Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of law, culture, technology, and politics. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.

Once upon a time, the concept of mandatory data retention seemed almost 
reasonable. What's the big difference between an ISP keeping data on 
users for a year instead of six months? Rep. Diana DeGette & co spent a 
large portion of last year talking about babies being raped thanks to 
the Internet and how that could be prevented by data retention -- and if 
they're right, who could be against the idea?

Well, it turns out that the Bush administration wants far more than just 
that. In a private meeting with industry groups last week, Assistant 
Attorney General Rachel Brand and other officials said they wanted to 
target Web sites that let users upload images or video:
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6163679.html

This is consistent with a Politech post from January, in which I said 
that search engines, domain registrars, and Web hosting services have 
also been talked about as data retention targets:
http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/24/not-just-isps/

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what the Justice Department has in 
mind. (A real problem is that discussions on this topic have been both 
vague and secretive. No language has been circulated, at least as of 
last week, so we can only speculate.)

-Declan

Posted by Declan McCullagh on Mar 07, 2007

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