The Collecting Every American's Digital Data For Submission To The Federal Government Without A Warrant Act of 2011

Well apparently Representative Lemar Smith of Texas was dropped several times on his head as a baby, its the only thing that explains the shit he tries to pass through the House of Representatives. You know this guy the one who sponsored the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA). Well he's at it again with a new bill called and you will love this "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" or H.R. 1981. This bill is some serious shit folks, although it purports to help protect children by collecting data on child pornographers, its way more insidious than that. BTW if you think this has anything to do with child pornography you are seriously in what Bill Maher describes as the bubble.

The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (H.R. 1981) is a bill designed to facilitate the enforcement of laws relating to the prosecution of child pornography.

So now we have established that's what they want you to think. What does it really do?



This bill would introduce tougher sentencing for offenders and would make it a crime to financially facilitate the sale, distribution and purchase of child pornography. Section 4 would require providers to retain a log of customer IP addresses, linked to "corresponding customer or subscriber information" listed in subsection (c)(2) of 18 USC 2703, for at least a year. This includes, but is not limited to forcing Internet service providers to keep track of and retain their customers' information -- including their name, address, phone number, credit card numbers and bank account numbers. The bill also protects internet service providers from civil actions resulting from the loss of data stored as a requirement of the bill.


Ok, so at first it sounds like they are sticking to the child porn thing, but then you see they want to save a log of customer information from an isp. This information includes Name, Address, Phone Number, Credit Card Numbers (WTF??????) and Bank Account Numbers (Double WTF!!!!!!!!!!) Not only that but the bill prevents you the consumer from ever suing your ISP because they gave this information away.

So you are probably saying to yourself doesn't your ISP already have this information. Yes. They do, however this bill authorizes them to hand it over to not only federal authorities, but local authorities and even attorneys working on civil cases including for divorce. Well yeah that seems to help stop child porn spread. WTF are they kidding? Anyone with common sense knows what this bill is all about. It's about taking away your civil liberties. It started with SOPA and PIPA and it continues with this piece of shit.

Somewhere along the line Lemar Smith and the other 25 shitheads in Washington he got to co-sponsor this bill forgot what it was like to be an American, forgot what they learned in school about our founding fathers and the tyranny they fought so hard against. This country was founded on Liberty and Justice. There is no Justice in taking away Liberty.

So let's talk about what this bill will actually do. Well for Criminals, nothing. Sorry to tell you Washington nitwits, this won't stop anyone from committing crimes, neither does SOPA or PIPA. Why you may ask? Because criminals who want to commit crimes do it in secret, like they have been doing for thousands of years. Currently criminals on the Internet may take less precaution now but if such a bill actually passes it will simply drive them further into secrecy. How?

Well several technologies exist that hide your data from prying eyes, and they start with something called encryption. You know what encryption is Mr. Lemar Smith don't know? Oh ok, well its a way of taking plain information and transforming it into something unreadable and unusable. While most people think of something like disk encryption or email encryption it can be used to encrypt not only those things but your entire Internet connection through the use of a secure Virtual Private Networking (VPN) tunnel.

VPN is typically used to establish a connection between a user at one end and a computer, usually a company at the other end. Secure tunneling protocols are designed with encryption that prevents interception and packet sniffing, and use sender authentication to prevent someone from spoofing their identity. When a connection is first negotiated, which is encrypted of course, both sides talk to each other establishing a secure connection. If either side is unable to do this it fails. Once this happens all data that flows from your computer's network interface to the other side's network interface is completely unreadable encrypted data. Since the end points are established from your computer to the end computer, there is no point an ISP can snoop this data.

Let me be clear, your credit card information, your email, your web traffic, none of that can be seen. Your ISP already has some information that can certainly be given to the Government but more than that, they will be unable to provide. Also even though they have the IP Address used by your ISP to actually give you a starting point on the Internet, that is changed in the tunnel to something completely different so the traffic routed to your original IP address is different from the traffic routed to your VPN IP address.

So now that we have proven this does not stop criminals from committing crimes what does it actually do? Well it gives the government the right to take away the average American's right to privacy.

This isn't China, this is America we demand our civil liberties. Our founding fathers demanded civil liberties and they fought and won their freedom. And they established this nation so that anyone born here had the same rights they wanted and achieved.


There is a nice video from Demand Progress that explains H.R. 1981, I suggest watching it.