"Fuck Bush"
No I do not intend to annoy anyone with the title of this post. That would be illegal now.
The Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act says:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
It is a stupid law and the repubs sneaked it into a huge justice department bill. Bush signed it a few days ago (with what "signing statement"?).
But the law might also apply to senior administration officials and other anonymous government sources, who, without disclosing their identities and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten and harass, abuse the webpages of the New York Times, Washington Post and other media.
Is this law retroactive so it can be applied to the Plame outing?
Posted by b on January 9, 2006 at 19:56 UTC | Permalink
Oh, he's had this particular bee in his bonnet for awhile now. At first, he tried to make satire and dissent seem unpatriotic. That worked for a bit, but one can only beat that drum for so long. George has never been a big fan of civil liberties in general and the sooner he can render legally irrelevant the first amendment to the US Constitution, the happier he will be.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 9 2006 21:03 utc | 2
Although a moment's consideration of the language used in this bill (specifically, the phrase "...without disclosing his identity") might just spell the end of the Whiskey Bar. Billmon uses a proxy to host his website so as to ensure his anonymity.
Voters, whistleblowers, people who want to protect their loved ones, who do these people think they are providing us with ideas that have to be dealt with on their own merits and not giving us the common courtesy of handing us their characters to assassinate? More importantly, who do we think they are and how can we prove it?
In keeping with the zeitgeist, I've devised a simple test to discover who these damnable anonymous annoyers are. I propose that we take anyone suspected of fostering the heinous and undemocratic qualities of anonymity (that is to say, anyone who does not willingly and immediately provide their social security numbers upon request) to the nearest large body of water, tie them bodily, and throw them in. If the person rises to the surface of the water, we may conclude that they are full of enough hot air to publish ideas and can safely execute them. If they sink to the bottom and drown, we may conclude that there was no undisclosed and anonymous bouyancy to them, and we may safely send a ham to their bereaved next-of-kin.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 9 2006 21:18 utc | 3
Hmmm. Rowan may or may not be my real name, but it's generally not my internet pseudonym, another name which is based on my real name, and is very easily traced to my real name. I'm also the only person who uses that pseudonym on the internet. Which one is more me? Someone call Baudrillard, I'm getting confused.
Not that I post using that pseudonym anywhere on the internet with intent to annoy. No, my intent is to wake people from their dogmatic slumber. If they do not wish to wake, and they get annoyed, is that MY fault?
Posted by: Rowan | Jan 9 2006 21:26 utc | 4
Intent.
Isn't that something you now have to prove in order to prevail in a lawsuit against an employer who discriminates or against a statute that merely results in discrimination?
Posted by: gylangirl | Jan 9 2006 21:52 utc | 5
For me this is the final piece of the puzzle - the end of uninhibited political discussion online.
Knowing that the NSA has been (illegally) monitoring web traffic wholesale, both inside and outside America; and knowing that they can force any web-site hoster (like Blogger.com) to provide it's logs containing poster's IP addresses, and any ISP (like AOL) to disclose the account using that IP at the time; and knowing that they can prohibit both service providers from disclosing that they have had to provide that information; you can safely assume that the NSA already has the capability to identify ANY poster online.
Now coupling that information with a general right to prosecute for "intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass" (not to mention suspicion of being associated with "terrorism") means they have incredible power to selectively prosecute and effectively co-opt (via blackmail) or remove any online dissent or "unapproved" information.
While the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides the IP anonymiser TOR, if their onion servers have been compromised the EFF wouldn't be allowed to tell you; and so those servers would simply act as honeypots helping the NSA identify people actually trying to be anonymous.
If the British had been able to determine the identity of anonymous posters of pamphlets leading up the the revolutionary war there wouldn't have been any opportunity for the populace to find out that they had common grievances and organise. A few well-placed executions and that war would never have happened.
Short of pretty sophisticated hackery with zombie relay proxies, randomised IP's and tunnelling (I'm way over my head here in case you can't tell) which the real criminals presumably use the populace is SOL.
Bernhard, Have you been asked for your logs? Would you be able to tell us if you had?
Dark days.
Posted by: Sentient Lemming | Jan 9 2006 21:56 utc | 6
Yes one of the ways that the oil and gas industry is able to run rough-shod over residents here is by keeping all agreements made with landowners confidential.
