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.
news.cnet.com
"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level." ...
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.
We know that there is a growing concern from "Big Brother" about the Internet, its democratic nature and knowledge sharing power. The Pentagon has declared the Internet as a threat to its goals.
The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".
The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006. A detailed explanation of the major thrust of this document and the significance of information operations or information warfare was described by me here.
globalresearch.ca
It's sickening to see these attacks on the privacy of people and the Internet in particular, disguised as legitimate worries, in this case of children.
There is already legislation in place for ISPs to keep the logs, and work with law enforcement when needed. This measure would be like creating legislation that would require people to keep their telephone bills for 2 years in case law enforcement needs to look at who they called or whom they received calls from.
I'm guessing this isn't so much about effectiveness because there are better ways to sniff and look at Internet traffic (NSA, directly from ISPs). I believe this is more about the psychological effect of making people required to keep logs of their Internet traffic.