Originally posted by: Bumrush99
What a buffoon. This idiot has never heard of the internet
Actually it is the Internet they are going after:
6-16-2005
Your ISP as Net watchdog
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months
It was raised not once but several times in the meeting, very emphatically," said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, which represents small to midsize companies. "We were told, 'You're going to have to start thinking about data retention if you don't want people to think you're soft on child porn.'"
McClure said that while the Justice Department representatives argued that Internet service providers should cooperate voluntarily, they also raised the "possibility that we should create by law a standard period of data retention." McClure added that "my sense was that this is something that they've been working on for a long time."
The current proposal appears to originate with the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, which enforces federal child pornography laws.
But once mandated by law, the logs likely would be mined during terrorism, copyright infringement and even routine criminal investigations.
Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, compared the Justice Department's idea to the since-abandoned Clipper Chip, a brainchild of the Clinton and first Bush White House. Initially the Clipper Chip--an encryption system with a backdoor for the federal government--was supposed to be voluntary, but declassified documents show that backdoors were supposed to become mandatory.