Big Brother Alert!

I found this news article a few days ago and don't see anyone mentioning it here. It involves a Republican Bill that will require all ISP's and providers of public Wi-Fi accress points to keep records on all users online activities for two years (for the purpose of assisting police in their investigations).

I would like to know what ATS users think of this and how it would effect your online activities.

If you are a Republican and see the danger in this, perhaps it's time to call your rep. and voice your opinion.

Check it out here:

news.cnet.com...

Guess no one cares about having their internet surfing activities being kept on record for up to two years of this bill goes through.

Its not that I am a agree with the Govn. or any one else monitering the internet, but I have no doubt that someone in the Intelligence community somewhere already knows each and every keystroke and click that myself and everyone else makes. As for black helicopters and little cameras in televisions.......not so much. It just seems like it would be too easy and too cheap for an intelligence entity to do.

reply to post by Tunatarian


You bet they do.

We can scream all we want about our rights and save our consitition but the truth is a plain as the nose on your face.

We are watched. We are controlled and the moment you start to think that you still have some rights or freedoms TPTB remind you of who is in control.

Just like here at ATS. You either play by their rules or you are eliminated.

Not knocking ATS; just making an anology that you can relate to.

this is a very dangerous thing to let happen.

if we do not have privacy in our homes where do we have it ???

It goes without saying that I think this bill sucks. But why are you just picking on the republicans when the dems also proposed this bill three years earlier? From your article

he legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.

Really this is just another OMG THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!! type of thing, or at least the 'protect our kids' mantra is used to justify it along with alot of other infringments on our rights.
I'd really like to see a movement along the lines of 'Raise your own darn kids so we can all retain our freedom'

Every thing you do online is allready being recorded. google does it, heck even yur pc records everything, and if you are opperating on windows, well you have been reporting any suspiciouse activity you are involved in on the net directly to the nsa. lol

The Dems did propose this three years ago. But then again, the Republicans and Democrats are just different fronts for the NWO in this country anyway, so it is no surprise that they both take turns reintroducing the same legislation.

Why the internet?
Are they going to start opening all personal mail too.
And of course tapping all phones. I think they already have a system that catches key words. Like anyone doing wrong wouldn't know to use code words.
For the children?
YOu mean pedophiles. THey could stop that pretty quick. A few public excutions should make a big dent in their activities.

Originally posted by FunSized
It goes without saying that I think this bill sucks. But why are you just picking on the republicans when the dems also proposed this bill three years earlier? From your article

Really this is just another OMG THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!! type of thing, or at least the 'protect our kids' mantra is used to justify it along with alot of other infringments on our rights.
I'd really like to see a movement along the lines of 'Raise your own darn kids so we can all retain our freedom'

I agree, I should not have stuck my foot in my mouth. The demo's are no better. Both parties want to wee wee on our party and take away our freedoms and privacy.


[edit on 25/2/09 by John Matrix]

Originally posted by John Matrix
I found this news article a few days ago and don't see anyone mentioning it here. It involves a Republican Bill that will require all ISP's and providers of public Wi-Fi accress points to keep records on all users online activities for two years (for the purpose of assisting police in their investigations).

I would like to know what ATS users think of this and how it would effect your online activities.

If you are a Republican and see the danger in this, perhaps it's time to call your rep. and voice your opinion.

Check it out here:

news.cnet.com...

This has already been happenning for while. Look at the lawsuit recently lost by youtube. Oh, and it goes way beyond two years. Now they just want a cheaper source for the information.

Originally posted by BeyondBelow
Every thing you do online is allready being recorded. google does it, heck even yur pc records everything, and if you are opperating on windows, well you have been reporting any suspiciouse activity you are involved in on the net directly to the nsa. lol

Really? I heard of key stroke programs but they have to be installed on your computer for an outsider to gain any information don't they. I thought they were placed on computers through malicious code embedded in websites, email viruses, etc. Then they monitor the key strokes people use when accessing password protected bank accounts, etc. and they send the ID and PW off to someone who is waiting to use the info to drain all of your money.

