DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet
from the screwing-the-nation-for-the-good-of-the-nation dept
Apparently, the only way to stop terrorists from hating us for our freedom is to strip away those offensive freedoms.
Erik Barnett, the DHS’s attache to the European Union, pitched some freedom-stripping ideas to a presumably more receptive audience via an article for a French policy magazine. Leveraging both the recent Paris attacks and the omnipresent law enforcement excuse for any bad idea — child porn — Barnett suggested victory in the War on Terror can be achieved by stripping internet users of their anonymity. You know, all of them, not just the terrorists.
After a short anecdote about a successful child porn prosecution in Europe. Barnett gets straight to the point. Here’s Kieren McCarthy of The Register.
Before we have an opportunity to celebrate, however, Barnett jumps straight to terrorism. “How much of the potential jihadists’ data should intelligence agencies or law enforcement be able to examine to protect citizenry from terrorist attack?”, he poses. The answer, of course, is everything.
Then the pitch: “As the use of technology by human beings grows and we look at ethical and philosophical questions surrounding ownership of data and privacy interests, we must start to ask how much of the user’s data is fair game for law enforcement to protect children from sexual abuse?”
In short, if you value internet-related freedoms, you’re basically supporting terrorism and child porn. No person — especially no legislator — would want to be seen as valuing personal freedoms over the good of the nation’s infrastructure/children. And, because terrible ideas must be buttressed by terrible analogies, Barnett theorizes that the internet is basically a car.
“When a person drives a car on a highway, he or she agrees to display a license plate. The license plate’s identifiers are ignored most of the time by law enforcement [unless] the car is involved in a legal infraction or otherwise becomes a matter of public interest. Similarly, should not every individual be required to display a ‘license plate’ on the digital super-highway?”
To use the Fourth Amendment for a moment, a lowered expectation of privacy is in play when operating a vehicle on public roads. However, the Fourth Amendment affords a great deal of privacy to the interior of people’s homes. Because the government (in most cases) does not provide internet access, it has no basis to demand ongoing access to citizens’ internet activities. It may acquire this information (along with subscriber info) using search warrants and subpoenas during the course of investigations, but it cannot demand (or at least shouldn’t) — for national security reasons or otherwise — that every internet user be immediately identifiable.
Discussions of requiring a license for internet usage have been raised previously but rarely go anywhere. To do so is to start heading down the path to totalitarianism. Unfortunately, being in a constant state of war against an ambiguous foe often results in legislators and government officials declaring their interest in seeing this path not only surveyed, but the first layer of asphalt applied.
Barnett is one of this number, and he wants a strawman to serve as construction foreman.
“Social media is used to generate support for terrorist groups … How appropriate is the law enforcement engagement of the social media companies to reveal digital fingerprints of these extremist groups? Who determines the level of ‘extremism’ of a group? Few would disagree that law enforcement and intelligence services should have the ability…”
Actually, lots of people would disagree, starting with many citizens and running all the way up to their service providers. On top of that, the nation’s courts would find the institution of a law that strips the anonymity of internet users to be unconstitutional, so that’s another hurdle Barnett and like-minded officials would not be able to clear, no matter their stated justification.
Filed Under: anonymity, dhs, erik barnett, internet, internet license, surveillance
Comments on “DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet”
The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
While terrorism and child porn are both serious problems, when it comes to affecting the public the numbers tend to be small. They’re serious issues, make no mistake, but for the majority of people they’ll never impact their lives.
Corruption in public offices on the other hand…
As such I propose that all public servants, from the simple cop on the street, to government agency attaches, all the way up to the US president be required to make available to the public all of their data, from phone calls to emails, browsing history to data on any service they use, so that the public will be able to pour through it and spot corruption before it is allowed to affect the public.
All of those with access to the data(that being everyone) will of course promise to never misuse the data, and will of course only use it in the name of spotting and preventing corruption, with no other use allowed, under penalty of a really stern finger wagging and talking to by a judge.
As I’m sure that no public servant is in favor of corruption among their ranks, I have no doubt that they will greet this proposal with their full support, and pass it into law with all due expediency.
Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
I applaud this idea. After all, if they are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide.
Re: Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
You really ARE an anonymous coward. Just because someone may not have anything to hide does not mean that all of their information should be accessible to outsiders, including “law enforcement” since we should ALL have the reasonable expectation of privacy. Then again, anonymous coward, you obviously DON’T really believe what you posted since you’re an anonymous coward, otherwise you’d let us in on your real name, address, e-mail, phone, etc.
