New snooping bill: What could possibly go wrong?

House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill :

"Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."

Let's think this through (hey, somebody has to!):

•  This is billed as a "protecting children from pornography" act.   Where is the official double-speak justification on this?  What part of this could even theoretically protect any kid from pornography? Did the spin-doctor on duty call in sick?
• This is going to be made available for "police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well".   Are we feeling secure yet?
• Every other monitoring system of this sort has been abused on a systematic basis.  
• Who is going to be paying for this?  I see a $6.99/month "snooped data retention" fee coming to a statement near you soon!
• The ISP is supposed to be capturing credit card numbers, bank account numbers, personal information, which begs questions such as:
• Who is going to be responsible for storing and safeguarding this information?  
• Can you imagine what kind of tasty target it would be for a criminal?  How may credit card transactions are flowing through Comcast's network every day?
• Are the ISPs going to be held to the same data confidentiality laws as everybody else?
  I see PCI, HIPAA and a few others jump out as being applicable here.   Who is going to audit these systems to ensure compliance.
• (Luckily) nearly every website these days uses HTTPS from credit card transactions.  How is an ISP supposed to capture this information on the wire?

There are so many things wrong with this idea, and they haven't even started implementing it yet.

Biz Stone reads my post!

Techcrunch reports on a email being sent to specific twitter accounts:

We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.

Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.

This is exactly what I have been saying recently about the "followers bubble". I've had others agree with me, while some (not to be named here) call out that it wasn't my place to say how they should use twitter. You're right. I have no control or jurisdiction over your twitter accounts. But the twitter exec staff sure does.

Yes, during my happy-dance, I did realize that this new policy will only relate to those few accounts using the twitter-implemented auto-follow, and do nothing for those who use external tools for this. But one can hope that this becomes a more strict policy, and I got a solution for that too:

Biz, because you such a nice guy, here is my free twitter monetisation strategy for you:

Relate the number of people you can follow to a pricing tier.

Think of the benefits:

1. Keep the auto-followers under control, without needing to heuristically blacklist accounts.
2. Only celebrities, companies and spammers are impacted, and they all got money.
3. ...
4. Profit!

This is possibly going to stir up some emotions, but think about this:
If you can honestly say "I think this person is interesting, so I am going to follow what they have to say", then why would you refuse to pay e.g. 1 cent per month for the privilege?

On Kafka and child porn

Interesting application of child porn laws:

In the Pennsylvania case, a school official seized the phone of one of the boys after he was caught using it during school hours in violation of a school rule, according to local police Capt. George Seranko. The official found the picture on the phone, and after some interrogation, discovered that two other girls had also e-mailed photos of themselves in the nude to friends. That's when the school called police, who obtained search warrants to seize the phones and examine them. Police showed the images to the local district attorney, who recommended they bring charges.

I've seen this happening so many times: An ambitious politician creates a law "for the good of the children" and before you know it people with pitchforks are setting libraries on fire.

Imagine this:
You are alone in your room. You look at yourself naked in the mirror. You take a picture of yourself, and you instantly are sex offender, branded for life. Any friends you send it too, instantly are too.

Or...

Two kids having consensual sex. Legally. The can invite kids of their own age to watch. Or even join in. When they watch through a window, they are legally OK. When they watch using a web cam, they all are instant sex offenders.


Or how about... you are surfing myspace and stumble across a profile page of a teen posting nude pictures of him/herself. Yes, that teen would be in violation of (amongst other things) the TOS. But still your browser dutifully downloads and stores the offending JPG. From then on, any computer forensics package run on your PC will provide the proof to convict you of possession of child porn.

Personally, I don't know what is scarier these days. The "evil hackers on the internet" or the "knights that protect us".

One group will try to to rip you off, and steal your money. The other can take away your home, freedom, custody of your kids.