September 19, 2006 5:32 PM PDT
Gonzales: ISPs must keep records on users
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Gonzales asked senators to adopt "data retention" legislation that would likely force Internet providers to keep customer logs for at least a year or two. Those logs, often routinely discarded after a few months, are intended to be used by police investigating crimes.
ISP snooping time line
In events that were first reported by CNET News.com, Bush administration officials have said Internet providers must keep track of what Americans are doing online. Here's the time line:
June 2005: Justice Department officials quietly propose data retention rules.
December 2005: European Parliament votes for data retention of up to two years.
April 14, 2006: Data retention proposals surface in Colorado and the U.S. Congress.
April 20, 2006: Attorney General Gonzales says data retention "must be addressed."
April 28, 2006: Rep. DeGette proposes data retention amendment.
May 16, 2006: Rep. Sensenbrenner drafts data retention legislation--but backs away from it two days later.
May 26, 2006: Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller meet with Internet and telecommunications companies.
June 27, 2006: Rep. Barton, chair of a House committee, calls new child protection legislation a "highest priority."
"This is a national problem that requires federal legislation," Gonzales said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "We need to figure out a way to have ISPs retain data for a sufficient period of time that would allow us to go back and retrieve it."
As the November election approaches, politicians have been devoting an unprecedented amount of attention to the topic of children, pornography and the Internet: At least three committees are holding hearings on the subject this week alone.
One committee even enlisted an outside-the-Beltway celebrity, basketball icon Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq appeared on videotape before the Senate Commerce Committee, and said: "I've seen images that make me very sad, I've seen images that make me very mad...Yeah, I'm mad, very mad, senator." (O'Neal is a
It's unclear what the prospects are for mandatory data retention in Congress this year, or whether politicians will delay action until 2007. One senior House Republican drafted a bill (click for PDF) but then backed away from it, and a Democratic proposal (click for PDF) has not been voted on.
But with the Bush administration firmly behind the concept, and with state and local law enforcement lending a hand in the lobbying efforts and saying such mandates would help protect children, industry groups and privacy advocates may be hard-pressed to head off new regulations. During Tuesday morning's appearance, for instance, Gonzales favorably cited a June letter (click for PDF) endorsing mandatory data retention that was signed by 49 attorneys general. The letter said: "It is clear that something must be done to ensure that ISPs retain data for a reasonable period of time."
Myriad suggestions
Sen. John McCain, who presided over the afternoon hearing, scolded Internet companies who "were invited to participate and chose not to." He said he would talk to Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, about scheduling an additional hearing during which the companies would be grilled.
Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, a Republican, used the hearing to tout a proposal, now tacked onto a mammoth communications bill and awaiting a vote, that would require all sexually explicit Web content to be labeled as such and home pages of all sites to be free of such content.
That measure, he said, "will help children from unwittingly stumbling across these words and images online."
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, echoed Gonzales' calls for ISPs to hang onto customer records. "Some companies have policies on retention, but they vary widely, are not implemented consistently, and frankly, most are too short to have meaningful prosecutorial value," he said.
Data retention legislation could follow one of two approaches, and it's not clear which is more likely.
One form could require Internet providers and perhaps social-networking sites and search engines to record for a year or two which IP address is used by which user. The other form would be far broader, requiring companies to record data such as the identities of e-mail correspondents, logs of who sent and received instant messages (but not the content of those communications), and the addresses of Web pages visited.
During a series of meetings that Justice Department officials have held with private companies--first reported by CNET News.com--officials have been ambiguous about how they want legislation worded, private-sector participants say. Companies involved have included AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Verizon Communications and trade associations.
Suggestions for congressional action at Tuesday afternoon's hearing didn't stop at data retention by private companies.
Sheriff Michael Brown, who heads an Internet Crimes Against Children task force in Bedford County, Va., called on Congress to ensure that any state, federal, local or educational institution that receives federal funding also conduct "appropriate transactional logging to allow the location of individuals that use that access in the exploitation of children." He said in his testimony (click for PDF) that the government could not, "in good conscience," make such demands of the private sector if it didn't also do the same.
That concept--restrictions slapped on using federal funds--echoes a 2000 federal law called the Children's Internet Protection Act. CIPA effectively forced schools and libraries to filter sexually explicit Web sites by tying that requirement to the receipt of federal funds, an approach the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in 2003.
The concept of more federal laws was popular at Tuesday's pair of hearings. Sharon Cooper, an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, urged politicians to require that all public-school health classes, from elementary to high school, teach "child sexual abuse prevention strategies as well as online and communication technology safety strategies."
And Sen. Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican, suggested that the Justice Department create a successor to the widely criticized Meese Commission, a 1986 federal panel that claimed to document the harmful effects of pornography. "Isn't it time we revisited the creation of an attorney's general commission and update, if you will, the kind of things the Meese Commission prophesied would happen?" Bennett asked.
