WASHINGTON, DC — Two bills before the U.S. Congress could have data-retention implications for people who employ Wi-Fi networks in their homes.The bills, both called the Internet Safety Act, were introduced late last week by Sen. John Cornyn [R-TX] in the Senate and Rep. Lamar Smith [R-TX] in the House. Each would strengthen penalties for accessing child pornography and predation via the Internet and beef up data-retention requirements.
Among the requirements: Any provider “of an electronic communication service or remote computing service” and anyone who “transmits, receives or stores” content and recipient lists of email messages would be required to retain for two years “all records or other information” about anyone using the network, even if the network address was assigned to the transaction only temporarily.
“While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” Cornyn noted in a press release.
Although Cornyn and Smith said the data-retention provisions in their bills are analogous to subscriber records required of telecommunications providers, consumer and privacy watchdogs have pointed out telecommunications data is not preserved for investigative purposes, nor are home users entangled in sweeping telecom legislation.
“There absolutely is no data retention requirement for phone companies for the purposes of law enforcement,” Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Mac World.
Telecoms and internet service providers already are required to collect and retain specific information when presented with a criminal warrant, Bankston said. In addition, ISP data can be preserved on request for up to 90 days without a warrant, and prosecutors have six months to obtain a court order to seize the preserved information.
According to Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Internet Safety Act bills presume guilt of all users before law enforcement even suspects something might be amiss. As written, the bills stand to impose heavy burdens on home and corporate networks, even if they are password-protected, and would require Wi-Fi routers to have their own hard drives for data storage.
The bills are “incredibly overbroad, and [don’t] just reach the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world; [they reach] your corner coffee shop and even you at home,” Bankston told Mac World. “The current definition of electronic communication providers certainly reaches people who run wireless routers.”
The good news? Analysts say that because the bills are sponsored by Republicans and have no Democratic co-sponsors, they are unlikely to get traction in a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Bankston said no one should be lulled into a false sense of security by that prediction, however.
“Data-retention proposals are sort of like zombies in that they’re kind of easy to knock down, but they tend to come back,” he said.
