Head Dunce John Cornyn has revived the Internet Safety Act. The SAFETY stands for Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth. But you and I know that is really NOT the aim of this bill. It would, essentially, shut down the internet as we know it, and radically change the kinds of internet access and privacy we now have.
...the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on--but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses.
This makes it just about impossible for most small businesses, small organizations, even apartment buildings and coffee shops, to offer wi-fi. It also means you could face severe criminal penalties if a neighbor hacks into your home's not-so-secure-secure-wifi setup.
Essentially, everyone who touches the internet faces criminal penalties if they don't keep serious records:
Under the Internet Safety Act, all of those would have to keep logs for at least two years. It "covers every employer that uses DHCP for its network," Gidari said. "It covers Aircell on airplanes-- hose little pico cells will have to store a lot of data for those in-the-air Internet users."
As we know, the real intent of this bill will not be to catch child predators. The real intent is to provide an avenue to shut down any internet communication deemed objectionable, on the shaky grounds of putting minors at risk for failing to meet any one of a number of tough-to-meet standards.
The legal definition of electronic communication service is "any service which provides to users thereof the ability to send or receive wire or electronic communications." The U.S. Justice Department's position is that any service "that provides others with means of communicating electronically" qualifies.
That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too.
So... you have a small business, want to do some IT yourself to save money, don't spend thousands on professional incription/security tools, you are vulnerable not only to whatever the hackers could take, but also to criminal penalties from the government. There is also the question of how a history of internet browsing, which could essentially follow you anywhere, could be used.
The disturbing part of the article is that it claims this is somehow bi-partisan-- John Conyers and Eric Holder are both mentioned as potential supports, though I doubt that is exactly true.
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."
On the new Battlestar Galactica, Adama justified why Galactica's technology is all old-school analog wire-dependent - he didn't want the Cylon's to be able to electronically tap their electronic communications. He may be on to something.