. (Score:3, Interesting)
Or parents can educate their kids about meeting people from myspace, and to be careful about how much detail they put on their account.
It also holds people more accountable to law enforcement too.
Like we don't already have enough laws to turn normal citizens into criminals.
If they have illegal information on there and they "delete" it before the cops see it, they data retention would be the only way for the police to
Re:Could this affect slashdot? (Score:2)
Naah, it won't affect slashdot. There aren't any predators here.
Hey, by the way, are you 14 or so? I'm 15...want to meet? I'll show you how to have fun.