Posted on 10/18/2006 8:33:53 AM PDT by Dr. Marten
"Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.
"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. "We must find a balance between the legitimate need for privacy and law enforcement's clear need for access."
The speech to the law enforcement group, which approved a resolution on the topic earlier in the day, echoes other calls from Bush administration officials to force private firms to record information about customers. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for instance, told Congress last month that "this is a national problem that requires federal legislation."
Justice Department officials admit privately that data retention legislation is controversial enough that there wasn't time to ease it through the U.S. Congress before politicians left to campaign for re-election. Instead, the idea is expected to surface in early 2007, and one Democratic politician has already promised legislation.
Law enforcement groups claim that by the time they contact Internet service providers, customers' records may have been deleted in the routine course of business. Industry representatives, however, say that if police respond to tips promptly instead of dawdling, it would be difficult to imagine any investigation that would be imperiled.
It's not clear exactly what a data retention law would require. One proposal would go beyond Internet providers and require registrars, the companies that sell domain names, to maintain records too. And during private meetings with industry officials, FBI and Justice Department representatives have cited the desirability of also forcing search engines to keep logs--a proposal that could gain additional law enforcement support after AOL showed how useful such records could be in investigations.
A representative of the International Association of Chiefs of Police said he was not able to provide a copy of the resolution.
Preservation vs. retention
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."
Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)
In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.
When adopting its data retention rules, the European Parliament approved U.K.-backed requirements saying that communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.
The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including: the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time and duration of phone calls, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.
Why not require phone companies to record all conversations, too, just in case the FBI wants to listen to them?
This is one thing that is so egregious that I really would vote out a republican that supported it. Whatever happened to getting a search warrant?
""Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms,""
I'm surprised he didn't find a way to fold the War on Some Drugs into terror and predation. The unholy trio usually appear in tandem when freedom is under GOP attack.
I've been expecting this for a long time based on "protecting the children" or protecting the media companies from music and movie sharing. It will be quite interesting to see the push for ISPs to record everything balanced against the growth of wireless technologies and hacking.
If you don't have anything to hide, you've got nothing to fear.
BTW, has anyone seen my jackboots?
Same here.
The analogy of a frog in boiling water comes to mind.
The US is slowly becoming a police state under the guise of fighting "terrorism" and protecting children.
Soon all the Bush apologists will rally around this story proclaiming him an absolute genius.
Wait, don't forget we have to tell the postal service to make photocopies of all the paper snail mail too, just in case...
Hands up!!!! WHO DIDN'T KNOW that when we get our first female president that the Madam President would have powers to track militias and VRWC "terrorists" over the inter net???
HOLD YOUR HANDS HIGH< PLEASE!!!
Yeah, I want somebody else to do my job, too. Perhaps the FBI could take care of it if they succeed in offloading their own work to ISPs.
Robert Mueller is an idiot. I would vote against anyone that supports this agenda. Too bad its so close to the election to get a handle on where this is going.
innocent until proven guilty?
Unfortunately that's what the donks claim too. The difference is it's all black and white for them and the Constitution (which they don't respect) IS a suicide pact.
This is the FBI camel getting its nose under the tent in the guise of the war on terror and to help the children.
Maybe Mueller should go back to trying to get democrats elected by harrassing Republican Candidates.
What are you, some kind of commie? Patriots have no need for search warrants, only guilty people do. /sarc
Can't they just get all the data from the NSA?
Everyone should be required to wear a GPS ankle bracelet too, 24/7, to keep track of where they go. Sheesh!
From the article:
Privacy groups and industry groups have generally opposed mandatory data retention, with some companies such as Comcast voluntarily agreeing to retain user data for longer periods.Hell, the data storage capabilities required to maintain a list of reasons why Comcast sucks would dwarf anything else out there. The list just got a bit longer....
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