June 5, 2006 Comments
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The San Francisco Gate ran a story late last week that talked about some discussions that are taking place between the Department of Justice and major Internet search providers like Microsoft, AOL and Google. The point of the meetings seems to be for the DOJ to feel out the providers to see if they might willingly hold on to user data that could be requested by law enforcement officials or if the government will need to push through legislation to compel the providers to save the data. It's obviously a conversation that has caught the attention of privacy advocates.
From the article:
The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Roehrkasse said.
While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department is interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms.
It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with, but not the contents of e-mail messages, the executives said.
The department proposed that the records be retained for as long as two years. Most Internet companies discard such records after a few weeks or months. In its proposal, the department appears to be trying to determine whether Internet companies will voluntarily agree to keep certain information or if it will need to seek legislation to require them to do so.
Coming on the heels of the DOJ's legal battle with Google over non-personalized search data, I'd expect to see some resistance on all fronts to this request as well. Expect the resistance to be even stronger if the agreement doesn't include very clear information on exactly what information the government would be able to request.
In some ways, the move is not unexpected. The government has long had venues in place to allow them to request information from phone companies, financial institutions and other areas of communication and transaction. With law enforcement rights so vague in the online space, it makes sense that criminals and terrorists would simply shift their lines of complication to the Internet.
On the other hand, privacy advocates point out that while it's important for the government to be able to do their jobs, it's also important that the average person retain their right to privacy and their right to avoid undue search. That's why the government is likely going to have to produce very clear rules on what constitutes "reason to request data" before most of these companies' lawyers will agree to allow the companies to fully cooperate.
This will be an issue worth keeping an eye on as anything that impacts the way people use the Internet, or the frequency with which they use it, can have a significant impact on online business.
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