Senator Cornyn (R-TX, disgrace to) has filed a bill which would require all ISPs and Wi-Fi operators to record the identities of all users.would require all ISPs and Wi-Fi operators to record the identities of all users.
Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.
The stipulations that even password protected home networks record data are particularly horrifying. Follow below the fold...
Two bills have been introduced so far--S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Each of the companion bills is titled "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act.
Each contains the same language: "A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."
Records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user. This language seems broad enough to give leeway to an ISP or Wi-Fi provider to collect any sort of informaton that would aid them in identifying a user. As we all remember, the telecoms were only to eager to violate the trust of their customers. Can we not expect a company to say: "More than one user can access the internet on a shared computer, shouldn't we keep the data of their internet use in order to detect patterns in use and thus identity which individual is using the computer at any given time? Afterall, we are only following the law."
Worrisomely, there are signs that Dems might not give a damn about this (surprise...)
After Gonzales left the Justice Department, the political will for data retention legislation seemed to ebb for a time, but then FBI Director Robert Mueller resumed lobbying efforts last spring.
This tends to be a bipartisan sentiment: Attorney General Eric Holder, a Democrat, said in 1999 that "certain data must be retained by ISPs for reasonable periods of time so that it can be accessible to law enforcement." Rep. John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that FBI proposals for data retention legislation "would be most welcome."
A new battle is on the horizon for those who want to keep the internet open, neutral, and private as possible.