Data Retention Considered Harmful
By Bob Aman | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Law, Legislation, TechnologyIt seems like it was only just yesterday that everyone and their system administrator was getting upset because the Department of Justice subpoenaed Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, asking for user search data, to be used in an attempt to revive an anti-porn law that had been shot down because it violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment. To virtually no one’s surprise, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL complied with the government’s request, but Google refused, promising to fight the subpoena to protect the privacy of their users. Interestingly though, the general effect of the incident was that quite a few users started looking to keep less of their data out on the web, and some services responded in kind by not logging nearly as much information about their users’ activities.
Well, now it seems that soon may no longer be an option. Apparently, Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado, is pushing for new legislation that would force “Internet access services” to retain identifying records for every customer, for a period of at least one year subsequent to the termination of an account. Unfortunately, she happened to define what “Internet access services” means within the context of this bill, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room:
INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE. — The term “Internet access service” means a service that enables users to access content, information, electronic mail, or other services offered over the Internet, and may also include access to proprietary content, information, and other services as part of a package of services offered to consumers. Such term does not include telecommunications services.
While I’m hardly a lawyer, that sounds like it includes traditional ISPs, college dormitory connections, and very possibly, the internet connection supplied by your workplace, as well as wireless access points at the local coffee shop or at airport terminals. An especially loose reading could also include many large websites, and apparently the Federal Communications Commission will get to decide on any details. Strangely, it says it doesn’t include telecommunications, but it’s not clear to me whether that means that an internet connection supplied through your mobile phone isn’t covered by the legislation. In any case, that particular exception smells rotten to me, but that’s hardly the point.
The point is that data retention on this scale is expensive, and non-trivial to implement if it isn’t already in place, thanks to dynamic IP addresses, and it has that whole uncomfortable privacy invasion thing to boot. Plus the implementation costs will almost certainly come out of the pockets of the Internet access services, and by extension, the pockets of their subscribers. Of course, DeGette complained about Internet service providers resisting the bill, saying that data retention was a “very minor burden” to bear. “I am horrified that the provider community is not working with us on this, because it seems to me to be a very simple piece of legislation, and I’m going to continue to fight for it.”
Why is she horrified, exactly? Because she’s shopping the bill around as a way of dealing with pedophiles. Think of the children!
Under the circumstances, I have to ask — if we make our children safe, but we take away their freedom in the process, have we really made the world a better place?
This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Law, Legislation, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 5th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
#1, her definition is really broad, and it looks to me like it includes almost anything you look at on the Internet, no matter how you do it. I am a lawyer, but unfortunately I don’t understand all the fancy computer terms, so I may not be helping at all. (Well, they’re fancy to me.)
#2, you bet she’s doing it to try weed out some pedophiles. The Internet has revolutionized the way pedophiles find victims, and it allows them 24/7 access to kiddie porn. But, the Internet makes things more convenient for everyone. That’s just the way it goes. It’s also easier to: purchase weapons, learn to make bombs (and meth), the best way to poison someone, stalk someone, etc. We can’t impose these types of regulations just because people use technology to assist themselves in the commission of crimes.
#3, doing this will not make children safe. Pedophiles have been around forever, and they will continue to victimize children, with or without the use of the Internet. I know lawmakers want to make it seem like it will go away if we would just monitor the Internet, but that’s just not going to happen.
May 5th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Meredith, it’s even worse than that. I’m sure she is intending it to be used to catch pedophiles, but that’s not what the FBI wants it for. The FBI knows full-well that this won’t do jack-diddly-squat, because pedophiles are smart, and they know full-well that they need to mask their IP address. Virtually all pedophiles use Darknets, Freenet, or Onion routing systems such as Tor, technologies that completely defeat the purpose of this legislation. But that didn’t stop the FBI from insisting that this legislation would help in investigations. Which leads me to believe that the FBI actually wants the law in place for other things, but knows that it’s much easier to pass a spying bill as a protection against child pornographers, and thus, that’s what the bill is described as doing.
May 5th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
it is no suprise that Google stands in lone defiance against giving up cutomer information- Gates always rolls over for the Feds because he has enough problems going on.
But it seems to me Google is operating on a two-sided coin. Heads, screw you Feds, we aren’t rolling over; Tails, lets develop China’s Internet and, by thier request, keep anything that has to do with Democracy, freedom, and open-mindedness from showing up on Chinese monitors.
Google stands to make more money in the US by thumbing their noses at big government demanding the right to snoop and by entering into a market in China by an acquiese to that government’s desire to be able to snoop.
May 6th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Completely agree, Smitster.