-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- .............................................................. >From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]: Conspiracy Shopping Cart: http://a-albionic.com/shopping.html From: Lloyd Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: U.S. Wants to Trace Net Users Date: Sunday, March 12, 2000 7:57 AM http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34720,00.html U.S. Wants to Trace Net Users by Declan McCullagh 3:00 a.m. 4.Mar.2000 PST WASHINGTON -- The ease of hiding one's identity on the Net is giving police migraines and justifies providing broad new powers to law enforcement, the White House says in a forthcoming report. The federal government should take steps to improve online traceability and promote international cooperation to identify Internet users, according to a draft of the report commissioned by President Clinton and obtained by Wired News. Police should be able to determine the source of hacker attacks or "anonymous emails that contain bomb threats," states the 200 KB document prepared by a high-level working group chaired by Attorney General Janet Reno. Although the report was largely complete before last month's prominent denial-of-service attacks, it will likely influence the debate over how the U.S. government should respond to them. The FBI has not made any arrests during its investigation, and bureau officials Tuesday told Congress that anonymity and the global nature of the Internet pose serious problems. A White House spokesman said the report is being finalized and "should be released very soon." The Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet, which Clinton created in August 1999 to consider new laws or educational programs, includes senior administration officials such as FBI Director Louis Freeh, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Commerce Secretary William Daley, and representatives from the military, DEA, and Secret Service. The group focused on what it views as the problem of anonymity, citing "the need for real-time tracing of Internet communications across traditional jurisdictional boundaries, both domestically and internationally [and] the need to track down sophisticated users who commit unlawful acts on the Internet while hiding their identities," according to the report. Currently no laws require Internet users in the United States to reveal their identities before signing up for accounts, and both fee-based and free services offer anonymous mail, Web browsing, and dialup connections. Internet service providers should be encouraged, though not required, to maintain detailed records of what their users are doing online. "Some industry members may not retain certain system data long enough to permit law enforcement to identify online offenders," the report says. But providing police with increased abilities to trace users raises thorny legal and technical questions, and civil libertarians on Friday questioned whether it would violate privacy rights protected by the Constitution. A 1995 Supreme Court decision, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, upheld a right to anonymous political speech. "This is the nutty kind of stuff that's produced by people who meet in closed rooms without windows," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. David Banisar, co-author of The Electronic Privacy Papers, said the administration unwisely "wants to make it easier to obtain people's identities, trace their movements online, and apply wiretapping to the Internet." The report says anonymous remailers can be used to protect the privacy of dissidents in oppressive countries, but also can frustrate police who can't figure out who sent the message. "To be sure, individuals can generally engage in many 'real world' activities relatively anonymously, such as making small cash payments and attending public events. But they cannot remain anonymous in other contexts, such as opening a bank account or registering a car," the report says. "Indeed, many financial institutions have substantial customer identification requirements." Response to the proposal among House Republican leaders was cautious. "We need to make sure this isn't used as an excuse to set up a big brother monitoring program. 'Real-time tracing of Internet communications' sounds an awful lot like a proposal to put backdoors in the latest revision of the Internet protocol itself," said Richard Diamond, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Obviously we need to be able to track down those who would use the Internet to commit crimes, just as if they had used a telephone to do the same," he said. "Let's just keep things in perspective." The White House report cites the PairGain case, in which a stock manipulator posted a fraudulent Bloomberg article in an attempt to drive the company's share prices up. The report also says that Congress should consider approving a law to remove some privacy protections from journalists and publishers. "With the advent of the Internet and widespread computer use, almost any computer can be used to 'publish' material," says the draft document, which also recommends reduced privacy rights for cable modem users. During a White House summit with industry leaders last month, Clinton denounced the recent denial-of-service attacks but cautioned against overreaction. The FBI and Justice Department have long opposed untraceable Internet use. "I think we are perilously close to a lose-lose situation in which citizens have lost their privacy to commercial interests and criminals have easy access to absolute anonymity," Justice Department prosecutor Philip Reitinger said on an MIT panel last April, according to The New York Times. The FBI's Freeh told Congress much the same thing when he testified during an appropriations hearing last year. 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