Your ISP as Net watchdog

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Essential Freedoms

- I would say that any freedom that does not directly endager someone's life is ESSENTIAL. This does not include your own as I don't feel the government should make laws on that.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you're saying you ought to have the right to endanger your own life, if you so choose, well, then I agree, but only to the extent that you don't take others with you. You are, for example, more than welcome to follow faith healing and throw away your insulin, if you're a diabetic. Throwing away your *child's* insulin, however, is another matter. (There have been legal cases on this. I'm not sure exactly what the courts have said, but I'm fairly certain they have upheld the child's welfare above the parents' religious beliefs.)



-Well that is where I feel you are willing to compromise your freedom and I am not. Yes it is very realistic and has been up until now. You are responsible for you OWN security on the internet. Regulations and laws are counterproductive and contrary to our constitution. "Too much cost for too little gain?" Huh? your part of the problem obviously.

Please explain to me how being anonymous on the Internet is realistic. Someone has to be able to know who you are, even if that someone is only your ISP. If not even your ISP can track your packets, you're not getting on the Internet, because the infrastructure simply can't work that way. Packets have to be able to get from point A to point B, and someone, somewhere, needs to be able to track them.


You must be a patriot act supporter.

The Patriot Act is a huge bill. I can't say I've read the whole thing, from beginning to end. Of what I know, there are parts I support and parts I personally think go too far. An example of where I think things go too far is the roving wiretap, where the government can tap an eniter cyber cafe (for example) in order to perform surveillance on one person's communication. Like most laws, the Patriot Act is neither all good or all bad.

- No one has the right to keep enforcement information on me and my family or track what I do, my beliefs, my interests, my hobbies, I have committed no crime, if anything I help to enforce just laws.

You give the ISP the right to retain the information when you sign up. I suggest you read your user agreement. That's not to say that the ISP will retain your data for an extended period. But they acquire those records in the course of doing business. You have no more right to demand they destroy that information than you'd have to demand that a store destroy your credit card receipts. If you can find an ISP that doesn't keep such data, then by all means, you're free to use it, but I can't imagine an ISP that doesn't keep Web logs and IP logs for some period of time. They'd have to be completely insane. The real question is under what circumstances the government has a right to those records. My current understanding is that it's standard ISP practice to give up such records under court order or subpoena.

I suggest you go out and pick up a history book and read about the ocean of blood that spilled, the young soldiers maimed and killed and the horrors the world has seen to get the rights that you toss aside as garbage while you run on your regulated hampster wheel of life. Start thinking ......everyone start thinking.

The soldiers killed and maimed have fought for the rights enumerated in the Constitution, and to keep us free from actual despots, the likes of which do exist today in countries like China. (Try going there and complaining about retention of Internet records.) By any global standard, we have an unbelievable amount of freedom in this country, even with the Patriot Act.

The actual rights enumerated in the Constitution are something that I think we should all hold dear. It's when people start expanding on those rights to rights that aren't in the Constitution that I have to object. There is no right to privacy in the Constitution. None. What there is is a protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Here is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now it seems to me that roaming wiretaps (where they eavesdrop on all communication in a public place, rather than just on the person being surveiled) is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, because the search isn't "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized". But there's no such thing as a blanket "right to privacy", as you seem to be implying. It's in the E.U.'s Constitution, but not the U.S. Constitution. What there is, in U.S. jurisprudence, is a standard for an expectation of privacy, based on the fact that certain invasions of your privacy are unreasonable (e.g., the government conducting a warrantless search).

My fear is that while everyone is chasing after these phantom rights (like anonymity on the Internet) real, actual rights, like the right not to have my property stolen or my life threatened, will be drastically compromized. Would any of us really feel better-off if someone could steal our money, or our identities, or hunt us down like dogs, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it? No thanks. That kind of "freedom" has too high a price tag. No one spilled their blood with that kind of "freedom" in mind.

Posted by: bhartman36   Posted on: 06/17/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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