With a firewall, security settings, and a good anti-virus software I thought these programs cannot get through??

Do you have any good tips for tech challenged people like myself?

Originally posted by elston

Originally posted by John Matrix
I found this news article a few days ago and don't see anyone mentioning it here. It involves a Republican Bill that will require all ISP's and providers of public Wi-Fi accress points to keep records on all users online activities for two years (for the purpose of assisting police in their investigations).

I would like to know what ATS users think of this and how it would effect your online activities.

If you are a Republican and see the danger in this, perhaps it's time to call your rep. and voice your opinion.

Check it out here:

news.cnet.com...

This has already been happenning for while. Look at the lawsuit recently lost by youtube. Oh, and it goes way beyond two years. Now they just want a cheaper source for the information.

Is there a list of ISP's and public wireless access points that keep track of all their users activities?
How do they do that? It would take hundreds of thousands of gigabites and HD's.

Ok, the thread is now in general conspiracies. Where are all the people that are interested in privacy issues. You are going to lose your rights if you don't start speaking up and call your gov. reps.

Originally posted by John Matrix
I found this news article a few days ago and don't see anyone mentioning it here. It involves a Republican Bill that will require all ISP's and providers of public Wi-Fi accress points to keep records on all users online activities for two years (for the purpose of assisting police in their investigations).

I know this might sound kind of silly to people who believe in conspiracies, but if you aren't doing anything wrong, or if you have nothing to hide, what's the big deal?

Isn't your car traced by way of a license plate? Your phone number listed with a phone company? All your personal information supplied to medical insurance companies, and other places?

I am not a republican or a democrat by the way, I have always voted as an independant.

Is introducing bills the National passtime for Congress?
What ever happened to going to the ball park.

It's like a bill fest every day.

Last time I watched C-span, they introduced the Guam WWII money give-away (for the 2nd time), and that was the best bill of the day, suspending the rules and all.

It's like a school of sharks on a bill feeding frenzy sometimes.
All important legislation is put on the back burner.

How about financial oversight legislation, abolish the FED, IRS, SEC, maybe some FDA Inqusition or congressional commitee or something of substance.

It's like a bunch of unruley kids playing musical chairs, but no chairs are ever removed.
Everyone wins, just like some public school policies.
There are no losers, (taxpayers notwithstanding)

every time these overbearing power grabbing bills come up, I get "tax man" from the Beatles stuck in my head for hours.

[edit on 27-2-2009 by imd12c4funn]

reply to post by John Matrix


Dude they already do monitor our internet activities. Google is one example of it.

My dad one day saw hammas new paper website showing evidence that 9/11 was a inside job.

The next day he was going to show me it and we found it was blocked. It gave us a message saying unauthrised access 404.

Yet I then used a proxy server to get around that and the page showed.

There is no clear evidence that the U.S government controls our internet but I do think they already have controls.

I mean if they can monitor the internet to trace words that people type. Why would they stop at just that?

we are currently being monitored they are just now starting to make it legalized.

There is no proof that the U.S government control and monitor us on the internet but with my experiences seeing questionable blocking sites that had content against the U.S gov made it all suspicious.

I am a computer programmer and I do understand the 404 errors etc. If that was a true 404 error I would have seen the same thing when I proxy through another computer.

So it's fishy.


Trust me this will get passed cause most Americans are still sleeping and are stupid they think they are smart but they are very blind.

This will get passed no matter if you like it or not you or me don't have the power anymore.

congress and senators just hijack our country. We are just going along a ride. They direct us and we follow.

This is in large numbers.

From what I heard facebook and google got seed money from the CIA.

Now why would CIA be interested in that??? well for one thing.... information collection.

people on facebook and that use google give out critical information without knowing it.

these can help the government get to know you and you know the saying the more knowledgeable you are the more control you can have over something.

So the gov is learning about you the more they know about you the better they can control you.

yes I really do mean control you . They find out what you like and that info gives them more advantages. More possible ways to grab even more information form you.

