Chicago (IL) - In an attempt to put an end to child pornography and make the Internet a safer place, federal law makers have proposed that the surfing habits of Internet users be retained for a period of two years. Currently, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, ISPs which are based in the United States are required to retain data connected with a specific IP address for a minimum of 90 days upon the request of law enforcement.





Two United States congressmen, Senator Jon Cornyn and Representative Lamar Smith, both from Texas, introduced separate bills last Thursday which require ISPs to store user information for a period of two years. In addition, the bills could potentially require home Wi-Fi router users to track the same information.



Collectively, the two bills are called The Internet Safety Act, and are designed to aid in the prevention of child pornography via the Internet. They call for stronger penalties for individuals found to be guilty of accessing child pornography online. They would require that Internet and e-mail service providers maintain records and information about anyone utilizing a network address assigned by the service. And, even though they are designed to protect from child pornographers, those same records can be utilized for any law enforcement purpose, and gives a possible open a window for use by private interests, such as the RIAA and the MPAA, who could subpoena records in an attempt to reduce online piracy.



The bills state: "A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."



If the bills are approved, then everyone from employers, ISPs, schools, coffee shops, diners and delis would all be required to keep detailed logs of all data associated with the IP addresses assigned randomly to individual users. Information collected and stored would include e-mail logins, sites visited and even search queries executed, along with comments made as the HTTP PUT and GET commands encode data input on user forms, such as comments, names, user IDs, pretty much everything volunteered, in the URL which is returned to the website.



This law is not unpopular in other countries. The European Union has a similar law which is directed solely at ISPs. This is also not the first time these bills have been floated, though in the past similar attempts have been unsuccessful.