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Congress May Add Record Requirements to MySpace 343

Posted by Zonk from the remembering-that-embarassing-photo dept.
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.)"
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Congress May Add Record Requirements to MySpace More

Congress May Add Record Requirements to MySpace

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  • Parents? (Score:5, Funny)

    by andrewman327 ( 635952 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:29AM (#15636042) Homepage Journal
    While the parents groups were in DC lobbying congress, their children were chatting with this really awesome guy who's only a few years older than they are, honest!

    • Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ppz003 ( 797487 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:10AM (#15636364) Homepage
      While this may seem funny to some, it is dead on. Why do parents think that everyone ELSE has to watch over their damn kids? In addition to the newly formed Pirate Party, how about we start a "Don't make laws against Darwinism" party?

      • Re:Parents? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by phyrra ( 986093 )
        I would actually love to know where this mentality came from as well. I work for a game development company and so many parents want to blame us for their children using their PayPal accounts and credit cards without their permission. Some parents seem to feel like it is everyone else's responsibility to watch their children, when really they need to start taking responsibility for their offspring. They can't expect everyone else to be parents for their kids. It's not our job. We're not getting paid for it.

      • Ingenious Idea! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MCTFB ( 863774 )
        Yah, history shows that when the elites allow society to rot from the bottom up, that society becomes weaker over time as the productive people have to pick up more and more slack for all the unproductive people. Eventually that society becomes weak enough that it gets conquered internally through a revolution of the mob, or externally from a society which has its act together.

        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:4, Funny)

      by neoform ( 551705 ) <djneoform@gmail.com> on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:20AM (#15636459) Homepage
      SOMEBODY PLLLLEEEASE THINK OF THE TERRORISTS!

      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..)

  • Won't someone think of the adults?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:30AM (#15636054)
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5130742.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    It's time we put a stop to these horrible predators.

  • Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:30AM (#15636055)
    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.

    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)

      by purpledinoz ( 573045 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:42AM (#15636156)
      Terrorism is their trump card.

      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...
      • You forgot drugs. Remember the Drug Omnibus Bill allowing the cops to confiscate all your property, say that it was used to receive, store, transport drugs, without actually charging you with anything. Then to regain your property, you have to prove its innocence ... good luck with that.
      • "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..."

        I vote for liberalism.
      • My fear would be "liberalism". Not that the war against it isn't already running.

      • Re:Since when did we all become a bunch of pussies (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:52AM (#15636752) Homepage
        fMRIs. New flavor of MRI machine that "determines" whethere you are lying. And perhaps eventually act as a crude mind scanning device as they learn more about the human brain. Coming... this year.

        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)

      by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:47AM (#15636190) Homepage Journal
      As per the DOD: Terrorism is "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."

      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
      • While there is some truth to this, the real freedom the terrorists of today want to take away is The Freedom To Be Not Muslim.

        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)

          by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:26AM (#15636523) Homepage Journal
          While I agree that the most desired goal is religiously based, the administration (specificly Pres Bush) has stated that "Terrorists hate our freedom"

          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)

          by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @12:44PM (#15637189) Journal
          OK, mods and repliers, let me spell it out more clearly. In the following argument:
          • The terrorists want to take away our freedoms.
          • The administration is taking away our freedoms.
          • The administration is therefore doing the terrorists work for them.
          there is a logical fallacy. The two "freedoms" are not the same thing. The administration is taking away what we usually call our "civil liberties". The terrorists we are fighting are trying to take away, as I said, the freedom to not be muslim, to live under something other than the Islamic Caliphate, to choose something other than being Muslim, Dhimmi, or dead.

          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!
          • The terrorists we are fighting are trying to take away, as I said, the freedom to not be muslim, to live under something other than the Islamic Caliphate, to choose something other than being Muslim, Dhimmi, or dead.

            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
          • First off, my apologies for your modding, I think you have a valid point that is worth discussing even if I don't agree with it. I also do not assume that since we do not agree that you are for the erosion of our rights.

            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

      • As per the DOD: Terrorism is "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."

        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:

        • Communism
        • Nuculeaaar War
        • Chi

      • 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.

    • The administration the other pointed out that the NYT was wrong to publish the SWIFT - Treasury - CIA story because the country was at war.

      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).

    • FTFA: "Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, originally proposed legislation (click here for PDF) in April that would require Internet service providers to retain activity logs to aid in criminal investigations, including ones involving child abuse.

      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
    • Dude, it's not the government, it's the people. Most people in the US are too stupid to not believe the government propoganda about a "terrorist" behind every bush. I don't think that there's anything that can be done about it. The stupid people who buy into all of this bullshit are in the majority, and they tend to out-breed those of us who understand what's going on.

      I don't know about you, but I'm tired of it, and I'm saving up to leave.

    • 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?!"

