I've been busy at work writing a series of articles about what's going on in terms of forcing Internet service providers to snoop on Americans. Basically Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller met with Internet and telecom companies (including Microsoft, Google, Verizon, and Comcast) last Friday and called on them to store data about users' activities for two years: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6077654.html Until that meeting, Gonzales and the Justice Department had been saying this would be useful for child porn fighting. Now they've realized (took 'em long enough) that (a) the stored data would be useful for terrorism investigations and (b) it might be politically convenient to pitch it as an anti-terrorism measure: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6078229.html Companies aren't very happy about this. And of course any such know-your-user law would presumably apply to libraries, schools, and coffee shops as well: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6078689.html Looking ahead a few years, assuming that data retention is adopted, it's unclear that the Feds would stop there. Imagine a shocking horrible tragedy could have been prevented if only even more expansive laws had been adopted on top of data retention. The end game eventually could involve (a) making it unlawful to offer Internet access without verifying identities, effectively shutting down open WiFi nodes and (b) restricting the use of encryption and anonymity services -- after all, what good is a pile of retained data if it doesn't tell you very much? This is sheer speculation, mind you. But then again a House of Representatives committee once approved a bill that would make it unlawful to sell encryption products without backdoors for the Feds. And Sen. Judd Gregg talked about restricting encryption products soon after 9/11, so perhaps it's not _that_ unlikely either. One other thing worth thinking about in terms of the Washington endgame. The Internet providers I've talked to have been generally opposed to the idea. But one of their primary complaints is the logical one of how much it will cost. If the Feds decide to write them a fat check, their complaints could evaporate and the legislation would instantly experience far less opposition. Watch for this; it would follow what happened with CALEA. Here's Microsoft's statement on data retention: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6078711.html Or, if you prefer, CNN and USA Today coverage of the topic: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2006-05-31-internet-record... _x.htm http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/30/technology/justice_internet/ -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]