Congress Wants WiFi Owners To Keep Log Files For 2 Years... For The Children

from the it's-always-for-the-children dept

Similar ideas have been proposed before, but new bills have been proposed in both the House and the Senate that require anyone offering internet connectivity to retain log files for two years. There's no good reason for this, of course. It's been shown that such data retention laws actually make it more difficult to track down the information you need while being expensive. But, of course, the politicians are claiming this is "to protect the children." Of course. They even have come up with a silly acronym so that the title of the bill (Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act) spells out "Internet SAFETY Act." Of course, that's a load of crap, because this bill has little to do with protecting children, and won't do much, if anything to actually protect children.

It will, however, be a huge nuisance for just about everyone. That's because the bill, as written, doesn't just apply to big ISPs, but to anyone providing internet access -- meaning all of you with your home routers fall under this law and will need to keep log files for two years or, you know, be accused of helping child predators. I can't wait until prosecutors are looking to charge someone with something -- and since they have no actual evidence on whatever it is they're looking for, they'll make use of such a law to prosecute. For the children. Of course.
Can someone pass a law that says that any politician who proposes a law "for the sake of the children" or "to protect the children" automatically gets thrown out of elected office? Protecting children is great -- but why is it that every law that is supposedly there to protect the children never actually has anything to do with protecting children?

Filed Under: data retention, protect the children, us, wifi