I think this article is overrated.
In Europe we already keep dynamic to customer identification track records. I believe in general and worldwide this record tracking is mandatory.
This identification information is available to law enforcing agencies after a judicial order of release, and only that way.
What we do not keep is what customers traffic actually is, I this I believe none, nowhere is doing and would be a flagrant violation of privacy.
Even WiFi hot spots are required, and if not would be required to, keep identification records. Check London act for instance.
So what exactly as changed with this new act ? The name ? Dismissal of judicial/ court order ?
Last Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives’ judiciary committee passed a bill that makes the online activity of every American available to police and attorneys upon request under the guise of protecting children from pornography.
Note: Update with citizen petitions on page 2.
The Republican-majority sponsored bill is called the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.
It has nothing to do with pornography, and was opposed by over 30 civil liberties and consumer advocacy organizations, as well as one brave indie ISP that is urging its customers to do everything they can to protest the invasion of privacy.
“Protecting Children” forces ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses.
It’s like having your wallet plus the web sites you visit tracked and handed over on request. These logs are now going to be retained for the scope of one and a half years.
(I have to wonder if ISPs can sell this data, too.)
This has nothing to do with porn. In case you’re like the Reps that passed this nightmare and you’ve forgotten: pornography is legal in the United States.
It is pedophilia that is illegal. But for the sake of harnessing hysteria to get a bill passed, clearly these particular Republicans find it convenient to conflate “pornographers” as pedophiles. Last time I checked in on the matter, pedophiles did not operate within the laws surrounding adult pornography.
Personally, I’m insulted as a porn-loving American girl to be included by way of consumer participation in this disgusting and misleading characterization. And that my privacy has just been sold for something that doesn’t actually help the children.
I don’t feel confident that treating us all like the criminals our system can’t catch is going to protect any children, especially when the people who passed the bill can’t - or won’t - distinguish the difference between legal adult pornography and pedophilia.
CNET’s Declan McCullagh reminds us that “the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.” CNET reported that mandatory data retention was being fast-tracked in January, 2011.
The fact that civil litigants could subpoena your internet activity and the contents of your wallet has nothing to do with the labeled and stated purpose of this bill.
“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”
However, this bill has a provision stating that a court does not need to approve administrative subpoenas used by U.S. Marshals who might use it to ‘track down unregistered sex offenders.’ This received strong arguments against giving Marshals too much power.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation spearheaded consumer and privacy groups’ opposition to the bill and hosted a one-click letter-writing campaign. This included the ACLU, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Patient Privacy Rights and many more.
Because of the way the bill requires information to be collected and stored, the EFF called the bill “ripe for abuse by law enforcement officials” and said that because the laws designed to protect the private data of consumers from government access are insufficient and out-of-date, it creates “a perfect storm for government abuse.”
Page 2: [Small ISPs react; How you can protect yourself from the snooping bill] »
