Gonzales pressures ISPs on data retention

[cal04]

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned. In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business.

In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time." "I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."

Until Gonzales' speech, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" (click for PDF) about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol providers, top administration officials began talking about the practice more favorably.



http://news.com.com/Gonzales+pressures+ISPs+on+data+retention/2100-1028_3-6077654.html?tag=nefd.top

[Gman]

1. I think Gonzales has cemented his position as the worst AG and

the biggest threat to civil liberties in history surpassing John Mitchell.

[longship]

2. Time to purge my log files

I run my own Net services. That means e-mail, DNS, Web, and everything else is hosted locally on my network. The only thing I pay my upstream provider for is a wire and bandwidth. I guess I need to script regular log purges now.

When will it end?

[Webster Green]

3. And I thought Ashcroft was bed....

This Torture Czar dude is a walking constitutional crisis.

[NYC]

4. Sounds like a false excuse to me.

...it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business...

If that's what they want, why don't they retain everything connected to those sites, instead of EVERYTHING under the sun?