[privacy] ISPs Will Face More Fed Heat to retain customer data

["Gary Funck" <gary () intrepid com>]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=186700476&su
bSection=All+Stories

ISPs Will Face More Fed Heat

By Chris Murphy
InformationWeek

Apr 24, 2006 12:00 AM

The Bush administration is considering asking Internet service providers to
retain more data in hopes of cracking down on child pornographers. The ISP
industry, however, thinks the idea isn't only impractical, but also that
it's being made a scapegoat.


U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week proposed legislation to
increase criminal penalties against ISPs that don't report child porn if
they find it on their systems. More significant, he suggested the government
may ask ISPs to hold records longer and make them more accessible to police
and prosectutors. "Unfortunately, the failure of some Internet service
providers to keep records has hampered our ability to conduct investigations
in this area," Gonzales said last week in a speech at the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.


Such talk gets the ISP industry fuming. "I'm not aware of any criminal
investigation that's been hampered by an ISP," says David McClure, CEO of
the U.S. Internet Industry Association, which represents ISPs. ISPs
generally keep records for 30 to 60 days. Anything more--such as keeping
records for a year--would be too expensive, a big security risk, and
probably impractical to search, he says. The industry thinks what works is
"data preservation"--having police come to an ISP with a court order to keep
all data on a specific person who's under investigation.


Access to Internet records is controversial: The Justice Department battled
Google in court over search data it wanted in order to defend a law aimed at
keeping kids from seeing porn. In that case, the administration cast a wide
net, asking more than 30 ISPs, search companies, and filtering-software
vendors for information.


Given how effectively criminals are exploiting the Internet to sell child
porn, expect the Justice Department to be even more aggressive in this
quest.

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