Congress may consider mandatory ISP snooping | Tech News on ZDNet By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com

It didn’t take long for the idea of forcing Internet providers to retain records of their users’ activities to gain traction in the U.S. Congress.

Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, gave a speech saying that data retention by Internet service providers is an “issue that must be addressed.” Child pornography investigations have been “hampered” because data may be routinely deleted, Gonzales warned.

Now, in a demonstration of bipartisan unity, a Democratic member of the Congressional Internet Caucus is preparing to introduce an amendment–perhaps during a U.S. House of Representatives floor vote next week–that would make such data deletion illegal.

Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette’s proposal says that any Internet service that “enables users to access content” must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user’s account was closed.

It’s not clear whether that requirement would be limited only to e-mail providers and Internet providers such as DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable modem services. An expansive reading of DeGette’s measure would require every Web site to retain those records. (Details would be left to the Federal Communications Commission.) …

In a move that may have led to broader interest inside the United States, the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers. …

Critics of DeGette’s proposal have said that, while the justification for Internet surveillance might be protecting children, the data would be accessible to any local or state law enforcement official investigating anything from drug possession to tax evasion. In addition, the one-year retention is a minimum; the FCC would receive the authority to require Internet companies to keep records “for not less than one year after a subscriber ceases to subscribe to such services.”

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, said: “This is an unrestricted grant of authority to the FCC to require surveillance.”

“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,” said Harper, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. “We’re seeing a kind of hysteria …. The result will be privacy that goes away and doesn’t come back when the foolishness is exposed.”