Friday February 20, 2009 02:00 pm
Republican Bill Would Require Home Owners To Retain Internet Access Logs
By Jamie
<http://crooksandliars.com/jamie/republican-bill-would-require-home-owners-re>
Chalk this up as forcing you to become big brother:
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 legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their
Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data
retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and
is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.
"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."
Joining Cornyn was Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on
the House Judiciary Committee, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,
who said such a measure would let "law enforcement stay ahead of the
criminals."
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.
So in essence, if you have a wireless router in your home then you would
be required to log all access to that router and keep those logs for two
years. Why? Because your neighbor might do something bad and use your
internet connection to do it.
What has me scratching my head is the situation of failure. What if my
$50 Linksys decides to bite the dust after one year? Do I have to store
that router for another year to comply with this law?
How about people who have routers without logging, or that has very
limited logging that might only keep X number of records and couldn’t
possibly store the data for two years? Will these people have to go out
and by new routers now?
This legislation will really cause outcries from privacy advocates. Just
the idea that some people may have to go out and buy new hardware simply
to become a new “big brother” for our government is very troubling.
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