Feds Want Your Email, IMs, and Everything Else, Forever

Those wacky Congressmen... they have a lot of funny ideas about technology sometimes, but this one really takes the cake: Lamar Smith (of Texas) has introduced a bill he calls the SAFETY (Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth) Act, which says, rather simply, that ISPs would have to record all users' web surfing history, instant messaging conversations, and email. Indefinitely.

I'm sure Smith's intentions are good: His goal is to prevent terrorism and child pornography through this record retention, but even the most conservative onlooker has to agree that this goes way, way, way too far. ISPs who fail to comply (and you might be surprised how liberal the interpretation of "ISP" can be) can face a year in prison if they don't keep the appropriate records.

The Seminal has more background and commentary on how this act sneaked up on us.

Remember the furor over AOL's release of anonymized search records last year? That was data from just a few hundred thousand users, without their names, and just terms they'd typed into a search engine. Now imagine the same thing, but affecting 200 times as many people, this time with their names and addresses attached to the search records. And adding to that all your emails, instant messages, and every web page you've ever visited, too. If ever there was an invasion of privacy on the march, this is it.

Right now, the SAFETY Act is in the House Judiciary Committee, so there's a strong possibility it won't go anywhere. That said, this bill is so heinous I'm going to do something I never do... in fact, I've never done: Send a letter to my Congressional representative expressing my dismay.