      You realy don't want to be left alone, you want immunity from causing someone else harm. There is a different. Be honest.

      The "Republicans" are happy to erode our media's rights to disseminate important information being withheld and to chastise them using "their" n

    • George Carlin's been ranting about it for a couple of decades. He call's it the "pussification of America". AKA "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!11tilde1!!~~!!!!WTFBBQ!!!!!"

  • Terrorism? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Andrewkov ( 140579 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:30AM (#15636056)
    This will help terrorism? Does Osama have a MySpace profile??

  • Land of the free... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FatSean ( 18753 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:31AM (#15636059) Homepage Journal
    I think the terrorists may have won, and they only had to kill a few thousand US citizens. What a shame. I wonder when single men will be required to produce ID if they walk past a public place where the children might be or where a terrorist attack would claim many lives.

    • Re:Land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:39AM (#15636131) Homepage Journal
      I think the terrorists may have won...

      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!

      • 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!

        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?

    • I've said it before, if you aren't a 14 year old or a pedophile, why the hell would you want to be on a site like myspace, a site full of 14 year old and pedophiles.

      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!


      • Damn straight! For godsake grow up and get on /. and spend your time trolling instead. Lazy bastids.

        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!

    • This whole "think of the children", "I can't watch out for my kids, so the government should do it for me" garbage was around long before 9/11. It around during the seventies, and was in full swing during the Clinton administration.

      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.
      • Remember those "Do you know where your kids are?" commercials? And the other hypeshit that's been dumped on us?

        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,
    • Single men travelling by air are already getting asked to move if they find themselves next to a child. see here [google.co.uk].

  • oh c'mon (Score:5, Funny)

    by myspys ( 204685 ) * on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:31AM (#15636066) Homepage
    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.

    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!
    • EITHER think of the children OR terrorists
      Congressional Asshat: MySpace is a dual use weapon and as such, should be regulated under the UN Accord of...

      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
    • If you ever babysat, you'd know that "terrorist" and "child" is not necessarily mutually exclusive...

  • In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:33AM (#15636074) Homepage Journal

    In other news:

    Another bill before Congress requires that all owners of physical bulletin boards hanging in public places such as offices, classrooms, and such be required to retain all materials posted on such bulletin boards for an unspecified period of time. Stricter efforts will also be placed on those responsible for bulletin boards placed in public places to verify the identity of those who post such materials. Any unverified materials being posted will result in the bulletin board and all retain material being immediately seized for investigation of potential terrorist activity, and the owners prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

    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.

    • I hear there's also a bill pending that will make posting fingerpaintings in kindergarten classrooms illegal

      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

    • What for? Would you continue a war after your opponent literally screams that you've won?

      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 of the children! AND Terrorists!!
  • I'm sorry, but why are the parents of these kids asking the age old questions of their kids???

    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!

    • I mean what the hell people! It's not a website's responsibility to keep your kids away from predators, IT'S YOURS!

      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)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:36AM (#15636106) Homepage Journal
    They really are so cute, so adorably innocent and naive, as they go about their daily business, chatting away to other people, getting crazy naive ideas in their inexperienced little heads. Of course they think what they're doing is right, but they just don't have the capacity or life experience to understand. If only we could gather them around, hug them, tell them it's all going to be okay as long as they stop for a moment and consider what they're doing, and educate them about the full, terrible impact their actions will have not only on themselves, but on everyone else around them. But, of course, they don't want to listen to wisdom, not at their age..

    ..I'm referring, of course, to the damn fool parents groups and lawmakers.

    • They really are so cute, so adorably innocent and naive, as they go about their daily business, chatting away to other people, getting crazy naive ideas in their inexperienced little heads. Of course they think what they're doing is right, but they just don't have the capacity or life experience to understand. If only we could gather them around, hug them, tell them it's all going to be okay as long as they stop for a moment and consider what they're doing, and educate them about the full, terrible impact

  • Verifying age? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by purpledinoz ( 573045 )
    "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."

    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)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
      It doesn't help that MySpace's structure actually encourages people to lie about their age. All profiles claiming to be under a certain age are private, and can only be read by friends. All profiles claiming to be above that age are public, and can't be hidden.

      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)

    by aleksiel ( 678251 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:38AM (#15636124)
    i can remember a few years back when it was the parent's resonsibility to watch their kid; when they would talk to them about stuff like this just like they would tell them to not talk to strangers, especially ones with candy.

    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)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:39AM (#15636133)
    Those damn kids^Wterrorists with their flash, background music and 32 sized Comic Sans fonts have to be apprehended!

    My EYES!
  • Web sites that operate in the French TLD are required to retain the email address and IP address of anything posted to their sites. I know one web site that gets requests from the police at least once a week. The authorities only get the information if they ask for it but they don't require a warrant.

