April 19, 2006 – There is a quiet move afoot in Congress for legislation that would force Internet providers to retain customer records for up to two years. If legislation of this kind actually does become law, then your ISP would be forced to store data on your every move on the Internet. The data that they could be forced to keep might include details of every website that you visit, who you correspond with via e-mail and even your instant message traffic. According to advocates of data retention, this type of law is needed to stop child pornographers. The problem is, it simply won’t work to stop most forms of criminal activity but it could wind up creating massive new databases containing highly personal information. These databases would be targets for hackers and could prove to be irresistible gold mines for government snooping and internet marketers alike.

It may not surprise you to lean that the Bush Administration is pushing Congress to enact a data retention law. The US Department of Justice started to quietly lobby for such a law in June of last year. The European Union passed such a law, which is set to go into effect in 2008, in December of last year.

But such proposals create a number of very real problems for ISP’s and consumers alike.

The amount of data that ISP’s would have to store in order to comply with this type of legislation is huge. There are billions of e-mail messages and instant messages sent every single day. While storing this data is not technically difficult, it will require massive amounts of storage space which will cost a lot of money.

On the consumer side of the equation, the two biggest problems are privacy and cost.

If ISP’s are forced to store all of the data that the government wants, then the costs for that storage will be passed onto consumers. This means higher charges for internet access.

But the most disturbing aspect to this proposal has to do with a loss of privacy. There are only two ways that the government can assemble the data that it is looking for. The first way would be to have the ISP’s transfer the responsibility for storing this data directly to the government. This is the least likely scenario.

The second method would be for the ISP’s to store the data on their own. Under this scenario, the government would simply need to subpoena data that it wanted to look at. No search warrant would be required. As if this isn’t bad enough, the companies storing the data would soon find that they may be able to use if for marketing purposes. For instance, anyone who gets a lot of e-mail about new technology might prove to be a good target for technology advertisers.

In either case, the collected data would contain a treasure trove of private information on consumers. The government and the ISP’s would eventually find ways to use this data for other purposes. The only loser in the equation is the consumer, who will quickly find that his e-mail and internet browsing habits are not so private anymore.

Those that are proposing data retention legislation are trying to tie it to child pornography. They are saying that the police could utilize retained data to track down child pornographers. What they fail to mention is that none of the proposals put forth so far limit the use of collected data to tracking down pedophiles.

Michael Chertoff, Director of Homeland Security voiced his support for a data retention law last month. He said that police should be able to run queries against retained data databases as a part of police investigations. But he didn’t mention a thing about child pornography. Based on this it is clear that such databases would have a far reaching impact.

The state of Colorado is also considering its own data retention law. It too is wrapping the issue around pedophiles.

It remains to be seen if any of the data retention proposals in Congress gain enough support to be put into legislation. Fortunately, not all elected representatives are sold on the idea. Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) who is the senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee said, "I'm against this child porn stuff, but at the same time, let's not further erode the rights of the American people."

There are voices outside of Congress that are stating their objections to this type of law too. Virtually every ISP in the country has come out against forced data retention. And the Director of Information Policy studies at the Cato Institute, Jim Harper said in an interview this week, "The true criminals will go and use random Wi-Fi nodes where you can get anonymous access." Referring to the possibility of passing a data retention law, he went on, "You haven't done anything but increase surveillance of law-abiding citizens."

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