Congress may start forcing Internet service providers to retain records of users' activities, CNET reports. All ISPs retain user data, but many delete it over a period of time. A Congressional
Internet Caucus is now preparing to introduce an amendment that would make such deletion illegal. Companies like MySpace might benefit from such a law--and indirectly, advertisers--because ISP user
data would make it easier to keep sex offenders off their site. According to the proposed amendment, all user records would have to be retained up to one year after an account is closed. It's not
clear from the article whether these provisions would be for all content providers or just ISPs and e-mail providers. Said one member of the Department of Homeland Security: "The FCC would be able to
tell Internet service providers to monitor our e-mails, monitor our Web surfing, monitor what we post on blogs or chat rooms, and everything else under the sun. The result will be privacy that goes
away..." Hello, Big Brother, hello hysteria. But for those of us who religiously use Google, it's not like they don't already keep track of everything we've ever browsed on the Web.
Read the whole story at CNET News.com »