Now, regarding this post, there is some more discussion at boingboing.net.
Posted by: That's Mr. Annoying to you. | Jan 9 2006 22:08 utc | 7
Here is what was posted at boingboing (god that's an annoying site); not that it really negates this discussion, or the Bush's intentions. Frankly I don't really understand what is being said here:
paste:
Reader comment: Another anonymous reader says the CNET News.com story misinterprets existing law and the text of the new bill -- IOW, trolls remain free to troll:
Uh, try again. Maybe you guys should read the text of the bill... this is a wildly inaccurate interpretation of the bill, in which the word "annoy" appears not once. The word "annoy" appears in *existing* legislation (Communications Act of 1934) and it does not include any communication a recipient might find annoying. Furthermore, the identity provision is not specified in the amendment discussed. Your article is, indeed, a joke.
Link
Reader comment: A government lawyer intimately familiar with the subject who requests anonymity sez,
Your latest reader comment has it exactly right. The anonymous harassment provision ( Link ) is the old telephone-annoyance statute that has been on the books for decades. It was updated in the widely (and in many respects deservedly) ridiculed Communications Decency Act to include new technologies, and the cases make clear its applicability to Internet communications. See, e.g., ACLU v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 829 n.5 (E.D. Pa. 1996) (text here), aff'd, 521 U.S. 824 (1997). Unlike the indecency provisions of the CDA, this scope update was not invalidated in the courts and remains fully effective.
In other words, the latest amendment, which supposedly adds Internet communications devices to the scope of the law, is meaningless surplusage.
Posted by: That's Mr. Annoying to you. | Jan 9 2006 22:15 utc | 8
all from Jan 06 and Dec 05:
Get out of MySpace, bloggers rage at Murdoch
Angry members of MySpace, the personal file-sharing website for young adults, are accusing Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites.
The 38 million subscribers to MySpace, which News Corp bought for $629m (£355m) last July, discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article337149.ece>Independent
Choking the Internet: How much longer will your favorite sites be on line?
by Wayne Madsen
Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAD20051212&articleId=1448>Global Research
He mentions AOL as well.
Australian legislators call for Internet censorship
Australian legislators have called for all Internet content to be filtered by ISPs before it is relayed to their customers. Sixty-two members of the ruling coalition have signed a letter calling for a restriction on pornographic, violent and other 'inappropriate' material. Internet users would have to opt in, by applying to their ISP, to receive the blocked content.
(link blocked by subscription procedure? err...google will still provide?)
Posted by: Noisette | Jan 9 2006 22:33 utc | 10
Story seems to making the rounds in record time. What I'm still trying to suss out is who has to file the complaint? I mean to say, does Bernhard have to be annoyed or can one of the visitors decide that they are annoyed? As Totalitarian as this is, we don't have an Annoyance Division of Homeland Security policing places yet, do we?
Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 9 2006 23:23 utc | 12
Well, crap. That was the exact same story Bernhard linked to in the first place. Jesus, it's annoying when people don't read things through.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 9 2006 23:29 utc | 13
I'm being not worried by this at the moment even before Joe Lawyer pointed out it's probably a beat-up. The reason is that it's a totally unworkable law that would be impossible to enforce outside the US and if it can't be enforced outside the US it won't be able to be censored within the US.
After 9/11 any nation that didn't want to get nuked passed a piece of legislation that squared with the US patriot and just like the Patriot Act it had sunset clauses.
Many countries did the same as NZ which was let other priorities get in the way of renewing it.
I won't bore MoA with the details but all sorts of hassles were cropping up all the time and money transfers from NZ that migrants were sending back to their families got confiscated by the US who had absolutely nothing to do with the transaction except that NZ Post had given Western Union their money transfer contract.
As far as I know UK and Australia were the only two countries to renew.
I've pointed out in here b4 that I believe it will be difficult to force change unless young people are onside.
Any sort of restriction on the current younger generation's texting, ICQing, blackberrying, mobile phoning, pickin up one night stands on the net and they would start tearing the joint up with a vengeance.
There are still email anonymising services dotted around the world in all sorts of obscure countries. Many do not have a back door for the US govt to access encrypted messages either.
