There is legislation being proposed that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain data on what IP addresses have been assigned to whom for 18 months. Unfortunately for the government such data retention laws have been controversial so they’ve had to exploit the children loophole by naming the legislation, “The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.”
Ars Technica has a very good opinion piece posted about how this legislation will backfire. Instead of using home connections to download illicit data people will simply go elsewhere.
There is no shortage of open wireless access points. Instead of downloading illicit data from a home connection you can connect to your neighbor’s wireless network, a businesses wireless network, or through an anonymizing service such as the Tor network. The legislation is entirely pointless and only puts a data storage burdun on ISPs.
The government simply wants access to information the public doesn’t believe access should be granted to. Just like every other time this situation occurs the government simply abuses the children loophope and then looks at any opposing their bill and acuses them of supporting child pornography. It’s kind of like naming the PATRIOT Act what it is then accusing anybody who opposes it to not being a patriot.