Conservative Republicans realized a victory with a 19 to 10 vote to pass what is misleading called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” Hiding behind a guise to protect America’s children ISP providers will now be required to keep logs and store customer activities for one year. An amendment that would have only required ISP providers to store IP addresses was rejected by a vote of 7 to 16.
At the last minute, the bill was rewritten to expand the types of information that internet providers are required to log and store. Along with IP addresses, customers name, address and phone numbers will be logged as well. But, they will even be required to store every users credit card and bank account numbers. Some members even suggested storing any temporary IP addresses.
Democratic opposition leader Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California said this new bill represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American that would let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.” Lofgren also stated that the retention of data will be easy to avoid. Criminals will start to go to public areas such as libraries and WIFI hotspots to surf the web. In the meantime, law abiding citizens will have their every move recorded.
Supporters dubbed the bill as a tool that could be used by law enforcement agencies in investigating crimes over the internet. Rep. John Conyers from Michigan said that the bill is not to protect children on the internet. He said it is to create a massive database for everyone in America for a lot of other reasons. Currently, log files that are no longer required are discarded and data preservation is only conducted after an ISP provider has been contacted by law enforcement officials.
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