House Republicans are about to put forth their first major technology initiative which is going to include a little thing called mandatory data retention.
Mandatory data retention would require ISP’s to keep a log of all your activity so that the police or any other law enforcement agency could look through it for use in a case.
The department of justice has been trying to put forward the idea of mandatory data retention (MDR) since 2005 and thankfully have failed every time. They have not quit though and this year is no different.
Most ISP’s only keep track of data as long as necessary for business purposes. Some companies like T-Mobile don’t have the necessary technology to allow tracking of users data. Other companies just refuse to share users information or charge for it as discouragement. However if this bill passes companies will be forced to surrender your data if the feds come knockin’.
Their excuse for wanting to violate your personal privacy is that child predators and criminals troll the internet and everyone and their children are in danger. The fact of the matter is that it’s fairly easy to track and capture internet criminals without governments having access to everybody data.
There a millions of downsides to ISP’s storing data, including the possibility of that data being compromised and ending up in the wrong hands… this reminds me of something I heard not to long ago, about how someone in law enforcement said there was no reason to track people on Facebook because there had been a ‘White flight’ from MySpace to Facebook, sighting the work of Danah Boyd and that MySpace was a lot more willing to work with them then Facebook was. In the end the statistics show that Law Enforcement catches a lot more drug dealing minorities then they ever have child molesters. So all this bill really does is allow these lying jerk-offs to force companies that want to defend their customers privacy to hand it over. Which is something I don’t think anyone wants.
You might be saying to yourself ‘well I don’t do anything wrong and I’ve got nothing to hide’. This may be true however if ISP’s store all your data, meaning every website you’ve been to, passwords, credit card numbers, IM’s, pictures pretty much any information you’ve entered into your computer. If it’s ever connected to the internet. Is subject to hackers, pissed off law enforcement, and other unscrupulous characters who would love nothing more than to pry through all that juicy information for their own personal gain.
Starting to see why the bills been shot down 5 years and running?
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