France Announces Massive Internet Surveillance by ISPs

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com]
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 4:15 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: France Announces Massive Internet Surveillance by ISPs

           France Announces Massive Internet Surveillance by ISPs

               http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000331.html


Greetings.  In a breathtaking act of arrogance reminiscent of the
heyday of Louis XVI (and likely to trigger similar public reactions
among many Internet users, though perhaps unfortunately absent the
"equalizing" influence of la guillotine), the French government and
its overseers (the entertainment industry), along with a cowering
collection of gutless ISPs, have announced an agreement for ISPs to
become the Internet Police Force in France.

Under the agreement (see below for links) ISPs will monitor users
for presumed illegal activities (read that as "file sharing") and
send reports on the accused to what amounts to an anti-piracy board.

This board could then mete out punishments as it sees fit, including
(attempted) banishment from the Internet (via what amounts to a
national blacklist).

To streamline the process, the entire procedure, as I understand it
right now, would operate -- at least initially -- on an
extrajudicial basis, without the messy intervention of courts,
judges, trials, or other post-Magna Carta niceties that might help
to assure that only the truly guilty are punished.

Proponents are arguing that this approach will avoid overly severe
judicial judgments, but in reality it's clearly an attempt to avoid
fixing broken laws, while kowtowing to entertainment industry
demands.

The utter idiocy and recklessness of this approach is pretty much
beyond description.  It is ripe for privacy abuses on a grand scale,
mistaken identities, false "convictions," and a long list of other
associated problems.

On the positive side though, the plan is likely to speed widespread
adoption of encryption, as even routine Internet communications move
to secure and in some cases cloaked channels to avoid these kinds of
repressive enforcement regimes.

It's one thing to use the conventional legal system to enforce
legitimate intellectual property rights, but it's something wholly
different to deputize ISPs into Network Monitors, feeding data to
what apparently could easily become a Star Chamber operating outside
the normal bounds of the conventional legal system.

More details from:
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7110024.stm
or
Le Monde (French):
   http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-982011,0.html
or
(Google translation): http://tinyurl.com/2wynfs


"Liberty, equality, fraternity"?

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com

-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com