The Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act, in brief

02/26/2009

Although a study was released last month by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force that reported a safer Internet than parents and others had imagined. Nevertheless, two politicians from Texas, Jon Cornyn and Lamar Smith, have each filed in the senate and house, respectively, their own versions of the Internet Safety Act, otherwise known as Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act. According to this bill, anyone providing Internet access would be required to keep records of who uses the service for two years. This includes ISPs like Comcast, you (as the wireless network in your own home, when used by several people, is provided to them by you), and the owners of hotels, coffee shops or other businesses where wireless Internet is offered. The implications of this are far-reaching, and bring up discussion of the availability and accessibility of all the various content and medias on the Internet, and who can access them.

Opponents of the bill claim it is an invasion of privacy. Just knowing that the government can easily find out just how often you go to PerezHilton.com may be jarring at first, but government officials maintain that the data amassed from this bill would only be used in criminal investigations. (After all, there's nothing illegal about finding out what's new with Miley Cyrus, as long as she is wearing clothes in the photos.) It appears that as long as this rule is followed and the information actually is only used as part of criminal investigations, all should be hunky dory. However, the implications of a citizen finding his way into the system of records is unnerving, although the actions the hacker could take from there do not appear at first blush to be too threatening. (Although, for some they could be& Or maybe just more fodder for Perez Hilton's blog.)

The Internet Safety Act is not the first of its kind. The European Union has its own version of the Internet Safety Act, but it does not apply to home wi-fi users as the Internet Safety Act itself would. The EU's version is aimed at Internet service providers including phone companies, and does not call for the retention of the extreme details of what users actually do over the Internet or say in their phone calls, only the bare bones data relating to when and where the Internet was accessed, what sites were accessed, who called who, etc.

The justification behind the Internet Safety Act is to keep tabs on who is accessing the Internet and from where. With this information, if law enforcement officials discover that if someone committed a crime over the Internet from a specific IP address, they can find out who was using that network at the time the crime was committed. Currently, with so many news articles each day reporting an arrest or indictment for possession of child pornography, it is unlikely that every name mentioned in those articles is the name of a guilty person. It is likely that some of those people are being accused of crimes committed on their computer, but by another person. All parties are innocent until proven guilty - by computer forensics and in the near future, perhaps, the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act.

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