NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Obama Admin's New Internet Data Retention Push
Obama Admin's New Internet Data Retention Push http://bit.ly/gfoL6p (ars technica - article) http://bit.ly/fN0bwx (House Judiciary Committee - Docs & Webcast) This of course turns into a true slippery slope in short order. No matter how long the designated retention period might be, as soon as a case comes along that exceeds that window, there will be demands to extend the retention period even farther. Calls to continually broaden the scope of retained data will also be inevitable. And the implications for entities who run their own mail servers (not using the shared email resources of ISPs, for example) are particularly, shall we say, interesting. It's important to consider data retention proposals in the context of earlier Obama administration expressions of concern about encrypted data, and their stated desire to be able to unencrypt Internet communications on demand for wiretapping purposes. Finally, we note that the title of the Judiciary Committee hearings features c-porn as its main element, though of course data retention demands are by no means restricted to that category of investigation. But the c-porn label tends to always be prominent in such cases, since the proponents of data retention (and others) would very much like to create a "third-rail" nexus of the "if you vote against this you're voting to protect c-porn!" variety. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com