Re: Re: Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
Whoosh. You appear to need a remedial sarcasm class, because wow, that went RIGHT over your head.
Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
You know that outing public official’s emails and browsing history has already been declared vexatious!
Re: Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
I’m sure they will be willing to set that aside for the greater good. And if they won’t, invoke the passionate plea of Helen Lovejoy: “Won’t somebody PLEEEASSE think of the children?!”
Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
Well said and right!
Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
By the way, I have always said that we should put public services into a panopticon that is always open to direct inspection by any citizen, by multiple means, without the same being in reverse.
Likewise, for civilian armaments. The police are nothing but last resort, last minute, after the fact officials with guns on their belts most of the time. Citizens should be no less capably equipped for dealing with crime than the police, no less armed, no less empowered.
Intelligence agencies may not operate within the country any further than can any citizen using any form of technology or methodology in order to gain information. Against enemy countries, that’s a different matter, just as with policing the interior being different than military force projected outwardly in defense of the entire country. So in the same way, citizens are no less empowered to “spy on” or “perform counterintelligence” against intelligence agencies in the country in any case where they are suspected of corruption, which is to say using espionage powers within the country and against any citizen.
What I’ve said in effect is that a country of laws based in proper foundations of right and justice will not allow intelligence activities beyond the scope of any citizen’s equal right to the same in country, and the same with military force. NO MORE “SPIES FOR THE KING.” They are a department of the military, nothing more.
Likewise, no rights to government. It is not a repository of rights, it is a registrar of their performance in public. Any citizen can govern the country de jure and de facto. That’s the very basis of the idea of government by the governed in the first place. It is a collective ipsarchy, and that is it. People are the agents and operatives and officials at all times, and the “government as such” is this. The institutions of the registration of public events and their due process is only ensured, validated, recorded, and as it were “broadcast publicly” by the government. Real government would look a lot more like journalism on the institutional level, and be a lot less invasive into people’s lives on the personal level.
The bare fact that people cannot, on average, even grasp the sense of what I’m here saying proves that the prison-state has already robbed them of their minds as well as their bodies and property. Given some events of which I’ll here not detail, their souls are also very much at stake.
Re: Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
Often, all that’s left for them is to clean up the mess.
Hell, what’s wrong with driving a pickup truck around that’s dragging a German eighty-eight with a box full of ammo? It’s just a gun, right?
I’m being sarcastic, in case it isn’t obvious. There’s a quantitative difference between a handgun or rifle and anti-aircraft artillery that can destroy a Sherman tank or a building or shoot down an airliner.
They’re supposed to be spying on potential enemies (to protect us from them). They’re supposed to accept that they’re constrained from spying on us domestically. That job is for the civilian (non-military) police. This distinction appears to have been lost in recent years.
Uh huh. Believes souls are a real thing. Maybe you need a nap.
Re: Re: The Corrupt Deserve No Rights
Citizens should be no less capably equipped for dealing with crime than the police, no less armed, no less empowered.
So the difference between police and everyone else would just be a matter of training?
I thought I was a shitty posterchild...
Its so cute he thinks he’s protecting our rights & freedoms while wiping his ass with the law.
So which revolving door multibillion dollar company is he gonna get the inside track on handling all of this data?
Papers, please?
Complete NON Sequitor
There is no crime, activity, or criminal enterprise so great that people should EVER give up their liberty to defeat.
http: // files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/213.html
Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.
~John Adams
Re: Complete NON Sequitor
I meant add… fulfilling the NON sequitur title… that the loss of these liberties or anonymity will not result in ANY IMPROVEMENT to their ability to prevent terrorism or stop it before they take action.
Re: Re: Complete NON Sequitor
but it will help their fight against dissent and people trying to expose criminal actions by their government.
Easier to rule when you can just kick down known dissenters doors in the middle of the night and make them vanish in the name of “fighting terrorism”
Re: Complete NON Sequitor
There is no crime, activity, or criminal enterprise so great that people should EVER give up their liberty to defeat.
And if we only had a President who was prepared to accept the true nature of the enterprise that we are fighting against then we would have less need to
Preface written into the copy of the Koran owned by
John Adams
Re: Re: Complete NON Sequitor
I presume you approve of this: http://www.wired.com/2012/05/total-war-islam/
Laws only affect law abiding people
Any internet id will be dodged by fake ids, stolen ids or whatever. There has never been and there will never be a way to prevent crime. Laws are not for crime prevention, only punishment. So the ones that will suffer will be the law abiding citizen. The more laws we create, the more chances we have of turning honest people into criminals.