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives will have its own hearing on the Internet and child pornography.
'Preservation' vs. 'retention'
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention, or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time.
An IP address is a unique 4-byte address used to communicate with a device on a computer network that relies on the Internet Protocol. An IP address associated with CNET.com, for instance, is 216.239.113.101. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)
In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.
When adopting its data retention rules, the European Parliament approved U.K.-backed requirements saying communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.
The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time and duration of phone calls, voice over Internet Protocol calls, or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.
See more CNET content tagged:
Internet provider, legislation, Rep., Internet Service Provider, attorney general
122 comments
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We can not preserve our freedom by allowing our government to take away any part of it--no matter how small.
First it's child porn, next it's terrorism. After that fails to produce results, maybe we'll investigate everyone who visits Muslim web sites. Or maybe we'll investigate visitors to Israeli sites--I'm sure Palestinians consider them to be terrorists.
The problem here is that once this door is opened, there is no way to close it.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.teckmagazine.com/content/view/667/43/" target="_newWindow">http://www.teckmagazine.com/content/view/667/43/</a>
data on citizens instead of fighting this war on "terrorism" or whatever you want to call that this week.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.teckmagazine.com/content/view/631/43/" target="_newWindow">http://www.teckmagazine.com/content/view/631/43/</a>
U.S. govt is more interested in tracking its own citizens. Good one.
They already listened in on phone calls without legal basis, and would like nothing better than being able to spy on every American.
Citizens should spy on their government, not the other way around. I want these neonazis out of existence for the farce they've been making of my country. This is America, dammit. We don't do this kind of crap and still get to be called the land of the free and the home of the brave.
<thinking of buying a gun...>
:))
and store all this info for two years, and Costa Rica will give them
tax breaks to become the Data Center of the world.
Gonzales/Bush can always be relied on to propose the most
onerous regulations with the highest cost and least benefit to
everyone, except their ever-growing fanaticism and fascism.
I can't type what I am thinking because CNET will just censor it out - but consider it said - at length.
This is NOT an invasion of privacy.
This is a law designed to specify a mandatory data-retention period. Your ISP has your data, and they can keep it for as long as they like. A court can issue a subponea for that data, and that is nothing new. There is no mandate for all ISP logs to be turned over to the federal government.
I think you are paranoid. Did you even read the article? The Bush administration doesn't give a rat's rear-end where you go on the Internet, and they don't want your data. What they want... is to give law enforcement the ability to legally collect evidence on criminals after a judge has granted approval. And there is nothing wrong with that.
The "child protection" is simply the red herring to distract you from yet another Bush Administration attempt to cull as much information about every person as they can.
Google? Googles all about $$ advertising; nothing wrong with that, but theyre not a political group.
Child porn my ass. Why is it the governments job to be parents to my kids? Im the parent, its my responsibility where my kids go and what they do. Its my responsibility what they watch, what they read, and who they associate with.
Im not one of those who believe the government was complicit in 9/11, but make no mistake, it has been distorted into the neocon political wet dream. Massive defense spending, 2 wars, terror alerts, citizens afraid, diminishing privacy& I ask you, are the terrorists, at least politically, winning?
Funny, I was just watching Enemy of the state the other night. That movie was made before 9/11. We should all watch it again.
Who the hell voted for this boob anyway? To all of you that did, shame on you!
They may say they will to get elected, but...
We need electable independent candidates that have some common sense about the limitations of government our founding fathers intended. Then the federal government would concentrate on our borders and defense of the country and the states would take care of the criminals among our citizenry.
I don't see either Democrats or Republicans reducing the federal government that much.
RFID tags that will track everything from the time it leaves a store which Walmart plans on using to track your buying habits from the time its made to the time it ends up in a landfill.
Ohh that shiny new PC you just bought has a unique hardware identifier besides having a serial number embedded in the CPU which most people dont even know about.
Your Mac address and I know mine is being checked by my ISP as I type this.
Umm lets see what else... your passport has an RFID tag embedded in it.
Your soon to be nationalized ID which the feds require all states to comply with by 2008 I believe must be registered with the feds if states wish to continue receiving federal funding.
Ohh and while we're at it did you know that you satellite TV and cable box can record what you watch.
George Orwell had the facts right he just got the year wrong.
I guess I just have to enjoy what little annonymity I have at the moment... but wait ohh thats right they have satellites that can see through buildings. Guess I am just another ant on this rock we call earth
However - what is being proposed is NOT spying, and does NOT infringe upon the rights of Americans.
<<Those logs, often routinely discarded after a few months, are intended to be used by police investigating crimes. >>
Currently, ISPs retain log files for a period of time that they choose. A police investigation can result in a subponea being issued for that data. This is NOTHING new.
