Posted on 05/27/2006 7:08:19 PM PDT by Panerai
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned.
In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business.
In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time."
"I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."
Until Gonzales' speech, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol providers, top administration officials began talking about the practice more favorably.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
Imagine Hillary as Pres...
It's for the children. You don't hate children, do you?
Yes, I am being sarcastic. It seems our government is intent on watching our every move, while allowing invaders into our country.
Well, isn't that, uh, special? Frightening? Chilling? Ripe with potential for misuse?
I didn't read the article beyond the posted excerpt - Does Gonzales put forth any legal justification for his "request"? This is reminiscent of the (happily dead) Romanian tyrant Ceaucescu's edict that all typewriters must be registered with the State, so that the State could better track down and imprison "criminals" who used their typewriters to write or publish anything critical of the State. This proposal is one very small step away from true domestic surveillance (as opposed to the NSA programs that have recently been labeled by the media as 'domestic surveillance' but were not)...
Common now, "it's for the children" after all.
this proposal crosses the line - because recording every web page you visit - is essentially the same as wiretapping your actual phone conversation - its the monitoring of content - what you read, what you email, etc.
I supported the phone number database archive, but not this. this is content.
"Oops! It's all gone. The dog computer virus ate it."
)
if this passes - buy stock in network sniffer and disk drive makers. retaining every web page, that every american visits, for 2 years, is going to require massive infrastructure on the part of the ISPs.
its going to have a chilling effect on free speech on the net, and there is going to be a booming business in offshore VPNs - that's what the "bad guys" they think they are going to catch with this insanity, will start using.
Our computers claim they "can't recall".
Anybody else hear this?
what does that have to do with this story?
there are other threads on that topic.
This has been around in the MSM. One has to wonder who "leaked".
its not a leak, there are other FR threads on it, Gonzales and Chertoff are on the record advocating this.
so far, americans have mostly cut the administration slack over the NSA programs that deal with anti terror. but I don't think people will accept having every single web page they visit, email they send, etc - stored for 2 years.
and I would like to know how they plan on filtering spam mail from your "archive".
Not really. It's actually worse because, as you have assumed, it implies that every link your browser pulls down is something you chose to download.
A browser hit pulls an index page, and then starts pulling images from God knows where, etc.
For example, if you read a Tony Snow thread on FR, the FBI might think you've got a fetish for Helen Thomas, since your ISP will invariably get dozens of subsequent requests from your browser for the Press Hag's images!
very true. spam email alone causes your machine to "hit" alot of objectionable locations.
if this passes, you are going to start seeing liberal cities like San Francisco and Portland setup public internet access with WiFi and WiMax, to allow citizens to be behind their NAT with a non specific IP address, so actual specific traffic cannot be matched to a person.
this is what the criminals are going to do anyway - they will start using McDonalds and other free WiFi places to conduct these activities.
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