agonist.org — A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is beginning to raise eyebrows. [It] would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely.The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term...
Feb 12, 2007 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountFeb 12, 2007
The bill itself doesn't seem to exactly require that ISPs monitor everything you do. What the language of the bill says is that an ISP is defined as "a service that--`(A) stores, through electromagnetic or other means, electronic data, including the content of web pages, electronic mail, documents, images, audio and video files, online discussion boards, and weblogs; and `(B) makes such data available via the Internet." What it says is that if, through the normal storing of information that ISPs already do, ISPs have knowledge of users' use of child pornography, they must report it. And the records they must keep are not necessarily your emails and web history, but "records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information." Don't get me wrong---I think it's a questionable bill. I don't like the idea of making internet service providers become police and there are certainly well-founded privacy concerns. I just think this blog post this skews the story a bit in terms of what the bill actually says.
vanosFeb 13, 2007
Sadly, I think it would merely codify what's probably already being done. Now, whether or not someone is in denial about that reality is another question entirely.