    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)

    by fullphaser ( 939696 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:43AM (#15636159) Homepage
    That the parents of today are convinced that they are no longer repsonsible for their own children, Why moniter video games when you can penalize the industry making them, why watch what your child does online , when you can simply put that problem off on the webamsters, The parties their blaming have no control over the kids, so... how is it that they can be without the repsonsiblity yet still have the gusto to claim it is someone elses fault? that is just way to lazy

  • Where in the Constitution is this allowed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SonicSpike ( 242293 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:43AM (#15636161) Journal
    Can someone tell me how this is any of the business of Congress?

    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/constituti on.articlei.html#section8 [cornell.edu]

    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/constituti on.billofrights.html#amendmentx [cornell.edu]
    • Can someone tell me how this is any of the business of Congress?

      "The Congress shall have power ... to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes"

      Sadly it's pretty much accepted that internet == commerce.
      • I think the problem is a bit deeper than that.

        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
    • Bush has admitted to flagrantly violating the law, not to mention pushing laws that violate the Constitution. Do you really expect them to think they have any limitations at all anymore?
    • I think all legislation should have a preface which explains how that specific legislation is within the bounds of Article I, Section 8 of the Const. Being forced to rationalize each piece of legislation and how it is a function of the government as set forth by our founding documents is important. I also think our courts need to have more integrity and overturn ANY legislation that does not have a direct derivation from one of those specific powers.
    • Keep reading.

      The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

      The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority

      Not that I necessarily agree with the Court's interpretation over the years, but you can't just cherry-pick a few lines out

    • 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,

    • 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....

      • Unfortunately the fed has a much longer history of expanding its powers unconstitutionally than just FDR. The other Roosevelt was notorious for doing this, along with a lot of the early politicians in the early part of the 20th century.

        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)

    by jchawk ( 127686 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:49AM (#15636200) Homepage Journal
    The idea of common people making laws for the rest of the "common" folks is interesting and for the most part works. This however is one of those situations where it doesn't work. The common law maker has no idea the techical requirements / money / time / people it takes to store such vast amounts of information. What they are creating is an un-due burden on the service providers.

    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)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:53AM (#15636227) Homepage
    Wow, that's a stretch. Does anyone have a link to Osama Bin Laden's myspace profile? Or is he disguised as a 16 year old goth girl?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:54AM (#15636236)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How do you verify 'under-18' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @10:56AM (#15636255) Homepage Journal
    It's easy to verify over-18... there are various ids that can be used to provide some record which in 99% of cases will be close enough to the real person as to make it work for validation (think a kid using parents CC # to authenticate.. you can just call the parent up and confirm permission to use).

    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)

    by PenrosePattern ( 460197 )
    How about all public corporations & all governments should be forced to record their meetings & keep them for a longer time period.
    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.
    • It's been made clear time and again that whats good for the goose isn't good for the gander when it comes to government. Government insists on having a growing base of knowledge about the movements of its citizens. When those citizens ask for more oversight and accountability of their government in return, they are told those things are secret, war on terror, or some other nonsense excuse of the day.

      Just yesterday, there was a story on Slashdot about a family in New Hampshire arrested for videotaping poli
  • So, what happens when a terrorist is 16 years old in this continuum? Do we all self destruct?

  • So this means (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ichigo Kurosaki ( 886802 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:15AM (#15636411)
    that the goverment is using the excuse of terrorism to be able to index everything about those who post on social network sites?

    scary...

  • panic is creating a lot of stupid ideas (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimBobJoe ( 2758 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:15AM (#15636413)
    Time magazine (I believe this week) had an article saying that the state attorney generals were meeting about the social networking issues.

    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.

  • set up shop someplace else I know what I'd do in a heartbeat.

    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)

    by QCompson ( 675963 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:28AM (#15636531)
    It's amazing what media-hysteria can accomplish. There are millions of children without healthcare in the U.S., and Congress thinks it is a matter of the highest priority to worry about this overblown "OMG think of the children!!!" crap.

    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!
    • How wonderful it would be to use this paranoia and corruption against the very people trying to gain power from it.

      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
  • to hold onto content access records for an unspecified length of time.

    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.


  • 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)

    by kitzilla ( 266382 ) <paperfrogNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday June 30, 2006 @11:59AM (#15636824) Homepage Journal
    As proposed, this law will have a deeply chilling effect on free speech. Think of all the small discussion boards out there: the hobbyist-level phpBB sites, gaming chats, religious websites, political forums, etc. All of a sudden, their operators might face the same records burden that a MySpace will be forced to shoulder.

    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.
  • I listened to some of the Congressional meetings on CSPAN, and I was struck by how ignorant Congresspeople are about the Internet. One woman from Tennessee was particularly clueless, yet her fears about how "scary" MySpace was can potentially drive legislation that affects the Internet. "oh my word, you mean someone can lie about their age, and MySpace doesn't do anything about that??"

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