June 16, 2005 | Special Agent Sally Struthers Visits Your ISP

The Justice Department is trying to convince your ISP to record your browsing habits and are suggesting that if ISPs don't do so voluntarily, they'll push for a law requiring them to do so, according to this story by Declan over at News.com.com.com.

And if ISPs resist, DOJ officials will tag them as "soft on child porn."

Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept.

In theory, at least, data retention could permit successful criminal and terrorism prosecutions that otherwise would have failed because of insufficient evidence. But privacy worries and questions about the practicality of assembling massive databases of customer behavior have caused a similar proposal to stall in Europe and could engender stiff opposition domestically.
[...]
Justice Department officials endorsed the concept at a private meeting with Internet service providers and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to interviews with multiple people who were present. The meeting took place on April 27 at the Holiday Inn Select in Alexandria, Va.

"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 mid-size 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 rest of the story has some great context about European efforts to require ISPs to keep track of what you do, just in case a law enforcement agency comes calling -- including a snarky bit about the tetrabytes of data that would needed to save everything about everybody.

Now, I got no soft spot in my heart for child pornographers or the people who like to look at their product. None.

But FBI agents don't need logs of every citizen's use of the Internet to catch child porn peddlers and those who get their jollies from looking at 8 year-olds engaged in sexual acts (though I honestly don't know whether kiddie porn leads to pedophilia -- the real crime here -- or not).

I also have no soft spot in my heart for any sweeping law enforcement proposal justified by a squeal of "Won't someone think about the children?"

We are a nation of children, teenagers nearing adulthood, and adults. Making law based purely on emotional appeals to "Save The Children!" a la Sally Struthers infantilizes all of us.

But thinking that way makes one soft on child porn, nowadays.

I suppose then that the corollary is that FBI agents are hard on child porn.

Posted by Ryan Singel at June 16, 2005 10:35 AM

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[Source: Secondary Screening] quoted: "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 mid-size companies. "We were told, 'Yo... [Read More]

Tracked on June 17, 2005 12:48 AM