34 ISPs Subpoenaed By U.S. Government

seanonymous writes "The Justice Department, in their continued effort to revive questionable legislation, has subpoenaed dozens of ISPs for files. Considering that ISPs generally host their users' mail, this seems like it could be a larger issue than their fight with Google over search queries. Some, like Verizon, even resisted the call for information." From the article: "Representatives for McAfee and Symantec confirmed that the companies had received and complied with the subpoenas. A spokeswoman at LookSmart did not immediately return a phone call. Many of the subpoenas asked for information related to products that can be used to filter out adult content for underage Internet users. Symantec's subpoena, dated June 29, asked for a wide range of information about the price and popularity of the Internet filtering products it sells and how the products are used by customers. " Information Week has a number of the documents involved, including the letter of objection from Verizon.

Comments

Re:Thank goodness I'm not in the US..

[voice_of_all_reason]

I don't quite understand the US governments crusade against online porn

Religious people don't just want to remove [insert_immoral_action_here] from their own life. They beleive it is their sacred duty to prevent everyone else from doing it as well. Regardless of the law everyone's agreed to live under.

Remember, this is the president who actually beleives god instructs him personally

Cripe

[spellraiser]

Is it just me, or are the DOJ's demands ridiculously numerous and far-reaching? A typical subpoena request 29 separate items, many of which are pretty, well, general. Consider, for example, this item from the Comcast subpoena (PDF Alert):

27. Studies indicating the number ofwebsites with pornographic content available on the World Wide Web, the proportion of such websites in comparison to the number of all websites on the World Wide Web, and/or the proportion of websites with pornographic content produced or created in the United States in comparison to such websites produced or created elsewhere.

Why on Earth is a humble ISP supposed to provide the DOJ with this information, and how are they supposed to do it? And why doesn't the DOJ just research this themselves if this is such a big deal for them?