back to article Will Europe's ISPs unmask anonymous IP infringers?

A debate into whether internet service providers should be able to deliver content over their networks to anonymous internet users has been launched in the EU. The presidency of the Council of Ministers, an EU lawmaking body, said there was a need to clarify whether "due diligence obligations such as 'know your customer' are …

  1. h4rm0ny

    Anonimity is too important.

    I'm against piracy and they should certainly go after those that facilitate it. And there are ways they can do that other than measures such as this. Something like this is both too damaging in other areas and fights against the nature of the Internet.

    1. Ole Juul

      Re: Anonimity is too important.

      It fights against basic human rights. Next they'll be suing the mint because I used dollar bills to buy drugs. The mint is, after all, responsible for knowing its customers. No? Seriously, there are any number of situations where we (also) take our freedom for granted. There is no need for debate, and there is no need to clarify. These EU lawmaking folk are just very, very, twisted people.

  2. Chris Miller

    I'm confused (again)

    On the one hand, it's impossible for an ISP not to 'know' (at least at the level of a building or corporate entity) the source/destination of an IP packet. OTOH anyone (with a bit of skill) can use encryption to disguise the content and possibly (by using TOR) the identity of the 'other end' of the dialogue.

    So what's this 'debate' trying to say? Do they want to make it illegal to run a TOR node or use encryption*?

    Anyone?

    * Don't laugh - French law did make it illegal to encrypt data for many years.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm confused (again)

      My interpretation is that they're talking about whether Starbucks should record your identity before allowing you to use their free WiFi.

    2. NumptyScrub

      Re: I'm confused (again)

      quote: "* Don't laugh - French law did make it illegal to encrypt data for many years."

      Whereas current UK law just makes it illegal to not decrypt any of your data whenever they tell you to.

      Same shit, different day ^^;

      1. Chris Miller

        Re: I'm confused (again)

        There is a non-trivial difference. First, you can be compelled to hand over your encryption keys, but it requires a court order (not a huge hurdle, admittedly). And second, at least you know that you're being so required.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I'm confused (again)

          A court order is not required, simply a request from a duly authorized person, and they can be authorized by say a chief constable. In other words there is little to no oversight on how demands to unencrypt your data are handled & processed and if your really unlucky such methods can be used as extra-judicial punishments against you if you frak off the wrong person

          1. david wilson

            Re: I'm confused (again)

            If you're 'unlucky' and/or piss off the wrong person, all manner of official powers could be used against you, including measures which few people would have issues with when they *aren't* abused.

        2. NumptyScrub

          Re: I'm confused (again)

          quote: "There is a non-trivial difference. First, you can be compelled to hand over your encryption keys, but it requires a court order (not a huge hurdle, admittedly). And second, at least you know that you're being so required."

          I linked Section 49 of the Act, have a quick read of it.

          Here is the mentioned Schedule 2 authorisations which does mention a court order, but have a read of the specifics for data obtained under statutory powers but without a warrant where it clarifies that juducial oversight is not required:

          (2)Subject to paragraph 6, where—

          (a)the statutory power was exercised, or is likely to be exercised, by the police, SOCA, SCDEA, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs or a member of Her Majesty’s forces, or

          (b)the information was provided or disclosed, or is likely to be provided or disclosed, to the police, SOCA, SCDEA, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs or a member of Her Majesty’s forces, or

          (c)the information is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the police, SOCA, SCDEA, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs or a member of Her Majesty’s forces,

          the police, SOCA, SCDEA, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs or, as the case may be, members of Her Majesty’s forces have the appropriate permission in relation to the protected information, without any grant of permission under paragraph 1. (emphasis mine)

          So the police, SOCA, SCDEA, HMRC agents and all armed forces employees do not need a court order to demand disclosure, if they have reason to believe the information is important in detecting crime (section 49 3 (b)) and they obtained the information through the use of a statutory power, such as the seizure of a mobile phone after you were involved in a road traffic incident.

          So you get rear-ended on the road, police look around on your phone and find an area that requires a password to unlock, you are required by law to make available all information on your phone or face a 24 month custodial sentence (5 years if the case is "national security" or "child indecency" related). They simply need to justify in court that they had reason to believe that the information they could not access could help them "detect crime". It is an edge case, absolutely, but it is also demonstrably completely legal for the police to do that should they wish to.

          I categorically do not like the idea that I can be forced (under pain of custodial sentence and lasting criminal record) to make demonstrably unrelated (and innocuous) private information available when I have committed no crime, and there is no warrant for the procurement of said information. On a scale of Utopian to Oppressive, this is already crossing the line in the wrong direction, in my opinion.

      2. Anakin
        Devil

        Re: I'm confused (again)

        The UK law was supposed to find jihad terrorists and... the first case was.... Suprise..

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7102180.stm

  3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Going nowhere fast

    Anything that involves the ISPs is likely to fall foul of existing ECJ judgements and technical restrictions are more likely to harm legitimate business than reduce privacy. You can already go after payment providers who work with criminals.

    The Council of Ministers itself does not legislate. All it can do is ask the Commission to draft some legislation which then has to go through the European Parliament and national parliaments.

    The big battle is going to be the upcoming renewal of data protection and privacy rules and how TTIP and CETA will try and scupper or work round them.

  4. Pen-y-gors

    Not rocket science

    Simple test - would they/can they impose the same limitations on a national postal service? i.e. do they have to inspect the content of every message? (and should they record the sender/receiver and dimensions/colour of envelope of every letter/parcel delivered.)

