House Panel Approves Bill Forcing ISPs To Log Users

skids writes "Under the guise of fighting child pornography, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require internet service providers to collect and retain records about Internet users' activity. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses. Per dissenting Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): 'The bill is mislabeled... This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.'"

Comments

No kidding

[grimmjeeper]

'The bill is mislabeled... This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.'

Conyers hit the nail on the head.

Re:No kidding

[h4rr4r]

This is not all or nothing. Having to fill out forms to calculate taxes seems fine. That data should also not be used for anything else. Keeping track of citizens speech is not any where near the same thing.

Re:No kidding

[0racle]

Detailed? Really? Like what the name of the person who checked you out at Lowes was? You submit that you bought 16 feet of duct tape right before you went and bought those sleeping pills? Which, coincidentally, was a week before that girl was found tied up and drugged in your area.

The level of detail your ISP would be logging would far outweigh any amount the IRS keeps about you.

Re:No kidding

[hairyfeet]

Simple: The market starts free, a few groups become uber-powerful, then buy the laws to ensure their monopoly never has to deal with competition. See "forever minus a single day" copyright extensions, DMCA, and a million other examples.

Sadly, and as much as I thought Rand was a looney, someone should cue up her "making criminals" line because with THIS much data they can make anyone they want into a criminal at ANY time. If they pull up a log that says you visited X server on date Y 2 years ago, how do you disprove it? Hell how do you even prove the data on server Y is the same as what was on server Y 2 years ago? Look at the old Whitehouse.com to see how squatters can take a domain and turn it.

This isn't getting a warrant to access someone's PC to look for child porn, this is entirely "guilty until proven innocent" wholesale data collection. And the truly fucking sad part? I have a friend that actually works busting CP in the state crime lab and he says the child pornographers don't use the net since that dragnet that made the news a couple of years back. What do they use now? Encrypted DVDs they send each other by USPS. That's right, the fricking mail.

So I urge everyone here to vote Green or New Whig straight down the line in 2012, and to urge everyone you meet to do the same. It is obvious that BOTH the Ds and the Rs damned near to a man have been bought by the corps, and the will of the people as well as the constitution is being completely ignored by these traitors. our last hope before having our own Arab Spring is to have real third and even fourth parties in this country, and a vote for a D or an R is now a "wasted vote" because they simply no longer listen to the people anymore.

Look out anyone who is married!

[Anonymous Coward]

And just wait till the subpoena’s start flying from divorce lawyers

Re:Look out anyone who is married!

[kwoodard]

By the way, you should also know "Patriot Act" intercepts are starting to show up in divorce court. People should read the text of the proposed statute carefully to note whether the data can only be use for "criminal investigations" (e.g., terrorism) or "all lawful government purposes" (e.g., divorce).

Reciprocal?

[Teun]

As CP is a global issue it has a clause to share this data with EU authorities.

No? I thought so...

I'm a bit confused about this bill .....

[King_TJ]

I read an article about this earlier today (I think it was on BoingBoing?) and despite trying to follow several govt. web site links to read the actual bill's contents, I wasn't able to view the whole thing anyplace?

If I visit the link the EFF suggests, for example, and click the link claiming to offer the "text of legislation" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:), I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it? Under "Section 4" though, it appears this was put in:

`(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'.

That makes it sound like they're simply wanting to collect the IP addresses issued via DHCP of all the customers, not anything else?

Re:I'm a bit confused about this bill .....

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire text of the bill is on the gpo.gov site:

    http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1981ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr1981ih.pdf

Re:I'm a bit confused about this bill .....

[Qzukk]

I get what seems to only be notes about changes made throughout it?

That's how bills work. There's a huge blob of text (the United States Code), the bill is basically a patch to that USC, so you have to get out the entire USC and apply the bill to it in order for it to make complete sense.

The first change made is adding "Whoever knowingly conducts, or attempts or conspires to conduct, a financial transaction (as defined in section 1956(c)) in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowing that such transaction will facilitate access to, or the possession of, child pornography (as defined in section 2256) shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both." (It is interesting to note that growing your own pot in your own backyard for your own use is "affecting interstate commerce" so this will almost certainly be used against everyone touching kiddy porn whether there was any kind of trade or financial transaction at all)

The second change is to change the money laundering laws to add kiddy porn and facilitating access to kiddy porn to the list of "specified unlawful activities" covered by money laundering.

Third, the "Required disclosure of customer communications or records" is updated to require that ISPs track which user is assigned which IP address when, for 18 months. And that it is the "sense" of Congress that the records "should" be stored securely.

Fourth, "No cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider of wire or electronic communication service, its officers, employees, agents, or other specified persons for providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with the terms of a court order, warrant, subpoena, statutory authorization, or certification under this chapter." is changed to "No cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider of wire or electronic communication service, its officers, employees, agents, or other specified persons for retaining records or providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with the terms of a court order, warrant, subpoena, statutory authorization, or certification under this chapter." This goes from "you can't sue your ISP because the government forced them to tattle on you" to "you can't sue your ISP because they stored information on you, or because the government forced them to tattle on you".

Fifth, storing information on you is further disallowed as a cause for civil action.

Sixth, federal marshals are given the power to issue administrative subpoenas regarding "unregistered" sex offenders. The subsection referred to describes various sex offenses that subpoenas may be issued for, but does not define what makes someone an "unregistered sex offender".

Seventh, additional laws against harassing child witnesses. As part of this, it includes this fascinating nugget:

(2) For purposes of subparagraphs (B)(ii) and (D)(ii) of paragraph (1), a court shall presume, subject to rebuttal by the person, that the distribution or publication using the Internet of a photograph of, or restricted personal information regarding, a specific person serves no legitimate purpose, unless that use is authorized by that specific person, is for news reporting purposes, is designed to locate that specific person (who has been reported to law enforcement as a missing person), or is part of a government-authorized effort to locate a fugitive or person of interest in a criminal, antiterrorism, or national security investigation

Eighth, additional levels of sentencing are mandated.

Ninth, additional punishment is added if the kiddy porn showed someone under 12. (sorry, getting bored of chasing down all the original rules)

Tenth, the sect

Partisanship? Please...

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

This bill will sail through with bipartisan support. Point me to the privacy-invading bill that was unilaterally forced through. The worst and biggest ones were bipartisan, namely the DMCA, which no one would even sign their name to, and the PATRIOT Act, which very few voted against.

Damn Tea Party!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Where the hell is the tea party? They talk about keeping the government out of our lives, but when it really matters they aren't anywhere to be found.

They can hold the entire country hostage with this ridiculous debt limit kabuki (it's ridiculous because congress already authorised the spending when they passed the bills spending the money earlier this year), they are trying to have their cake and eat it too) but they can't stop one minor bill that directly contradicts their stated ideology? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Small government Tea Partyers at your service

[Omnifarious]

Yep, this is what the small-government people want. More regulation and requirements on business so it can continue to innovate. This is government getting out of the way.

I hate the way this group lies blatantly. The rampant hypocrisy and lying is endemic to this movement. I hope you small government fiscal conservative types take note here. Or maybe you should stop telling yourselves that's what you stand for.