Valleywag noted an article about how the government wants ISP’s to provide all it’s data to them. This is one of those quiet battles that goes on, where people tend not to notice until legislation is actually passed. I find this one a little disturbing; after years of working to make all of our data more secure, the government is turning the train around because parenting in this country sucks. The idea of my personal account access history and data being available to third parties does not make me feel safe.

Regardless, let’s say I want to do a google search- and I type in google.com, except I misspell it- and please don’t try this one at home, but if you type goggle by accident- pop up’s only Damien could love will assault your machine. Next thing you know, your history has something naughty, and your ISP provides that to America’s Most Wanted, who just happens to be doing another on-air sting for internet pervs surfing for the nasty. Extreme, perhaps- but plausible, considering the poor knowledge base our legal system has about the internets.

Honestly, it sounds to me like this is just more political tomfoolery, proposed by politicians looking for props- ironically enough, we keep finding out how it’s the politicians themselves behaving badly. With all the problems on the internet today- from account phishing to identity theft- are new laws really what we need right now? More training and understanding should be the first priority… oh, why do I waste my breath. The FBI is running Windows 3.1 and the current administration is knees deep in 9/11 horseshit - and for a minute I thought everything was going to be OK. Well I give this new nonsense my loving stamp of bullshit. PS: this entry is linktastic, as is the cnet story it’s based on. Don’t forget to click.

Filed under: Geek, Society