I just don't reckon the spooks are able to pull it off so why worry about something that won't happen?
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2006 6:42 utc | 15
Couldn't this law be applied to those anonymous groups which seem to spring up like the spawn of dragon's teeth at Thebes to savage Demorcratic candidates or proponents? The supporters all hide behind some innocuous name while they spew bile and lies. That seems pretty annoying to me. Kerry could have had great fun flensing those scum, with the full power of the law and courts behind him. Could this law be used to force disclosure of who supports and funds such organziations? Be careful of what you wish for.
Posted by: PrahaPartizan | Jan 10 2006 18:32 utc | 16
Any sort of restriction on the current younger generation's texting, ICQing, blackberrying, mobile phoning, pickin up one night stands on the net and they would start tearing the joint up with a vengeance.
In Sweden just a few days ago the Pirate party (Piratpartiet) was launched, aming for seats in the parliament in this autumns election. Sure, they are young, inexperienced and disorganised, but they are knowledgeable about technology and pissed. Their list of demands is as follows:
1. abolish copyright, patents and all other immaterial property rights.
2. refuse to obey by international agreements that upholds immaterial property.
3. all agreemants that limits the distribution of information (EULAs for example) is to be declared null and void.
4. spying on private communication is to be outlawed, no matter if it is in letters or emails. Espescially aplies to ISPs. To EU data storage directive is not to be implemented in Sweden.
5. the swedish minister of justice who has been one of the biggest promoters of said data storage directive is never to be allowed public office again. Expect possibly has official hot dog vendor. Outdoors. In winter.
Yepp, they are pissed. They probably will not manage to get into parliament but I think they will raise their issues and hopefully some of their issues will be picked up by other parties. As 1,2 million swedes download (according to official sources) in a country with just 9 million inhabitants there is quite a big possible constituency at stake.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 10 2006 18:55 utc | 17
Bernhard, Have you been asked for your logs? Would you be able to tell us if you had?
The blog is running on Typepad in the U.S. They have the logs and they won´t tell me if the get asked for them.
Brits move against leakers too:
British men face trial over "Jazeera bombing" leak
Posted by: GM | Jan 10 2006 23:08 utc | 19
Do you people use your brain or do you just spout ignorance and hatred at all hours of the day... Left leaning Arlen Spector (R) added the rider into the bill, Bush has nothing to do with it. Its a stupid law and was written primarily to protect women from being harrassed by stalkers.
Posted by: non-retard | Jan 11 2006 2:13 utc | 20
SKOD, that is very interesting. "Pirate party (Piratpartiet)."
Here we always had the Rhinoceros party putting up flyers for every election, black and white xeroxed pages, a beautiful illustration of a rhino at the top, then the exhortation to vote for richard the troll.
Nowadays of course there is the marijuana party, apparently this really freaks out the neighbors to the south when they pick up a Canadian station and the chart on the news says, "Liberals - 33%, Conservatives - 31%, NDP - 20%, Greens - 3%, Marijuana party - .5%."
Or whatever. I like the idea of political parties that represent a small constituency, not necessarily a geographic region as is the case in Canada and the U.S.
I think the first few issues raised by the Pirates, about intellectual property and reform of patents on ideas or algorithms is a good one. Computer software patents and copyrights are a terrible hindrance to just getting the job done in the obvious way -- but if that is patented, you have to license it or come up with a different method.
And these are simple ideas, no one should be able to own them. Does anyone own the law of gravity? Yes, Newton does but he doesn't get royalties.
Thanks for your post. When is the election?
Posted by: jonku | Jan 11 2006 9:15 utc | 21
The election is this fall, the third sunday in september (elections are always on a sunday and the normal elections are always on the third sunday of september).
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 11 2006 14:59 utc | 22
The comments to this entry are closed.
I am already working on cleaning up my act, as my real name is not "ralphieboy".
So I looked up "annoy" in my Webster's and found it defined as: "to irritate with a nettling or exasperating effect especially by by being a continuous or repeatedly renewed source of vexation."
Why do I get the feeling that this law is going to find itself being applied in rather creative ways to stifle dissent and/or the dissemination of information that is not flattering to certain powers-that-be?
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 9 2006 20:56 utc | 1