It makes sense
We must give up anonymity, for our safety.
Part of the deal with giving up anonymity is that we must also give up all encryption. Encryption is an impediment to identifying people who voice opinions. Again, this is so that the government can protect us from The Bad Guys™.
I feel safer already.
Don’t lose any sleep worrying about the consequences of not having encryption. The government will protect all of our critical infrastructure from hackers. The government is our friend.
Re: It makes sense
The next logical step would be to give up your freedom. As only terrorists would be against slavery. If everyone is a slave then there can be no crime.
From a technical standpoint, your IP address is very much like a license plate. So what more is needed? You can use one of those covers that black-outs license plates, remove the plate, or steal another car’s plate and you can use a VPN/Tor/Neighbor’s connection to cover up your source IP address. This makes absolutely no sense, hell I would even argue that with tracking cookies, feedback reports, and other phone home software that car’s are probably more anonymous than the internet.
Plates do not identify the driver
Let’s not forge that the plates do not in fact identify the driver. They identify the car – and through a search of government records, the owner. Upon close inspection, they also identify whether someone has paid the registration (i.e. usage fee).
In IT terms that might be analogous to the MAC address on the network card in the computer or other device.
Re: Plates do not identify the driver
I think that the IP would be more the equivelent of the license plate of a car – a person’s drivers license would be more or less the equivelent of a MAC address … which can be spoofed, just as a license number can be forged.
Re: Re: Plates do not identify the driver
Nope. I think I’ve a choice of about five places within a block of where I live that I could walk into and use their freely provided WiFi connection, not to mention all the open unlocked routers people have in their homes in the area. Some of them, I wouldn’t even need to go inside. I could be sitting at a bus stop outside across the street. Fold in a VPN and you or anyone else would never be able to find out who or where I am.
I’m beginning to think demanding people have a valid Internet driver’s license may be a thing we should consider just to keep the imbeciles off until they’ve learned enough about it not to hurt themselves or others while connected. I do not want that license to be provided by government. An ISP can do that perfectly well when you show up to buy your connection.
Where is he coming from
Sometimes I just don’t understand the thinking of these types. Isn’t he a citizen too? Doesn’t he value his freedoms guaranteed by the constitution? And what about his oath to uphold the constitution. Here he is advocating laws in opposition to the constitution.
Re: Where is he coming from
look at any country where a democracy turned into a dictatorship and you will understand better
“In short, if you value internet-related freedoms, you’re basically supporting terrorism and child porn. “
AB != BA.
Your logic here is shaky at best. I don’t the concept is that if you support internet freedom that you support terrorism (or CP). It’s the much more nuanced concept, one where you desires for absolute freedom and to be unaccountable for your words or actions online are being used by others to far less positive ends. The harder you push for absolute freedom (and dig in your heels against anything that take any of it away), is the harder you fight for their rights to be protected as well and to remain entirely, completely anonymous.
It’s not that you support those evil terrorists, just that your need to be anonymous gives them an equal footing.
Re: Re:
So the fact that all these bad guys (criminals) are hiding in the midst of all of us law abiding (non-criminals) is why we need to have our rights taken away?
You should probably not sleep in that top bunk any more. I think you’ve hit your head way more often than you should’ve by falling out repeatedly.
Barnett should avoid that analogy
Barnett said
This is an analogy he should avoid. In the first place, nobody “agrees” to display a license plate. They are required to. That’s an enormous difference.
Regardless of that, though, with the increased public awareness of ALPRs, license plates are becoming something that more and more ordinary people are resenting.
Re: Barnett should avoid that analogy
I came here to say that:
This sentence is no longer correct; now the identifiers are being collected everywhere and being shared not only with LE, but also with insurers, debt collectors and corporations willing to pay. I think we’re going to be seeing pushback in this area soon as well.
His analogy was more apt than he thought. Previously, we didn’t record LP data, just like most of the internet activity back in the 90’s went unlogged (or at least uncorrelated). Now we’ve moved to “collect, sort and store it all!” on both fronts, because we can. This is a big issue, no matter who is doing the collecting and storing.
Re: Re: Barnett should avoid that analogy
“…being shared not only with LE, but also with insurers, debt collectors and corporations willing to pay. I think we’re going to be seeing pushback in this area soon as well.”
