Bill proposes ISPs, Wi-Fi keep logs for police

Bill proposes ISPs, Wi-Fi keep logs for police

news.cnet.com

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

(visit the link for the full news article)

"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level." ...

That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too.

We know that there is a growing concern from "Big Brother" about the Internet, its democratic nature and knowledge sharing power. The Pentagon has declared the Internet as a threat to its goals.

Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an "enemy weapons system"

Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet

It's sickening to see these attacks on the privacy of people and the Internet in particular, disguised as legitimate worries, in this case of children.

There is already legislation in place for ISPs to keep the logs, and work with law enforcement when needed. This measure would be like creating legislation that would require people to keep their telephone bills for 2 years in case law enforcement needs to look at who they called or whom they received calls from.

I'm guessing this isn't so much about effectiveness because there are better ways to sniff and look at Internet traffic (NSA, directly from ISPs). I believe this is more about the psychological effect of making people required to keep logs of their Internet traffic.

news.cnet.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Just wanted to add that while my previous posts talks about Republicans in specific, the Democrats aren't any better when it comes to this (and the article makes notice of it).

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. ...

In the Bush administration, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had called for a very similar proposal, saying that subscriber information and network data should be logged for two years. ...

This tends to be a bipartisan sentiment: Attorney General Eric Holder, a Democrat, said in 1999 that "certain data must be retained by ISPs for reasonable periods of time so that it can be accessible to law enforcement." Rep. John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that FBI proposals for data retention legislation "would be most welcome."

I find it ironic, however, that Republicans would support something like this, while we the public are still waiting for those pesky emails about the Iraq war and other matters that the Bush Administration said it lost, and the system they set up to use RNC servers to communicate, all in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

It has become so painfully obvious that we have no freedoms at all. We have been lulled to sleep by the false flag events and have allowed our need for the illusion of safety to steal our freedom!!!!

You now cannot travel, talk on the phone, visit a store, walk down the street, make purchases, or use your internet without surveillance. George Orwell would be very proud of our government. Reading this post right after the thread on the "terrorist threat of protesters at the RNC" only further infuriates me. So much for the freedoms of our parents, they are forever history. red

reply to post by converge


Yeah, while they're telling us about small government...They both want their big government. Only one want our money and the other wants to know what positions we like best when taking it. Damned crooks.

Amazing how they use the protection of children to justify this. Are they just assuming that everybody with an internet connection is a pedophile? Instead of creating Big Brother with Big Eyes, they ought to find a solution as to what to do with pedophiles so they won't mess with children in the first place. Obviously, having a public database with the pedophiles pic, name, and address isn't working. Go after the criminals.

I hope this doesn't fly. I like my privacy and I won't be spied on by my own police force when I talk about how much the government needs an ass kicking.

As far as I know, most home WAPs don't keep logs. If it's a router then it might keep logs of what MAC got assigned an IP or what IPs attempted to connect from the web on which ports... How are you supposed to fit 2 years worth of logged web requests on an access point or router? Where I work we rotate our apache access log once a month because it gets so huge, and we have a VERY limited audience to our server.

It's just another bill that has no realistic way to be implemented by the average joe that throws a router up on his internet connection.

reply to post by jam321


It's not that amazing. It's logical, this way people dont fight this law because they're afraid of being labeled as 'protecting pedofiles'. Best way to get new laws passed, probably better than using the terrorist card.