SOPA Is Defeated, But New Internet Bill Gains Critics
Rep. Lamar Smith announced yesterday that he is completely withdrawing the controversial SOPA legislation being considered in the House “until there is wider agreement on a solution.” But just as the bill’s opponents celebrate the success of their massive protest movement, another law also authored by Smith is attracting attention as an even bigger threat to Internet freedom. The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 would require internet providers to store every single customer’s browsing history and private data for over a year, and is being called a lethal threat to privacy rights by critics.
Back in August, Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic called the legislation, also known as H.R. 1981, “arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties now under consideration in the United States.” The bill has been approved by committee, but not by the whole House.
The bill also calls for harsher punishments for child pornographers and increased protection for child witnesses, stipulations that, on their own, few would object to. A relatively short section on “retention of certain records” is what’s causing all the concern:
“A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication…”
The bill also suggests weakly and vaguely that “records retained… should be stored securely to protect customer privacy”.
Critics accuse the bill of using “protecting children” as an excuse to violate civil liberties, comparing it to the argument that internet censorship (as recommended by SOPA and PIPA) was necessary to fight copyright infringement and piracy.
What do you think? Is this new bill a crime fighting tool, or a threat to privacy?
I’ve already contact my Reps on this. At it’s best, it’s creating a honey pot for hackers and crackers..
Write to them now!!! There’s an easy way to do this at eff. org!
This bill is insane. It will say it is for protection of children but with all of that data sitting right there it will used for whatever they want. The child protection claim is just to get their foot in the door. They know that no one will argue against protecting children.
Message to the government- if you want to proctect the kids, leave the internet alone. It might be all they will have left to protect themselves from you.
Wait… Why is child pornography bad? It’s just as bad as normal pornography.
If it’s non-consensual, then it counts as rape/kidnap which is already illegal, so what’s the big deal?
Definitely a crappy excuse to crackdown on the giant freedoms the internet provides. Which makes me wonder how much money Lamar and his cronies are receiving to turn a blind eye to push stupid legislation like this forward.
Most child sex abuses (85 to 95% depending on sources) are caused by someone from the family circle (including babysitters, boyfriends/girlfriends, etc). Those have nothing to do with the internet.
(source: 1, 2 and others)
Hence, I call bullshit.
I say another blackout because clearly they think we are stupid and don’t see right through the name of the bill.
Dear Ben,
thank you for the information. Here in Germany we had to deal recently with a similar law, called “Zugangserschwerungsgesetz”, americans would probably call this “Child Abuse Access Impediment Law” – please check out the corresponding Wikipedia-Source.
Technically, the Federal Criminal Police Office wanted carry out a blacklist with which they wanted to force ISPs with to block certain sites on the basis of DNS redirection. After a three-year struggle and education campaigns to our politicians and a unique protest from the civil society, we finally abolished this counterproductive law.
In order to convince politicians, it has helped to make clear what the problems are the and also to make it clear that child abuse material can be actually removed from the network if authorities, Providers and reporting offices turn to the topic seriously. For instance, phisingsites are eventually removed successfully within a very short time.
Greetings, Peter
I honestly think this is all a setup from all the media outlets who tried to keep this all on the hush as much as possible. At the sametime, lets see if Google, Wiki and all the other protesting sites participate in getting everyone to protest this new bill the way that they did. Chances are, if they don’t, than this new bill will be exactly what they wanted in the first place. Besides, I thought that Google was retaining all of our data. What isn’t said or well known is that Google already has a super computer to absorb everyone’s info. All the gov’t needs to do is label a bill with some cover up name that the SHEEPLE will go wild for, realizing the true effects when its too late!!
This is the reason why there should be a big push to get this idiot and others like him out of office.
I posted about SOPA & PIPA here:
Blog: http://cstuarthardwick.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/sopa-and-pipa-are-against-everyones-interests/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0LQEJHIfw
Are they proposing to store the IPs of every user, or the history and private data? The language of the bill quoted in this article suggests just the IP.
“would require internet providers to store every single customer’s browsing history and private data for over a year”
versus:
“A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication…”
So which is it? My IP, or my browsing history and “private data”? (What constitutes provate data for them?) Without more clarification, this article is a little misleading.
in other words..same thing but even stronger against our freedoms with a scary name to get people to support it.got to love our people up in DC
Check out this commercial we made to combat SOPA and PIPA!
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92I0hrYvdjI
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/35405496
This is a CLEAR violation of the 4th Amendment. KILL THE BILL!
They should not be able to do that it is like a country wide wire tap
I can see doing that to single person with probable cause and a courts permission
Think about how much implementing that would cost and who is going to pay the bill
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