This is a particular grievance of mine, and it applies to personal data in general. Personal data has NEVER been regarded as belonging to the data subject, and even under the most protective regimes, as long as it’s declared by the collector to some authority to some degree, it’s free to be disclosed to just about anyone willing to pay for it.
It's Only a Matter of Time
Sadly, such a move is probably inevitable.
The technology to give every person on Earth their very own unique identifying cyber ID is already here. It’s called IP version 6. There are 3.4×10^38 unique addresses in IP v6, more than enough to give one to every human being on Earth. At the moment IP v6 is not compulsory. Some day though it will be, even if only because we have now run out of IP v4 addresses.
The easiest way for governments to implement Barnett’s advice would be for them to compel ISPs to make IP v6 compulsory and issue a unique address to each of their customers, one they would use every time they go online. The downside for the government: if you change ISPs you’d get a different IP address.
The more Big Brother-ish way of handling it would be to assign every citizen their own unique IP address at birth and then compel ISPs to use that IP address for you whenever you go online using some national or international registry. If that ever happens it is not clear that even software like Tor would be able to overcome it, especially if IP v4 addresses are retired.
iI would also point out that should the latter scenario ever come to pass, using a different IP address will probably be illegal, equivalent to using a fake (or somebody else’s) passport or driver’s licence, complete with criminal penalties for lawbreakers.
None of this is likely to happen today or tomorrow but given the way the world is going, sooner or later one of those two scenarios is likely to happen, especially in places like China where the initial moves at banning anonymity are already being taken.
Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
An IP address does not identify a person, but rather an endpoint on the network, a computer, or more likely a router at a person residence, or the café providing WIFI access.. So you proposal does not identify people, especially if they use public WIFI.
Re: Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
It also doesn’t factor in DCHP, which many consumer accounts use. MAC addresses are more unique, but as already pointed out only identifies the connecting device, not the user behind it.
The license plate analogy is apt only up to a point. Take a business with a fleet of vehicles. It’s possible one vehicle could have as many as 100 different people driving it in it’s history but said vehicle will display only one license plate until the company sells or disposes it.
Re: Re: Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
“MAC addresses are more unique”
Indeed. The MAC addresses on my mobile devices are so unique that they change every day.
Re: Re: Re:2 It's Only a Matter of Time
1) MAC addresses only identify hardware. If you have have a Windows laptop and an Apple iPhone each will have its own separate MAC address. (in fact strictly speaking the only ID network cards. If you have wi-fi AND ethernet on your computer each will have a separate MaC address.
Is that more unique? Not necessarily. If you were to use both your wi-fi AND your ethernet to connect to the ethernet not only will you have a different MAC address your router will also assign each a different IP address
None of these though necessarily identifies an individual person.
2) There are far more IP version 6 addresses than there are MAC addresses. That allows it to be more unique than MAC addresses.
Re: Re: Re:3 It's Only a Matter of Time
I was making a bit of a joke to highlight a particular point. IP addresses are more useful because they are relatively reliable — it is relatively difficult for you to use a different IP address.
MAC addresses are less useful (and, in a sense more unique) because it is trivially easy to change them to something else. My portable devices really do get randomized MAC addresses that change every day. So, MAC addresses are so unique that my devices don’t even keep the same one for very long.
Re: Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
You seem to be confusing IP v6 with IP v4.
Every computer, router, or other device on the Internet has its own unique IP address. True, if you are behind a firewall, those outside may only see you out on the wider Net as using an IP address common to other users operating at the same time. Also if you are using DHCP your computer’s IP address amy change from session to session; and of course if more than one person uses your computer they may well find themselves using the same IP address. you do
NONE OF THAT NECESSARILY APPLIES WITH IP VERSION 6!!!
Those sorts of situations are mainly being there at the moment due to the limitations of IP v4, which only has 4 billion unique addresses. Under IP v6 it won’t be necessary, and I suspect governments will mandate that the address you are assigned will be the one you will use out on the Net, and irrespective of the device your use.
There are en enough unique addresses in IP v6 to give one to every human being today and for centuries to come. In fact there are enough addresses to give one to each device (computer or phone) you are using and another to you as an individual person.
Re: Re: Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
“Every computer, router, or other device on the Internet has its own unique IP address.”
Not quite true…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT
Re: Re: Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
I suspect governments will mandate that the address you are assigned will be the one you will use out on the Net, and irrespective of the device your use.
