

Congress Tries To Hide Data Retention Law Pretending It's an Anti-Child Porn Law - ygreek
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/04402514995/congress-tries-to-hide-massive-data-retention-law-pretending-its-anti-child-porn-law.shtml

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grandpa
Here in Canada, we have bills with neutral names like C15. It sounds like in
America, the title is used to frame the conversation, as in the notorious
"Repeal the job killing healthcare law act".

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dp1234
In America you can pretty much guarantee that if the bill has a name that
makes it sound like it is good for you...it will definitely be bad for you.

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elehack
One thing I'm unclear on is what the definition of "provider of an electronic
communication service" is. From the bill text
(<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-1981>) and Title 18
definitions section
([http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=electronic%20communication%20service&url=/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002510
----000-.html)), it seems to be ISP, since they're requiring the "temporarily
assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account" to be
retained. This leads me to believe that the bill basically requires ISPs to
keep IP <=> account mappings around, and isn't so egregious as to require e.g.
Google to store de-anonymized logs for all account usage for 18 months; the
definitions seem to corroborate this.

In which case it's questionable, but not near as bad as it could be. Or am I
missing something?

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owenmarshall
The bill further limits administrative subpoenas to the US Marshal service
that are investigating child pornography cases.

I think the argument people have is that the US Marshal service could abuse
this mechanism to blindly issue reams of subpoenas and see what sticks.

The law _should_ protect against that by requiring good cause to obtain the
subpoena. Whether or not it does is the sticking point.

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tsotha
The system works pretty well in normal criminal cases. If the defense can show
the subpoena was issued illegally the government can't use any evidence
gathered as a result. It's a pretty big embarrassment for the cops and the DA,
and doubly so if the suspect walks.

