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Websites and ISPs could be required to retain visitor info

Do you or would you seriously consider using anonymising browser sessions?

  • Yes, I use them now

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • I don't use them at the moment but may do in the future

    Votes: 9 56.3%
  • What on earth is an anonymising browser session?

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • Not sure, i don't think it will really make much difference

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • No, i would never use something like that

    Votes: 1 6.3%

  • Total voters
    16
This is info relating to a court case in the USA, so not directly and immediately relevant to us in the UK, but you know how things tend to follow..

I thought it makes an interesting article, especially in light of the other thread regarding ISP censorship. On one hand they may remove info while on the other being forced to actually generate more info.

Mods - (sorry to make such a long post again, i thought it best to quote in full here rather than simply steal the originating sites bandwidth..is that best, for future reference? If you would rather, please feel free if you want to edit and just link to the op instead.)

edit - ps, my first poll..please feel free to correct me if i shouldnt have or have done it wrong cheers / edit

by Mark Rasch
SecurityFocus
Thursday Aug 9, 2007

A series of legal events means that companies that have no business reason to retain documents or records may be compelled to create and retain such records just so they can become available for discovery.

Companies routinely create, maintain and store electronic records. Some records are consciously created – like memoranda, letters, spreadsheets, and even e-mails and chat or instant message communications. Other records are created inadvertently, like meta data, log records, IP history records and the like. Some information is useful to the company, and it wants to retain it, and other information is of little use, merely takes up space, creates potential liability, and represents an unwarranted threat for attack or violation of privacy. The problem for most companies in developing or maintaining a document retention/destruction policy is identifying the documents and records it wants to keep and effectively purging the ones it doesn't want. Some recent legal events have made the problem of document retention and destruction even more complicated.

A recent case involving file sharing site TorrentSpy illustrates the point....

(source - read here for the article)
continued next post..

EDIT - ok having read up on copyright.. i was technically wrong to quote the whole article :( *mumble*
 
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continued from last post..

Ask.com went further, offering a service called AskEraser (http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/450/) which it claims would allow for anonymous web surfing, and where "the company claims it will not retain the search histories of customers who opt in for the AskEraser".

Which brings us back to where we started. Just because you promise NOT to collect or retain records, doesn't mean that you won't be required to collect and maintain them. Even if you don't have technology readily available to capture data streaming through your network, if the information is stored there briefly, you may be required to capture it.

Sure, you can try anonymizing technologies, but these usually work by NOT LOGGING data, which as we learned with TorrentSpy doesn't always work. What we need is a commonsense approach to what really is a record that is stored by a company, as opposed to log data which COULD be stored by a company.
(source)
 
Last edited:
Mods - (sorry to make such a long post again, i thought it best to quote in full here rather than simply steal the originating sites bandwidth..is that best, for future reference? If you would rather, please feel free if you want to edit and just link to the op instead.)

edit - ps, my first poll..please feel free to correct me if i shouldnt have or have done it wrong cheers / edit



(source)
continued next post..

I thought you liked me aswell but today you have given me more reading than ever :(:rolleyes:

Since i sat here and read it all then it can stay and others can do the same :laugh:


I dislike the way this is heading I have nothing to hide yet the innocent are being treated as guilty in a police state.......
 
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I thought you liked me aswell but today you have given me more reading than ever :(:rolleyes:

Since i sat here and read it all then it can stay and others can do the same :laugh:


I dislike the way this is heading I have nothing to hide yet the innocent are being treated as guilty in a police state.......

heh, sorry mate, ;) i tend to get slow patches and i read.....a lot... :P and i like to share and hear others thoughts.

Yes, i dont or shouldnt have anything to hide either, but....

a) i object to companies or governments actively seeking to collect identifing info (DNA databases anyone!) which will be held and possibly used against me at some time as they see fit.

b) I do not implicitly trust companies that operate for their own profit and i do not trust my government.

a+b= people like me who may say something that someone "in power" may not like, being prosecuted (read persecuted).

A police state, as you mention Kits, is becoming more andmore a reality, not only in the USA, but here in the UK too. In fact there are more CCTV cameras watching us here already. The police can even kill entirely innocent people and get away with murder (read here and here) .

Some would call me paranoid, i call myself (well one of the things:P) a realist.

ps if anyone does follow those links to my webby forum..be gentle :P its just a wee baby with lots of work to be done yet heh, in fact i havent actually officially 'opened' it yet :P but feel free to join and share if ye so wish.

EDIT - removed link to my forum atm.. i think i need to research copyright information about news reports *sigh*
 
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Funny you should mention the Ask Eraser... a couple of days ago I was wondering why Google didn't allow you to actually choose whether to have your searches made anonymous or not (rather than waiting 18 months). It's a good idea so let's hope it catches on. :hrmph:
 
Rather than make a new thread, since this news is linked to the website info being retained, thought id just use this one.

Looks like this law is due to come into effect today..? :/ I have nothing to hide but sod it i dont support such actions by the goverment. I would trust them as far as..well not at all. Time to get rid of my mobile heh.

Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones

Mail on Sunday 30th Sep said:
Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow.

The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos.
By 2009 the Government plans to extend the rules to cover internet use: the websites we have visited, the people we have emailed and phone calls made over the net.

Click here for the full article.
 
Mybe what is about to happen to the british citizens is going to get worse I read in the evening news that the french person in EU wnats all british motoerists to have a tracking device fited to cars so he can monitor what we do and charge us for every mile we drive. Money going direct to him in the EU and not roadtax oaid to our government as it is now.

The spy in the sky controled by control freaks not elected by us.
 
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I cant say Im bothered by the phone thing in itself, as people wouldnt be listening to my conversations unless I was into something dodgy.

However it does bother me how control freak this country is becoming.

As for the satnav devices in the cars, I beleive this already got discussed in another thread. To sum it up quickly - a big waste of time with huge expense :rolleyes:
 
It isnt Satnav it was more a way to track us as we drive so this french person could charge us by the mile for every trip we do the money going firect to the EU not the government and our old road tax abolished.. If this happens I canonly see our governement loking for another stealth tax to replace the lost revenue.

Been trying to find this onlie but can't wish hubby hadnt thrown out paper..
 
Sorry, should have been clearer....

Basically its little devices in the cars that use satnav to figure out and broadcast your location, rather than guide us to where we want to go. This is then used for calculating road tax, which has been discussed before.

The argument is that its fairer. Instead of the normal road tax the people that travel the furthest and use the busiest road at the busiest times of day have to pay more.

Many peoples arguments are:

Expensive. Not only do you have to get a device for each car, you have to have the systems to track it. This means a database, more IT systems, staff, paperwork, etc.

Open to fraud. These devices are going to have to be tamperproof, and we all know thats not going to be possible. Why not just disconnect it from the battery for long trips? They are going to have to make this tamperproof for all sorts of car, even very old ones. This is in addition to all the usual paperwork fraud.

It will require another government IT project. Need I say more?
 
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Easy, you apply to the government promising something totally unfeasible within a timeframe thats impossible.

And then you have to say its going to go overbudget to fix all the bugs you introduced.

Sorted!
 
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