Big Brother heads online

The prospect of Americans having their every move online tracked and stored for a year inched closer to reality last week.

Despite the objections of privacy advocates and some Republicans and Democrats, a House of Representatives committee, including Rep. Randy Forbes, approved a bill that would require Internet service providers to store a trove of users' Internet Protocol addresses - and could ultimately include data such as financial information and web history - in the event that law enforcement authorities need the information during an investigation.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, was dubbed The "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011." It won approval, despite efforts by both Republican and Democratic opponents, including Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, to derail or amend it.

While the production and distribution of child pornography is a serious offense demanding serious enforcement, nothing in the bill limits its scope to investigations of child pornography. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, emphasized as much when she tried in vain to rename the bill for what she said it really stood for: the "Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act of 2011."

The bill and a similar proposal awaiting action in the Senate represent an egregious overreach by the federal government in the name of security and would put an undue burden on companies required to comply with the storage mandate.

Internet service providers currently exercise their own discretion when it comes to holding users' records, but few hold information for more than a few weeks.

Federal law, however, already gives authorities conducting an investigation the power to compel companies to retain a user's records for 90 days. Internet service providers already relay more than 100,000 leads each year to authorities investigating child pornography. Officials have conceded they can't handle all of them.

The bill fails to provide significant new resources to investigate and prosecute more cases involving child pornography. Meanwhile, it would put millions of Americans' personal information at risk of being hacked and stolen from service providers' databases.

Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out yet another significant flaw in the proposal: "The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American..., " he said.

"Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans' expressive activities is simply un-American."

Sadly, too many in Congress appear unable or unwilling to recognize that.