[rlmorel]

Uh oh...here we go.

I just came from a thread about Internet addiction...they are all going to be over here in a few minutes...:)

[Sir Gawain]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for instance, told Congress last month that "this is a national problem that requires federal legislation."

The words of a tyrant.

[TheLion]

Depending on what they want to track, anyone can be found guilty. Visiting a conservative site, for instance.

[Just mythoughts]

Well isn't this just tooooo interesting? All manner of questions have formed in my head.

[SpaceBar]

Robert Mueller can make a hermetic seal between his lips and my ass.

[ikka]

This is precisely why Congress and the courts never focused on enforcing the level playing field in telecoms.

Much easier to just have to deal with Comcast or other cable co. and then deal with the local phone company that provides DSL.

[Wormwood]

I'm waiting for the usual suspects to come marching in and defend this LATEST assault on our liberties at the hands of our Benevolent Leaders.

[Constantine XIII]

This plan is made of 24k failure.

[cynwoody]

http://tor.eff.org/

[lesser_satan]

bump

[Jack Hammer]

Plenty would love to search homes without a warrant, too; doesn't make it a good idea.

[metesky]

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt

[Knitebane]

"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,"

That's because, Mr. Director of Funded But Incompetent, storing log files takes disk space and disk space costs money.

I've worked for several ISPs, from mom-and-pop shops to one of the largest in the country. It is common practice to discard all logs of routers unless you are troubleshooting.

Since the 1996 Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act (thanks Bill!) most ISP's send all of their server logs directly to /dev/null, thus bypassing the law requiring them to retain logs for 90 days of any record in their possession. By not generating logs, they have nothing to retain.

If ISPs store every log file of every user packet, who is going to pay for all of that storage?

People are entitled to have an INFORMED opinion. Too bad blowhards like this can stand in front of a microphone and display their ignorance.

As a practical matter, a US Government mandate to log user activity would probably sink every ISP with less than 5000 users immediately.

For the rest, expect your ISP bill to double instantly.

[Hardastarboard]

"this is a national problem that requires federal legislation."

So is picking your nose and leaving the remnants under the edge of your chair. I propose that the House take action immediately.

[rlmorel]

My Irony Emitter is malfunctioning...nobody seemed to pick up that I WAS one of those people over in the Internet Addiction thread at

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1721293/posts

Hi...my name is rlmorel...I'm a Freepaholic...:)

[GOP Poet]

It is all sort of wierd. I write fiction for a living and am always very hyperconscious when I Google words that this stuff could very well end up in a file somewhere and some times the content of my books and research there of can take me to some pretty sorted places on the web as well.

It is much easier to ease drop on the web, then on the streets in seedy areas sometimes. Overall, anything I ever write or explore on the web, I fully intend to see it someday used against me. Maybe I am paranoid or something or just realistic. One never knows.

But if terrorists are using the internet, I believe certain types of procedures and system should be put in place to access information or patterns that could help stop terrorism or crime.