ISP snooping gaining support

ISP snooping gaining support
By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: April 14, 2006, 4:03 AM PDT

The explosive idea of forcing Internet providers to record their customers' online activities for future police access is gaining ground in state capitols and in Washington, D.C.

Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate.
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What's new:
Federal and state politicians are embracing the idea of requiring Internet service providers to record what their subscribers do online, in case that data is useful for future investigations.High Impact
Bottom line:

Data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat room activity that normally are discarded.
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Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months. And some proposals would require providers to retain data that ordinarily never would have been kept at all.

CNET News.com was the first to report last June that the U.S. Department of Justice was quietly shopping around the idea of legally required data retention. But it was the European Parliament's vote in December for a data retention requirement that seems to have attracted broader interest inside the United States.

At a hearing last week, Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who heads a House oversight and investigations subcommittee, suggested that data retention laws would be useful to police investigating crimes against children.

"I absolutely think that that is an idea that is worth pursuing," an aide to Whitfield said in an interview on Thursday. "If those files were retained for a longer period of time, it would help in the uncovering and prosecution of these crimes." Another hearing is planned for April 27.

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Yes by all means lets snoop into what people are saying or doing on-line while the Mexican border is a porous as cheesecloth. This is a very bad I idea and is tantamount to recoding all phone conversations in the hopes of finding some criminal intent. The politician's are sooooooo out of touch with the people that something is going to have to give and soon!