Merged: Use a firewall. Go to jail !! and State DMCA's Make NAT Illegal?

Let's here it for Texas and Mass. I think computer geeks should be elected to office, maybe then people would smarten up.

Quote:

---

b) Offense defined.--Any person commits an offense if he knowingly:

(1) possesses, uses, manufactures, develops, assembles, distributes, transfers, imports into this state, licenses, leases, sells or offers, promotes or advertises for sale, use or distribution any communication device:

(i) for the commission of a theft of a communication service or to receive, intercept, disrupt, transmit, re-transmits, decrypt, acquire or facilitate the receipt, interception, disruption, transmission, re-transmission, decryption or acquisition of any communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider; or

(ii) to conceal or to assist another to conceal from any communication service provider, or from any lawful authority, the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication

---

Quote:

---

"If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the 'To' and 'From' lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)

"Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the 'from' and 'to' fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security 'firewalls' use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation.

---

Full Story

Holy police-state, Batman!

Once again proof that just getting elected to office is like having children; anyone can do it, just not everyone can do it well.

More and more, the land of the free is becoming "the land of those that follow blindly." (And boy aren't there enough Biblical quotes to fuel that fire...)

Soon they will pass a law where windows and doors must be unlocked and must provide a line of site directly into your home, so that you can't hide your terrorist (communist; anti-american; pro-french...) actions. Heaven forbid that an actual criminal should just stroll in through your front door and steal all your possessions and kill you in your sleep...

Funny that something aimed at ending terrorism will probably just fascilitate it, not to mention fraud. Where does SSL fall into this? Where do VPN's? Obviously PGP is done..., which is basically like making envelopes illegal.

Well, I doubt this will get through though, I mean read this:

Quote:

---

manufactures, develops, assembles, distributes, transfers, imports into this state, licenses, leases, sells or offers, promotes or advertises for sale, use or distribution any communication device

---

That would make Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Netgear, and how many other large corporations, criminal. And since we know that the only thing that makes laws faster than fear is money, the Corps are going to protect themselves, and for once that actually might protect us.

Wouldn't it be funny to see M$ and the EFF working together!

Quote:

---

mttlg writes "According to Freedom to Tinker, MA, TX, SC, FL, GA, AK, TN, and CO have introduced similar bills that would make it illegal to possess, use, etc. "any communication device to receive ... any communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider" or "to conceal ... from any communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." (Additional legalese removed for the sake of brevity.) This would seem to outlaw NAT, VPNs, and many other security measures. In other words, don't secure your communications, just sue if you don't like who receives them." The bills define 'communication service' as just about any sort of telecom service that is provided for a charge or fee. In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service. For example, if your ISP charges per computer connected, using a router/NAT device would be illegal if these became law.

MORE

---

Thankfully I don't live in one of those states. I think the DMCA has been written too broadly from the get go and has been abused and mis-interpreted since it went into affect.

I'd be interested to know what the true goal was here. Doesn't this conflict with other bills like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that REQUIRE customer data to be encrypted or otherwise protected?

Well unfortunately i DO! Now this sounds like a scary idea, i think the politicians have way too much time on thier hands.

Just as a note.. I posted this earlier here

My apologies. I wasn't 100% sure what Forum it should go in. I didn't do an in-depth search of the forums. I just picked the one I thought it should go in and saw that there was nothing there on it.

Its crazy. I don't even think the politicians know enough to understand that they are creating conflicting laws- you must encrypt everything but its against the law to encrypt anything. Do you think they use VPN or NAT or a firewall per chance for congressional servers?

That has got to be the most stupid waste of resources I've ever seen.

We already have a shortage of IPs and using NAT is a great way to help protetect your computer and networks.

<offtopic>
I hope they don't introduce this in my state. They already banned smoking in public indoor places... and I know she's not getting my vote! I'd be happy to see people taking action and more bumper stickers against our current state lawmakers... Protest! Protest! Protest!

No need to apologize Tony... just making a point of it.. I too had the same dilema ... I was unsure of where to post..... so I went with the usual fall back of General Chit Chat...

It is rather intersting tho.. I'm curious to see what happens with it... I seriously hope this get's shot down real fast.. otherwise there are some definate problems with the world today.

My wife already wants to move to Canada (doesn't agree with current political regime and resents "representative" government that governs in spite of the people rather than representing the people...little things like that) - if a crazy bill like that gets passed in Michigan I may just have to agree.

Windsor here we come!

Welll Tony we'll accept ya's with open arms... seems to be all Canada does. hehe.... I wouldn't recommend Windsor tho. it's so dirty..... If you like being in big cities.. then go with London.... wana be bigger.. go TO or one of the suburbs like Missisauga.... Want to be close to nature and beauty in a small town. then head up north to Sault Ste. Marie...

Windsor is a horrid horrid city, and no one should ever willingly choose to live there.