So to sum it up. This will get passed. Trust me they don't give a crap about you. They care only for themselves.

They lie on tv and make even more lies to get these things to pass.

Once they get what they want they smile like they stole Christmas. People think these smiles are showing he is joyful that he help the country and pushed the bill on the floor.

Yet he is smiling about something totally different.

If you don't want this to pass then orgainize a group and plan what you will do if they pass that bill.

Like riot??


The only simple solution to fixing those corrupted people is to seriously grab a metal bat and wack them until they get the picture.

that is the only way. case you can make all the rules you want a crook never follow the rules so whats the point to make more rules,laws, regulation if they won't follow it.

I don't want them to monitor my activites cause it's invasion of privacy which we have a right to ...... well had a right too.


Well I hope that this dosen't get passed and hope many people start waking up and smell the coffee. The country is changing for the worst and it's real.

From a technical standpoint I seriously doubt the claims of every internet user being tracked. The amount of resources needed to keep track and process such stats into something useful would likely exceed the storage space of the entire web itself. I guess most people do not realize it, but server logs and logging such things requires a huge amount of resources.

Is it possible to do? It sure is. Just like sending someone to Pluto is technically possible if enough resources are put into it. I could see it happening on specific people very easily, but then they wouldn't use Google for such a thing. It would be more likely of some kind of hack into your PC with the implant of some kind of monitor program. Maybe some kind of thing in windows that keeps a backdoor open for them perhaps. That would be much more likely.

So technically I can't say it's not possible. I have done tracking on the web before, and know where it's limits are. I built an ad network for a company years ago, and used tracking all the time. Give every user a unique id, and then I can track what ads they have seen, if they click on one I can see what kind of ads they like, I can use the website content the ad is appearing on to see a certain interest. I also used your ip address to find out where you were generally located(accurate within about 10-20 miles usually). But I didn't do any of this stuff to actually track what I user did, and I didn't care what a user did. It was just done to optimize the ads given to the people to increase revenue.

But could I have used the same technology in another way? Yes I could have. All you needed to do however is delete your cookie with the id, and it resets the process. And, I can only ever get data from websites you visited that carried my ads/code. If you visited a site that didn't have the ads on them, then I had no idea. That is how cookies and websites work, limits.

For that reason I doubt they would use Google for much tracking. But it is useful for finding trends in what people search for, and other general things.

But the real issue here is not if it is possible. It is, and I am pretty sure most of the things done like it are done for optimizing the user experience. The real issue is that it is something people need to worry about at all. The real issue is the lack of trust, which is obviously justified, that is present.

This is just a symptom of the problem. There is really not much at all you can do across the web or on a PC that can be 100% guaranteed safe. Knowing what I know, I do not worry about such things to much, but I can't honestly sit here and say there is nothing to worry about, or that it isn't possible. Like it or not, you are entering into a public domain.

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
I know this might sound kind of silly to people who believe in conspiracies, but if you aren't doing anything wrong, or if you have nothing to hide, what's the big deal?

I am not a republican or a democrat by the way, I have always voted as an independant.

I'm not sure what "keeping logs" means. Does it mean that everything someone types in an adult forum when chatting with someone about wife swapping is to be recorded for some pervert cop to read later?

I'm using that as an extreme example because I am sure the 31,894,693 Members of www.adultfriendfinder.com would really like to know.

It's not a matter of doing anything wrong or having anything to hide, it's a matter of privacy. Your neighbors know you have a phone and a car, but they can't listen to your conversations while in the car or while you are on your phone. You don't have to tell anyone who you are phoning and where you are driving your car when you hit the road. Are we going to be forced to keep records of phone conversations and conversation we have with friends and family while on road trips next?

I see a day when we will have no time to even look for a job, let alone go to work at one.

reply to post by computerwiz32


I agree it's going to happen. I just wanted to let more people know it's coming. It's very sad that these politicians have nothing better to do but brainstorm ways to control us, rather than use the brainpower to come up with solutions to the economic crisis.