Also lending their support for data retention were Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who said that Internet chatrooms were crammed with sexual predators.
That’s from a CNET article on a renewed initiative to require Internet Service Providers to maintain two years worth of records regarding their customers online activity.
I sympathize with the FBI agents legitimately trying to track down purveyors of child pornography and sexual predators. But this idea is stupid - stupid on its face, a face that happens to be far, far up its ass.
Verizon isn’t caching the content of pages I view. They might keep records of IP addresses I request and ports over which I communicate, but that’s about it. So as long as I directly route all of my traffic through Verizon’s servers they can figure out what web sites I’m looking at. As long as I route all of my traffic directly through their servers. If you’re not brain dead and you really want to maintain communication with your child-diddling buddies without getting nabbed by the FBI, then you use a proxy server. The substitution effect at work beyond supply and demand graphs! There’s nothing illegal about using a proxy server (except maybe in China and Saudi Arabia). Just like the original Great Wall, the Great Firewall is subject to breach.
This is little more than a reach for greater and unwarranted police power enabled by politicians whose image of the Internet is comprised mostly of predators, thieves, and general deviants.