e-ignite

The US Government seem to be following in the footsteps of the EU and are planning on making ISPs retain all internet and email traffic of its users. The US claims that this data will not be actively monitored (my guess is they’re already actively monitoring you anyway!) but the information can be subpoenaed at a later date if required. This issue has been discussed in detail before with regard to the recently introduced EU law that means European ISPs have to do this. However, there seems to be a bit of a difference to the approach to the issue by the US.

According to this news story, the US Government are planning to use this data gathering technique so that they can use existing laws to subpoena the data, and this means that they do not have to battle to introduce a new law that would most likely be unpoular and widley criticised by privacy groups. However, if the Government succeed in making ISPs gather this data, the “Privacy Sledgehammer” will have fallen, and I believe it will never be restored.

The main issue to this data retention is the currently vague terms that it has been proposed in. The proposals are not entirely specific, although it is clear that the US want to be able to identify which individuals used which websites, and they also want to know what exact terms have been used in any searches. According to the NY Times, currently the Government want specific data on who has sent email to who, but they are currently not demanding that the whole email text is retained.

There are some unsurprising similarities between this proposal and the EU law - the retention period is “up to 2 years”, although they are trying to get ISPs to sign up to the code “voluntarily”. Presumably, this will involve them putting financial pressure on the larger ISPs, threatening tax breaks and so on (but excuse me for sounding cynical), although if the majority of ISPs do not sign up voluntarily, I am quite certain that this will be proposed as law. The EU went for a much harder line on the issue and bypassed the “voluntary” stage of the aggreement, passing the ruling by majority in an EU court with the argument of Terrorism Prevention flaunted. It is hardly surprising that George W Bush’s administration is in charge of this push in the US, whilst an extremely similar scheme was again pushed through in the EU when Tony Blair had presidency.

Again, forgive my cynicism, but I don’t believe in coincidence. Do you?