New bill would force ISPs to retain user data for two years
For years, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has been pressing for legislation that would require Internet Service Providers to retain user data in order to aid law enforcement in hunting down child porn peddlers and downloaders. Last week, he introduced his most recent effort, and today was joined at a press conference in Austin by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sponsored the Senate's companion bill, to make the case for the 2009 edition of the Internet Safety Act.
Smith is hardly the only member of Congress enthusiastic about Internet regulation aimed at protecting children: a 2008 analysisproduced jointly by the Center for Democracy and Technology and theProgress and Freedom Foundation counted 30 such bills introduced in asingle year. But he is one of the more persistent.
Language requiring ISPs to preserve user data for two years-as this most recent bill would-first appeared in the ambitious Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Act of 2002, which passed the House by an overwhelming margin but stalled in the Senate. A series of subsequent attempts-most recently the Internet SAFETY Act (that's "Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth")-have all died in committee.
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