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Republican Bill Requires You to Keep Home Networking Records

by Terrence O'Brien on February 24, 2009 at 01:39 PM

Republican Bill Requires You to Keep Home Networking Records

Republicans in Congress are pushing for a new data retention law that will require anyone providing access to electronic communication to keep records of users for at least two years. Europe has similar requirements for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telephone providers, but the new proposal in the U.S. legislature goes far beyond the European regulations.

The proposal requires all providers of electronic communications access to retain records. That would, at least in theory, include small coffee shops, public access points (like libraries and schools), and even private citizens who operate home networks, whether wireless or wired. How this would even be possible for a home user is lost on us.

The truly surprising (read: frustrating) part is that Democrats proposed similar legislation three years ago for ISPs and phone providers, but Republicans squashed the legislation after businesses such as AT&T put pressure on them.

Currently, providers are required to maintain records for 90 days, but government officials feel more time is necessary to track and build cases against Internet criminals, like hackers and child pornographers.

We've got no problem with law enforcement requiring ISPs to keep records for legal purposes, but if they think we're going to keep a log of every friend who pops in our apartment and uses our wireless connection for five minutes, they're out of their damn minds. [From: CNET]

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Tags: congress, data retention, DataRetention, law, legislation, politics, security, senate

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