The change being proposed, is a mandatory period for data retention. Meaning - ISPs would be forced to maintain their log files for a given period of time in case a subponea was issued for that data.
It is NOT a law requiring ISPs to voluntarially hand over all data to the government, as some of these folks would have you believe.
There are already laws in place to govern data retention for businesses, especially related to email. The difference in this case, is that the law would be far less vague - which would be good.
The PROBLEM... is not one of rights, or spying.... those arguments are clearly unsubstantiated. Rather, the burdon placed upon an already low-margin business will be unreasonable. Data collection and storage requirements are translated into a dollar-cost for ISPs, and that cost will be passed to the consumer... which means that the cost of Internet access will increase.
ISPs can already store all your data for as long as they'd like. What the government is trying to do, is to set a STANDARD for data retention. You'd think that some of these open-source fans who preach standards would understand this. With a standard in place - investigators would know ahead of time whether or not data is available for collection as evidence in a case against a criminal. Rather than obtaining a warrant only to later learn that the ISP didn't retain those records, investigators will know ahead of time whether or not the data will be there.
But I think you're mischaracterizing our article and quoting from it selectively.
One possibility that's been talked about is forcing ISPs to go further than recording IP address assignments and keep logs of email correspondents, etc. Also this would apply to search engines, social networking sites, etc.
This would not be a small change and does not deserve to be dismissed as such.
What ever happened to warrants? The Republicans are acting like that word never existed.
most parents (the good kind, anyway) would do ANYTHING for their children, including die for them. this fanatical defense of kids turns off every rational bone in a parent's body.
in fact, protecting their children is such an irrational thing that most parents would gladly KILL SOMEONE ELSE to protect their children, if forced to choose. those same parents will certainly vote to take every single right that YOU have, in order to satisfy their primal urge to protect THEIR children.
if these irrational parents would be perfectly happy to KILL YOU to think their kids are safer, what makes you think they won't pass every sort of draconian law imaginable if a politician scares them into thinking they have to?
that's why politicians will never stop exploiting people's children for political gain.
it's time we as a national stood up and said "Sorry, parents, but your kids are not worth me losing my constitutional rights. End of story- no exceptions."
This sort of legislation is a red-herring in that it does not actually do anything to cure the problem. It does, however, open the door to abuse by government, lawyers, and law enforcement. If the information is collected under the pretense of protecting children, do you really think a judge will refuse to obtain information that is known to exist for other purposes? Of course not. If it exists at all it will be subject to subpeona for other purposes such as divorces and other civil suits.
It is just a bad idea all around, plain and simple.
Even if he gets his law, it's totally worthless as criminals will just use an off-shore proxy that is not subject to US subpeona authority. The only record they would have is the connection to the proxy.
Useless.
safe at all times. I am of the opinion that children must grow and
adapt to the environment, not the environment adapt to the
child. That being said, I do beleive in protecting my daughter to
the extent possible. I am against child porn and child abuse.
I also make sure that my child does not use the computer or the
internet unless I know what she is doing with/on it. I do not
believe in taking away anyones rights, mine included, or
infringing on anyones rights, mine included. I can only take so
much Elmo, Disney and sugary sweet kids shows and sites.
Some may consider me a bad parent, I really don't care. My child
learns to deal with her environment and if that means that
sometimes she gets a scrape or a bump or a bruise, so be it.
Keep your damn government hands out of my privacy, I have
nothing that would interest you.
The federal government of the united states is completely and utterly corrupt.
The party that favored less government activity in our lives is long dead.
hail hail hail King Bush and his smucks
The answer is no!
Being old enough to remember that and going through the civil rights era it seems that all of those points of privilege that the US Government used to point out are slowly (if not already) disappearing and we are becoming what we used to ridicule.
What difference is there NOW between the old Soviet KGB and the US Government's "intelligence" (Oxymoronic) agencies? Absolutely none.
We used to tout that democracy held that the citizens freely elect their representatives, I am starting to doubt that as well particularly with the out-dated electoral college making my vote not count. The electoral college may have been useful in the days that communications were at best bt telegraph but in the day when EVERY vote can be counted I don't want someone else interpreting my vote.
As far as Attorney General Gonzalez is concerned he is just a "yes man" to King George 'W'.
It's ironic that we fought for independence from England during the rule of King George and now we have another King George trying his best to reverse all of those gains.
Man I can't believe that this is the USA I fought for.
~Ex NAVY Gulf War I~
This is sad... Wake up parents and DO your jobs damn it! Police your own kids and stop using the computer as a babysitter just like my parents used the TV when I was a kid
Politician's are like diapers and they need to be changed for the same reason.
Robert