House Votes for Big Brother Public Wi-Fi Law

House Votes for Big Brother Public Wi-Fi Law

www.truthnews.us

In other words, the local bookstore or coffee shop with an open WiFi connection will now be forced by the government to snoop on its patrons, lest these business owners be held liable for what their patrons view. No doubt, instead of dealing with this Big Brother role imposed on them by the government, in addition to paying business taxes, many will likely stop offering WiFi connectivity.

There are two more points worth noting. First, the vote on the SAFE Act seems unusually rushed. ...

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The bill is called the “Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act,”.

This bill is redundant! The ISP's are already SUPPOSED to be doing this, now the government is trying to get more citizens to spy on MORE citizens, WHERE WILL THIS END!

The bill is actually suppose to be to help catch people who use WiFi to download childporn, BUT, the article goes on to say

"Naturally, few people will be looking at child pornography at the local coffee shop, but they might be looking at a website that is deemed terrorist by one of the Ministry of Homeland Security’s “centers of excellence.” It should be remembered that the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act focuses on the internet as the medium responsible for transmitting terrorist rhetoric and ideas.

A FREE country that spies on its citizens every chance it can!

Only two Republicans saw this as an assault again on "The Bill of Rights" (the Fourth Amendment - The right of the people to be secure in their persons), Paul Broun and Ron Paul were the only two people who voted against this.

This reminds me of the Afghanistan Mutaween, only instead of one Mutaween "spy" force, the US government is just trying to get all its citizens to spy on each other and turn each other in. So far they have the firemen spying on us thanks to Homeland Security (because firemen don't need search warrants to enter a home) and now they want every company that offers WiFi to spy on what their patrons are doing online.

Is this the way Hitler started gaining total control of his country?
By getting everybody to spy on each other?

Or am I reading waaay to much between the lines.

www.truthnews.us
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 6/12/07 by Keyhole]

I really think this administration has just gone "spy happy".

I forgot to mention, along with the government trying to get US citizens to spy on each other and getting the fire departments to spy on us, Bush now wants spy satellites to spy on US citizens. This has been illegal up to know.
Please see the following thread for more info on THAT.

Bush Goes Private to Spy on You

Good!

I was wonder how long it would be before they started cracking down on open Wifi connections. I know it sounds bad but there needs to be a way of tracking computers at locations such a this. Open wifi connections in public places are virus writers play grounds. They want send out virus from there own homes, you can track back the ip addresses find them. So, they go to public place with an open connection and dump there junk into the world wide web causing problems for the everyday Joe. All the coffee shops have to is record the Mac Address of a PC and problems are solve. Normal user will nothing to fear because nobody is going track down an everyday user. That would too much work, but hacker causing problems would worth the effort of hunting down Mac addresses.

Originally posted by ebe51
All the coffee shops have to is record the Mac Address of a PC and problems are solve.

Not even close. :shk:

MAC addresses can be spoofed quite easily, and malicious script writers can still just drive around neighborhoods untill they find an unprotected home network to use. Heck, even if it's a protected home network, it doesn't take long to crack one with the right tools. Awhile back I saw footage from an FBI conference, on google video, where they cracked a "consumer level" (WEP encrypted) router within 5 minutes with readily available hardware & programs. Not that it matters though, there's enough unprotected home networks around that it likely wouldn't be worth the extra hassle for anyone with bad intentions.

[edit on 12/7/07 by redmage]

Originally posted by redmage

Originally posted by ebe51
All the coffee shops have to is record the Mac Address of a PC and problems are solve.

Not even close. :shk:

MAC addresses can be spoofed quite easily, and malicious script writers can still just drive around neighborhoods untill they find an unprotected home network to use. Heck, even if it's a protected home network, it doesn't take long to crack one with the right tools. Awhile back I saw footage from an FBI conference, on google video, where they cracked a "consumer level" (WEP encrypted) router within 5 minutes with readily available hardware & programs. Not that it matters though, there's enough unprotected home networks around that it likely wouldn't be worth the extra hassle for anyone with bad intentions.

[edit on 12/7/07 by redmage]

Yea, your right I've spoofed my mac addresses before. Wasn't really thinking about it.

any virtual machine lets you SET the mac address of a virtual adapter. which means someone simply running parallels on a mac already has an artificial mac address.

the point of this law was to crack down on people who are AWARE of things like child pornography being transmitted on their open networks, requiring them to report it or face the fine. obviously there may be loopholes that make the implications more far-reaching, but this wasn't intended as a "log all of your network activity or else" law.