DOJ Wants ISPs to Log User Traffic UPDATED

Anonymous Coward writes "Kevin Poulson writes in an article in SecurityFocus that in an early draft of the White House's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace", the DOJ proposes that the US enact European style 'data retention' laws, which force ISPs to log and retain all of your email headers, as well as your Web browsing history." Nothing worse for the DOJ to be upstaged by Europe in oppressive lawmaking, they must feel like they're losing their edge. Update: 06/19 23:04 GMT by M : The SecurityFocus article has been updated with this note, saying that the U.S. denies having any plans for data-retention laws. Guess we'll have to wait until the plan is released to see.

Comments

Sounds reasonable

[atrowe]

I value my privacy as much as the next guy, but I don't think the DOJ's request is at all unreasonable. In fact, most ISP's already do log their user's traffic. In fact, if you're using a major ISP such as AT&T or Earthlink to read this, your traffic is almost certainly being logged right at this moment. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, logging user's activities on-line allows law enforcement to catch spammers (I'm sure most Slashdotters hate spammers), virus writers and distributers, software pirates, pedophiles, and all sorts of other cyber-miscreants. This is a Good Thing. I sure as hell don't want to be on-line with those types of people, and I'm sure most other readers will agree with me here.

It seems that the issue at hand isn't the act of logging activities themselves, but how willing your ISP is to distribute those logs. In all previous cases I am aware of, ISP's do not give out personal information about a user without first being served with a subpoena. This is no worse than the restrictions we have had on wiretapping and eavesdropping for the past 50 or so years, so I don't see any reason for anyone to get upset about this. If you aren't breaking the law, then you have nothing to worry about, and your information will remain private in the hands of your service provider, however if you're doing something illegal, then there is no reason that the FBI or such should not be able to serve your ISP with a subpoena to obtain your usage logs. Its perfectly within our Constitutional rights for the government to do this, and anyone who is made nervous because of this probably has something to hide.

finally

[tps12]

It's good to see the US catching up with Europe regarding computer security. There was a time (between the World Wars) when the US led the pack in terms of national security and technology. Sadly, we've seen a lot of that slip away, as second-world countries like France and Canada have upstaged us.

I'm happy to see that we're at least catching up. Now we just have to make the switch from Windows to Linux throughout the government, and we'll be ahead again.

One note on rights...I am a little frightened about ISPs keeping tabs on my netwanderings. But they probably keep the records anyway, so as long as the spooks (meaning gov't, not black people) need a warrant to get to it, I'm cool with this.