Congress Wants ISPs to Retain Data for 12 Months

Do you want your ISP to keep records of when you are online, and/or the sites you visit while you’re there? They do. There are a variety of reasons–some better than others–for why an ISP might need this information in the short term, but a bill making its way through Congress would compel ISPs to keep the data for a full year.

A ThreatPost blog entry explains:

“The bill was introduced with the purported intention of protecting children from online pornography, but it has become a lightning rod for privacy advocates and security experts who have decried the data-retention provision. Under the language currently in H.R. 1981, ISPs would be required to store the IP addresses assigned to each subscriber for 12 months. The idea behind this section is “to assist federal law enforcement in online child pornography and child exploitation investigations”, according to the committee.”

Click here to read the entire post with more explanation.