Feds pushing for Internet records
BY JOHN REINAN
McClatchy Newspapers
MINNEAPOLIS — The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.
For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.
The idea is to help law enforcement track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens, joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused.
"I don't think it's realistic to think that we would create this enormous honeypot of information and then say to the FBI, 'You can only use it for this narrow purpose,'" said Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes free speech and privacy in communication.
"We have an environment in which we're collecting more and more information on the personal lives of Americans, and our laws are completely inadequate to protect us."
So far, no concrete proposal has emerged, but U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made it clear that he'd like to see quick action.
In September testimony before a Senate committee, Gonzales painted a graphic and disturbing picture of child pornography on the Web, which he called an urgent threat to children. The production and consumption of child pornography has exploded as the Internet makes it easier to exchange images, Gonzales said.
But federal agents and prosecutors are hampered in their investigations because Internet companies don't routinely keep records of their traffic, he told the committee.
Gonzales also pushed for Internet records tracking in an April speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
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