Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
While everyone was distracted with the hullabaloo surround the artificial “debt ceiling crisis”, Congress did manage to get some work done. Unfortunately that work was in furtherance of eroding your right to privacy. Thursday, July 28, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee submitted a bill (H.R. 1981) under the politically motivated and misleading name Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, which was quietly lobbied for by conservative Republicans and the Department of Justice, voted in committee to advance regulations requiring Internet service providers to retain your account information. This information preserved would include not just your IP address, but customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers and bank account numbers as well. The Judiciary Committee approved this bill in a 19-0 vote, rejecting a last minute amendment that would have required the retention of IP addresses only by 7-16.
It is helpful to note there is a distinction between “data retention” and “data preservation”. ISPs regularly destroy log records no longer required for business purposed. However, under the existing Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act, ISP’s can be required to retain log files or any record in their possession for up to 90 days at the request of a governmental entity. This data preservation policy would require ISPs to keep all log files and records related to commercial Internet accounts for 18 months. As this requirement would not apply to non-commercial accounts such as public access provided in Internet cafes and public libraries, any intelligent criminal could simply avoid logging by going to a public access point or by hacking into an improperly secured wireless network while the Internet traffic of individual law-abiding account holders across America would be recorded. As Rep. John Conyers (D – MI) succinctly put it, “The bill is mislabeled. This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.” Criticism of the bill came from both sides of the aisle with Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R – WI), the previous chairman of the House Judiciary committee, noting “I oppose this bill. It can be amended, but I don’t think it can be fixed… It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I’m not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children.”
Given that the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act already provides for data retention upon request and the Protect Our Children Act of 2008, requires any ISP that “obtains actual knowledge” of possible child pornography transmissions to “make a report of such facts or circumstances” and backs that requirement with a $150,000 fine for the first offense and up to $300,000 for each subsequent offense, does H.R. 1981 do anything to further protect children or is it simply an invasion of your privacy and erosion of your rights that serves no legitimate governmental interest not already met by existing law? What do you think?
Source: CNETNews
~Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
rafflaw “If you have read all of Gene’s postings over the years, you would realize your claim that he is a partisan Dem is all wet.”
Don’t you mean all of Buddha’s postings over the years? Or did we finally stop playing the Gene H. is not Buddha game?
I know it gets confusing when he sent email to you using both his Gene Howington and his Buddha_is_Laughing accounts. Is that what led to the collapse of the now-defunct cppamerica?
Who the hell is going to protect me from my government?
Gene took a hard anti- Pelosi stance, and now we have Boehner. Does not sound like a partisan democrat to me.
Roco,
I don’t think we will see it too soon, in light of the crap going down right now in Washington.
kderosa,
If you have read all of Gene’s postings over the years, you would realize your claim that he is a partisan Dem is all wet.
SM, if geneh is not a partisan dem then why is he acting like one? This is an issue that should transcend partisanship. For every willie horton there is a corresponding dem dirty trick. That’s politics. If the dems don’t have the stomache for it, they should not have run.
Don’t like the libertarian party…it is too close to Ron Paul and the tea party.
rafflaw:
hopefully the whole house will defeat it and send it the s… pile and not back to committee.
kderosa Remember Willie Horton… Gene is not a partisan democrat whatsoever. I am.
kderosa,
voting for a bill to get out of committee has nothing to do with being in favor of the bill. The dems may have merely wanted the whole House the opportunity to vote for or against this misleading bill. I realize that actually allowing the full body to have a vote is something Teapublicans do not understand, but it is democratic.
kderosa,
I don’t care what your problem is with me. The fact of the matter is that when one party or the other does something worthy of criticism, they’ll get criticized for it. I’m equal opportunity. For example, the DNC failed the American people by not investigating and prosecuting the war criminals in the Bush administration. Both parties failed the American people by failing to address the threat to democracy that is inherent in the Citizens United ruling. The current political parties of this country but especially the DNC, the GOP and their far right-wing extremist branch the Teabaggers all suck. Let me repeat that because it bears repeating: The political parties in this country all suck. They are all driven by corporate lobbyists and big money campaign contributors interests instead of minding the business of the people. In the instant story, the GOP was the one pushing for this bill over bi-partisan concerns about civil rights infringement. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the GOP. I’m the messenger. If you don’t like the contents of the message, address your concerns to the news makers.
Congressmen take oaths to uphold the Constitution, SM. I didn’t realize that a) being tarred with a bill with a misleading silly name would have no credible defense that Democrats could rely upon to set the record straight and b) that would be a valid reason to vote for an uncosntitutional bill. Do you vote for a party that is this politically weak?
kderosa, The republicans would claim that any democrat that voted against the bill was in favor of child pornography and run ads.
The phony drama over any legislative issue in Washington should be an immediate sign that something is going on behind the scenes that the legislators don’t want the public to know about.
It’s always been so starting with the Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia Convention) in May of 1787.
And yet it enjoys strong bipartisan support. As well as many democrat CO-sponsors. And was clearly voted out of committee with Democrat support.
What could possibly explain that?
My problem with you, GeneH, is your overt partisanship on an issue that appears to be bipartisan. It is an awful bill, but an awful bill with bipartisan support. Neglecting to mention that fact is misleading at best and dishonest at worst. It is also typcal of your behavior which does a disservice to this blog.
Think the old house judiciary chair, John Conyers, was far more liberal than this Texas right winger, Lamar Smith.
And Swarthmore mom’s reply would be the reason why, kderosa.
Or as they used to say in grade school, “He who smelt it, dealt it.” This bill was driven by conservative Republicans and the DOJ. If you have a problem with presenting that fact then I suggest you take it up with the GOP and ask them not to sponsor legislation that’s a draconian infringement upon rights that provides no social benefit not already met by other laws.
kderosa The bill never got a hearing until the republicans took over.
@GeneH
You claim: “which was quietly lobbied for by conservative Republicans and the Department of Justice”
Yet, the cosponsors of the billcontain many Democrats.
and then you concede
“The Judiciary Committee approved this bill in a 19-0 vote” which indicates that the bill has bipartisan support.
So my question is: why is your post so unfairly partisan?
raff,
Given that the bill only came out of committee last Thursday and the House has been busy with the Dueling Babies of Boehner and Reid, I suspect they’ll wait to vote on this some other time when they can try to slip it past unnoticed but aren’t burdened by the strong arm job the GOP is trying to pullover on the American people.
Great article Gene! This is an obvious attempt to spy on Americans and the scary part of it is that they are not hiding the fact! Was this bill voted on by the full body yet? I was wondering if Rep. Sensebrenner was in the committee that voted for it 19-0? I trust Sensebrenner as far as the Cubs pitching staff can throw a baseball.