Talk:SAFETY bill would require U.S. ISPs to log on-line user activity

The bill itself seems to say nothing about logging surfing activity, email, or IMs. It does mention that ISPs have to report people who look at child porn, and that they have to record their subscribers personal data (name, address, etc.) The exageration seems to originate here. --DCo1 19:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

"SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS. (a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information." So while it might be more broadly construed, all the law says is that they at least have to keep name and address.--DCo1 19:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

My take is that the content of an Internet user's activity is not what is at stake here, merely their presence. So if some person became upset and made an issue over something posted by an Internet user, the ISP could be compelled, if the complaint has enough gravity, to provide records that associate a user to the content being complained about. -Edbrown05 10:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

So in an indirect sense, it is about accountability for one's on-line actions. -Edbrown05 10:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Still does not mention SPECIFICALLY IM's e-mail etc...thats misleading. DragonFire1024 21:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

• The above extract implies that name to IP information must be available, very little more. Since most ISPs assign dynamic IP addresses the required data log is a list of who was online from what IP when, not a detailed log of communications. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Off-topic

Off topic though this may be, but just how many $$$ are wasted every year with think-tanks and study groups to come up with the cutsey names for bills that form acronyms that would make you ashamed to vote against them? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent question. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, given the short excerpt, the bill DOES NOT exempt IMs, surfing, etc. Nor does it exempt requiring conversations etc to be recorded. It basically amounts to an internet wiretap without the requirement of a warrant. So they are basically saying if you use the internet you are guilty until proven innocent. The bill also doesn't delineate the AGs powers in this. So if a child porn pop-up occurs when you are at some sexual site you could be assumed guilty with all the good stuff that goes with it.

I think you're being unnecessarily alarmist. There's no way to monitor all the traffic on the Internet to the level you imagine the government wants. Taking my usage as an example, I work from home. I'm roughly halfway through my work day and I've transferred about 40Mb over a VPN connection. That's excluding my emails, regular surfing, and encrypted Skype calls. If fine granularity logging is required then Internet access in the US will become unaffordable, and the government will have to ban all the services that allow direct encrypted user-user communications. The economic damage that would cause is enough to discount draconian logging measures.

Oh, and please sign your posts. You do this by appending ~~~~ four tilde characters which the wiki software replaces with your username and a timestamp.

However, if you can find a well-reasoned argument that logging beyond IP assignment will be required then please post a link to it. Most of what I've seen is alarmist "blogosphere" stuff written by people who don't understand what communications are safe and which are not, thus categorising everything as dangerous. Were all IMs, emails, and surfing sessions logged then every ISP would need a datacentre like Google's and your ISP would be the ideal place to get a backup of your PC from. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's a better idea!

I am completely agaists censorship, but I do think the better alternative would be to have a government blocklist of child pornography sites. Sites would be added only if they matched certain critera so that our government won't start blocking everything it doesn't want us to see, but I see no harm in the inability to access child pornography distrobution sites...208.183.225.11 19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)