    If the answer's No, then don't apply it to electronic communications.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not rocket science

      US does currently photograph all external metadata on US Postal mail, allegedly. It's not certain if the automated machinery that does this also trivially scans with powerful IR/UV/etc to look inside the envelope.

      I have not read anything that mentions if, for example, UK does the same?

      1. Chris Miller

        Re: Not rocket science

        UK mail is (mostly) scanned by OCR systems that identify the postcode (ZIP code) of the destination and sort it appropriately. They don't work very well on handwriting, of course. To what extent this information is recorded I have no idea.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Not rocket science

          Pretty much all postal systems scan and store the metadata.

      2. phil dude
        Joke

        Re: Not rocket science

        In the US they sell envelopes specifically to guard against scans - I don't KNOW they will defeat more sophisticated methods, but there are sold and I have seen them used. A sort of metallic finish to the paper.

        My local postal carrier (postman if you in the UK) tells me they deliberately photo the envelopes to do the OCR/Zipcode deposition. Many are automatically added (luminous dots) but the ones that don't can be reprocessed.

        I tried to discuss the idea that the barcodes (you can print in the US) if they were on the envelope when he picked then up (they collect parcels too -very cool), could be scanned as he put it in the truck so sorting could be done in advance....

        Perhaps I need to explain it clearer.

        The joke icon for all the ways in which a universal postal service could be improved with a little bit of tech...

        P.

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Not rocket science

        "US does currently photograph all external metadata on US Postal mail, allegedly."

        Yes, but is it stored? Is there much value in the data that some number of envelopes are sent to a particular address? Yes, they can get quantity, frequency to a destination, but they nearest they get to a <from> is the first sorting office it hits. I could see that the historical data may help in an ongoing investigation that may point to new leads but not be incriminating in and of itself, especially if the recording system doesn't differentiate between normal mail and junk mail. eg a bank robber in London got a letter from Cardiff a week before each job so it's time to investigate "the usual suspects" in the Cardiff area.

        There's far less metadata involved in physical mail than data packets. There was an interesting article here the other day on how "anonymous" mobile phone location data can be fairly easily and fairly accurately be linked a specific person but I don't see how that could apply to physical mail.

  5. big col

    Whats wrong with catching real crooks

    The police, EU, law makers and anybody who wants to look good puts massive effort into preventing IP infringement.

    Yet the crooks, scumbags, tricksters and spammers continue to ply their trade ripping off the old and vulnerable, with impunity.

    I am sick of the whole debate.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whats wrong with catching real crooks

      in the best case that I can think of, Germany, a full 50% of all (proportional) intercept intel is shared with the various Police agencies

      In UK, for fear of a European Court of Justice condemnation ruling from the Thatcher era, all (non-proportional!) intel is Strap Eleven* restricted, doesn't exist, doesn't happen, will never happen AND is subsequently shared with the police in approximately 0% of all cases. (I'd hope that there would be at least some US-style parallel construction, but I suppose the UK spooks are too busy mildly subverting the presumably pre-revolutionary UK populace that they don't have time, energy, budget to catch the Unlicensed Criminals**)

      *Strap Eleven = Spinal Tap, 11 levels above Top Secret

      **Pratchett: Vimes only goes after Unlicensed Criminals?

      1. Grikath

        Re: Whats wrong with catching real crooks

        Sorry...Vimes is notorious because he goes after the real criminals. It's why "He's not a diplomat. He's the reason diplomats exist."

  6. Caesarius
    Stop

    Where in the chain of communication

    Copyright is more to do with making content available, like if I put all the Harry Potter books online for people to download (1). Otherwise, why not go after the people who laid the cables.

    As I always say, the internet is the very best and the very worst of anarchy.

    (1) I'm still annoyed that "view with browser" and "download" are distinguished: how else can anyone view something with their browser?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Where in the chain of communication

      As I'm sure Steven Fry could explain, downloading and viewing in a web browser are completely different.

  7. MacroRodent

    Lobbying

    The voice of the media industry lobbying can be heard loud and clear here.

  8. Graham Marsden

    "due diligence checks banks are obliged to conduct...

    "...to ensure that their customers are who they say they are and are not involved in money laundering activities"

    And not, in any way, colluding with them to do exactly that *cough*Barclays*cough*

  9. Grikath

    request for "clarity" ....

    equates to : "we've been approached by well-paying lobbyists to attempt to get this be made illegal by law."

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Presumably this is related to the next round of transatlantic trade agreements.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Simple solution

    Get rid of copyright and this becomes a non-problem.

    Might save some legitimate consumers some money too.

  12. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    A thought experiment

    Let's suppose the media maffia get their way here.

    Let's also suppose that nobody finds an alternative way to distribute files.

    What will they do when they find their business is still going down the tubes?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: A thought experiment

      "What will they do when they find their business is still going down the tubes?"

      Lobby for mandatory consumer quotas.

      "Citizen, you appear to have forgotten to stream and pay for this weeks Top 20!!. The fine is €400!!"

      "But there were no new chart entries this week, I already have it from last week"

      "Citizen, last weeks copy has expired and auto deleted from your iPod 12 thanks to the wonderful DRMJobsAGoodUn system, as you well know. You MUST buy the new copy! Conviction sustained, we have auto-debited your account, have a nice day!"

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Strange Priorities

    I (naively, maybe) look to our political masters to do their best to ensure a safe environment for me and mine, which is why I find it strange that they should be going to such efforts to strip away anonymity in order to stop IPR infringement.

    What about two more important issues to the average citizen - the sharing of child pornography and the communication of terrorism-related materials? Why aren't these uppermost in their minds?

    Is it because they only harm people, whereas IPR infringment harms profit?

    Not as base as that, surely?

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