Firewalls set to become Illegal

[The Edge]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8595

WTF?
Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states
the various states bills all require the banning the use of any technology that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication."

That's mad. If you don't know what a firewall is, shame on you;)
Read here. (http://www.vicomsoft.com/knowledge/reference/firewalls1.html)


Edge

[killingspree]

this is crazy... this bill is never going to pass!!
it would be like banning traffic lights from all streets :-P

[edit:]
from the Michigan LegislatureA person who violates subsection (1), (2), or (3) is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 4 years or a fine of not more than $2,000.00, or both. All fines shall be imposed for each unlawful telecommunications access device or telecommunications access device involved in the offense. Each unlawful telecommunications access device or telecommunications access device is considered a separate violation.

wow. so if i own a router, have installed a firewall and encrypt my email seperately i can get up to 12 (!!!) year of prison and/or up to a $6.000 fine... crazy

oh and this bill has already been passed in Michgan, effective today!
see here (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000336.html) + the following pages and the bill itself here (http://www.michiganlegislature.org/mileg.asp?page=getObject&objName=mcl-750-540c-amended)

regards
steVe

[mpucoder]

Is "The Enquirer" always so alarmist? This law, which would affect me, is one of many that is NOT intended for primary enforcement. In other words, they are not going to hunt down every person who uses anonymous services, fake names (like MPUCoder), or NAT routers. The law is intended as an "add-on" - commit a crime over the internet, such as fraud, identity theft, or terrorism, and they will throw this charge in with the others. It may be the only charge that will stick in many cases.
Also, technically, address translation is not concealment. It might require NAT routers to log all mappings to fully comply, but the technology would not disappear. In fact, without NAT we would have run out of IPv4 addresses long ago.

BTW - encrypted email encrypts the body of the message only, the headers (From, To, Reply-to, etc) must remain plain-text for SMTP relaying and internal routing within SMTP/POP servers to function.

[The Edge]

@mpucoder
aggreed. I found it a funny read all the same.
I mean, how could it possibly be enforced.


Edge

[Jazz]

I see what you mean, mpucoder. However it's a very perverse legal system where laws are constructed in full knowledge that a lot of people are already breaking them, with the intent not to prosecute them for it, but install them all the same in order to inflict a heavier punishment on somebody breaking *another* law. How twisted can you get?

[mpucoder]

I just thought of another application of this law, one that will have pro's and con's - the blocking of Caller ID. I'd love to get the number of those pesky telemarketers.

I agree that diligence is needed when it comes to the legislators. Seems to me in 227 years they should have run out of things to make illegal, but they feel it's their job to write laws (in the job description somewhere, I think).
This law in particular is in the draft stage, and obviously needs additional wording. Although I can see the intent, it needs to be more robustly defined, or the law could be abused.

[markrb]

I'd love to get the number of those pesky telemarketers.
If you didn't know there is a service your telco must provide if asked for and if you have caller ID that will block all incoming calls from people with caller ID block until they have removed the block. This can be done on a single call basis by dialing *82 right before dialing.

If they have caller ID block they get a message that says "this number does not accept private calls. To remove caller ID blocking please hang up and dial *82 to remove the blocking for this call only."

My brother has it and it is very effective against tele marketers since 99% have their number blocked.

Personally I do not have the caller ID service so I cannot get this anti blocking service.


The idea of arresting someone for a lesser crime knowing it will stick and that the worse crime you know that person committed, but maybe not prove in court is an old tactic. Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion and never served a day for murder or any other crime.

Mark

[theReal]

...and in no time, the land of the free becomes a restrictive police state like China, where you're not allowed to use encryption programs. Congrats Mr. Bush!

[Jazz]

The idea of arresting someone for a lesser crime knowing it will stick and that the worse crime you know that person committed, but maybe not prove in court is an old tactic. Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion and never served a day for murder or any other crime.

At least he got the consolation he was sentenced for a real crime. :rolleyes:

[haroldw]

"The existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." If the definition of this requirement becomes: origin or destination of any communication "device" then I don't see this happening for two reasons (I'm not a TCP/IP expert. If my reasoning is flawed I'm sure someone will correct me.):

1. Cost; all routers to the connected to the Internet would have to be replaced with some different, possibly not yet invented technology. Routers or whatever they become would only act as a gateway with little or no security features. Internet security would fall back to the workstation level. More man hours spent at the workstation level. More IT jobs (yes!)

2. Actual TCP/IP addresses. If this is to come about every individual workstation, server or other device connected to the internet would need a registered IP address. How many hundreds of networks currently use the reserved IP addresses of: 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 or 172.16.0.0 or 172.31.255.255 or 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255, internally? I guess we will need a more robust version of TCP/IP with more addresses than version 6. To do that equipment and drivers need to be replaced to support the next version of TCP/IP after version 6.

If it is left as "origin or destination of any communication" (in a broad sense) than it could protentially refer to a companies' street address or something to that affect. It wouldn't be as bad, but they would still have to do something about home users.

[int 21h]

If this did apply to something besides IP based traffic, *67 would become illegal! :rolleyes:

[mpucoder]

Origin and destination could mean a person or a particular computer. In either case home networks, and probably small businesses would not need to change. But larger company networks would require record keeping at the routers, nothing more, to trace back messages.

As for dialup, all ISP's are required to maintain records concerning connections, so all messages can be traced back to who was using a given modem at any time.

Back to the telephone - my thought about this law applying to telemarketers is wrong. Only the service provider, not the recipient, needs to know the identity of the originator.

btw - we poor slobs use IPv4, not version 6. Version 4 has about 2 billion addresses, and is streched to the limit. IP version 6 uses a 16 byte address, or about 256 x 10^36 addresses.