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That’s not my picture Officer, I swear!
By jonathan | March 4, 2007
So I was a big fan of President Bush 41. Am I fan of Bush 43? Ehhh, he’s losing me quickly unfortunately. I think I would really like the guy on a personal level, but his policies on Illegal Immigration and Privacy/Technology issues I have totally disagreed with. Here’s the latest decision I whole heartedly disagree with.
This past Wednesday there was a closed door meeting held between DOJ officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, and various ISP representatives. The topic of this meeting primarily was the DOJ’s proposal to ISP’s and image-sharing sites that they must now maintain records of people who upload pictures and videos. The reasoning behind this proposal, according to the DOJ, is so that law enforcement can investigate content they believe is illegal at a later time. The argument for this proposal is in the name of prevention of child pornographers and terrorism. The latter seems to be a very popular reason lately for a significant amount of legislation by the Bush administration and Republicans alike. This proposal sounds great, but there are two really large problems with this legislation.
First and foremost is the violation of civil liberties that this proposal represents. Before the current Bush administration we as Americans had a lot more freedoms and liberty. While most Americans would give up any privacy and freedom they have just to avoid another 9/11, the fact is, this is not something that could prevent another 9/11. While I do believe this could be a useful tool in discovering child pornographers, let’s think about this realistically for a moment. Most serious, hardcore child pornographers are already using Steganography tools to send and store their images. While there have been a few cases where a handful of illegal images have ended up on Flickr or Photobucket, this is a rarity. This clearly shows the current proposal’s benefit for tracking down pedophiles is not a reality.
Secondly, the requirement for ISP’s and companies who host images and videos to retain all this information, has serious financial implications. Financial implications that will not be the responsibility of the respective companies. To retain all of this data on potential law breakers, storage space, software, hardware and manpower are needed in high quantity. To fight opposition from these company’s who’s help and cooperation the government desperately needs, the government will set aside a large pool of money to subsidize their costs. Where will this money come from? You guessed it, John Q. Taxpayer.So, to sum it all up, why must we not support any proposal’s or legislation from the current administration requesting even more data retention by ISP’s and other companies? Two reasons: 1) Complete inefficiency in producing desired results and 2) The financial burden it would place on the taxpayers. We don’t need another Big Brother program paid for by the citizens.
For more information, see the following link which contains the full story: Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites
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