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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 ...
no he is not.
call records are not like taped conversations. this would be like the government asking the phone companies to tape EVERY call, and store them for 2 years, so they could be accessed at any time.
if they log every web page you visit, every email you send - that's content, just like your actual phone conversation.
" Yes, I am being sarcastic. It seems our government is intent on watching our every move, while allowing invaders into our country."
They want to watch because they can. They're in business you see and the more criminals they can create the better business is. The illusion of widespread criminal activity is great for budgets. Rest assured though that government beauracracies are almost always incompetant. They spend lots of your money for PR trying to show otherwise but I think most people know the truth. It's the idea that the PoPo's may be watching that causes most people to flinch. It doesn't deter criminals however and never will.
The best bang for the buck is policemen on the street.
The Feds love whiz-bang tech but are highly vulnerable to low tech like people walking across the border.
Feh...he just wants to know who that annoying little Hispanarepublicana chick on FR is who insists on calling him Alberto "La Raza" Gonzalez and reminding others of his board of directors stint with a state affiliate of "La Raza" in Texas.
Thanks for the alert. I am getting a bit tired of these "requests" for information that Gonzales and his crew seem to love so much.
You know, be it "sneak and peak" or wiretaps or data mining or whatever.... There's a real simple way to address both national security and 4th amendment issues.
Pass an exculpatory law that any evidence of a crime discovered by these "anti-terrorism" searches that is NOT terror related CANNOT be used in court.
If the FBI thinks I'm a terrorist, but I turn out only to be bragging about running a stop sign on a chat room, then move along, copper!
If I am a SF lib nutter claiming "Death to America" and I illegally bought some C4 with intent to use it in a terrorist plot, then throw the book at me.
And even in a bad case where an anti-terror wiretap turns up good old fashioned tax fraud, then, sorry IRS, you gotta catch me some other way.
Granted, the Bush Admin is not going to use the NSA to prosecute traffic violations. But to codify that into law now would allay any fears of being hauled off to jail in the middle of the night because some computer flagged you as looking at too many "hate" sites like FR!
This is very, very troubling. It appears that some in the federal government have decided they want to be able to track the computer activities of any person in America, to reconfigure everything they've ever done online, and to have that available any time govt. wants to use it.
The people in govt. change, but the beast remains and gets larger. And then it takes orders from someone else.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller are part of the topic and I didn't see a thread on them possibly resigning so I asked if anyone else heard that.
Thank You!
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
And the sad thing is that for those that know how, it is pretty darn easy to make comunications opaque to all but NSA level prying.
One toe over the line begats a second toe over the line ... and eventually a third. Then the whole foot. Then they just jump over it.
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