That’s the thing – the IP address goes with the device, not the person. If I hand my phone to someone else, the IP address doesn’t change, whether it’s v4 or v6. There may someday be a mandatory national ID, but doing it via IP addresses would be dumb. The only thing IP v6 has going for it in this regard is that it’s a really big identifier (ie enough possible values for everyone), but it’s really not hard to come up with really big identifiers.
Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
I think another american revolution might happen before that comes to pass.
Re: It's Only a Matter of Time
We already tunnel IPv6 over IPv4, so irrelevant.
What criminal would ever care about legality? They already break the law. What’s one more to them? Yeah, let’s penalize the law abiding. That makes so much sense, I can’t believe it took so long for us to think of it.
It's about influence
Barnett is just bowing to his corporatist masters. They will always have “anonymous speech” as expressed through: political action committees, media influence (via talking points, slant, and pseudo-documentaries presented as news), collusive trusts, backdoor lobbying and outright bribery.
None of their “anonymity” will be degraded by this proposed law. It will only prohibit activities of the ordinary citizen, by eliminating the anonymity for individual speech that might dilute corporate influence.
Re: It's about influence
Or, he could be campaigning for a cushy revolving door type job once his term in office is over. I can’t imagine anyone coming up with this drivel any other way.
I can’t help but wonder about this statement in light of Techdirt’s enthusiastic support for municipal broadband…
Re: Re:
You do know what the “F” in FBI means, yes? Don’t they teach you guys about this stuff in civics classes?
I’ve met a lot of civic politicians just while we were out walking on a sidewalk. I’ve never met a head of state, though I did know a couple of members of parliament who did end up heads of state.
They play in completely different leagues.
The best way to win at the war on terror would be to stop supplying, funding and training the terrorists in the hopes they will fight against your enemies and not turn on you.
Since they continue to turn on their CIA handlers.
Re: Re:
And there we go. THIS is the enemy we’re fighting against, not the non-Anglo peoples of the Middle East and North Africa.
F*ck DHS
I would rather see the DHS cease to exist.
“Similarly, should not every individual be required to display a ‘license plate’ on the digital super-highway?”
Out of interest, what punishment can I expect to receive if I’m caught DUI on the digital super-highway?
Re: Re:
How do they even detect it? Bad typing or dyslexia? Lots of people do that stone cold sober. I’d have thought this Erik Barnett had to be on something fairly intoxicating to come up with something as silly as this.
The Corrupt
And the data saved by the govt would never be used for unethical purpose, just like over 25 secret service agents using personal data of a US congressman to blackball him because they did not like a bill he supported.
Ya, we all trust the govt.
I wonder if these fucking stupid politicians stop for a minute and think about how many things can be outright banned with the excuses “well pedophiles and terrorists use them”…
Erik "The Nosy Pervert" Barnett should be thrown in jail.
We’ve just been shown proof (his confession) of his intent to pervert the Constitutional protections of, what, seven billion people now? That’s a lot of perversion! This is not at all funny. With imbeciles like this running around, who cares about terrorists and kiddie-fiddlers? They’re nothing compared to this guy’s ideas.
How in the world does someone this foolish manage to grow to adulthood? The dumbth is staggering.
Somebody wake up Barnett!
I wonder what rock he’s been living under. How can anyone not know about red light cameras, automated license plate readers, and CCTV surveillance cameras?
this is a zionist plot, who has the contracts for DHS, israeli firsters, thats who, and all info goes to israel first to see if there is anything the zionists don’t like, and now they are pushing this, it is because the zionists are worried about anti zionist publication on the internet
DON’T LET THE ZIONISTS CONTROL THE INTERNET
This guy is an idiot.
I am totally anonymous on the net, and there is not a damn thing this asshole can do about it.
And I, as an individual, with individual rights as a human have no say?
I am not willing to give up anymore of anything to receive any more protections that criminalize me. Go away!
Who are the terrorists? The ones who created them? The ones who brought them here? The ones who allowed them to cross our borders? The ones who invaded their countries when told to leave? The war mongers? The liars and deceitful?
We already know the agenda that is planned far ahead of time- go after the REAL terrorists if you want us to be safe. But that may cut your paychecks wouldn’t it?
DHS Cretinism Writ Large
DHS Official Thinks People Should Have To Give Up Their Anonymity To Use The Internet
American citizen thinks the defective thinking DHS Official known as Erik Barnett should have to give up his Anonymity by wearing a dunce cap when ever he goes out in public.
DHS & Anonymity
DHS has no authority to make such laws. In fact the DHS is wholly unconstitutional I.E. in conflict with the supreme law of this country and its workers are under the constitution domestic enemies.