http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061018-8017.html FBI head calls for data retention rules 10/18/2006 10:29:11 AM, by Nate Anderson Do you hear it? That rhythmic beat is the sound of the data retention drum being thumped by politicians and security figures. On Monday, at a conference of international police chiefs, head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told his audience that terrorists were using the Internet to radicalize without having to travel. Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller showed up at the same conference and delivered a similar message. "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," he said, according to CNet. Mueller took a further step, though, arguing that the US needs stricter data retention guidelines. "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. The solution? Forcing ISPs to retain data for set periods of time. Neither of these arguments is anything new. The Internet is regularly trotted out in speeches on terrorism; Mueller himself did it just weeks ago in a speech to Chicago executives. "Instead of training camps, we have seen a rise in websites that promote violent jihad and give step-by-step instructions on how to build suicide vests and explosives," he told them. Government officials have also pushed repeatedly for retention guidelines that would control what sort of data an ISP must keep and for how long. Attorney General Gonzales, in particular, has lobbied for new retention laws for some time, arguing that they are necessary to help control child pornography and exploitation. The thing about retention laws is that they require all data to be maintained, not simply the data from child pornographers and terrorists. This means that such laws are usually favored by other, unrelated groups who would like access to such log files. Groups like the music labels. In Europe, where retention rules are already in place, the entertainment industry has already stated its belief that the data should be available for use in the investigation of any crime, even copyright infringement. This makes some people nervous, including some in government. After the AOL data release scandal broke, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a bill that would put limits on how long ISPs can retain customer informationbexactly the opposite approach of that favored by the law enforcement community. Don't expect much action on such proposals with an election so near, though; Markey's bill has been stalled in committee since February. -- 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]