The Data Retention Disaster Heading to the US

[Geee]

American Thinker:

The scandal over PRISM, the NSA's alleged secret backdoor into some of the biggest services on the internet, shows little sign of dying down. But while PRISM's data mining has been hidden away from the eyes of American citizens, over in Europe there is a mass surveillance program that's been operating out in the open for the last eight years. The European Data Retention Directive forces all EU Internet Service Providers to log data on its users and store that data for up to two years after their subscription ends. Something similar could be heading to U.S. shores.

In March, the author of the Patriot Act James Sensenbrenner, who was quick to condemn PRISM, made his second attempt to push for ISP data retention laws, hoping to tack proposals onto the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. After questioning from journalists Sensenbrenner backed down. But with Obama's Justice Department fully supporting data retention, this latest skirmish is just the start of a long war that could see ISPs legally forced to record details of every website you've ever visited. In this article we'll take a look at what data retention is, the impact it's had on privacy in Europe, and what you can do to protect yourself.

What is Data Retention?

Data retention is, essentially, when your ISP logs and stores the personal data attached to your IP address (unlike PRISM, which focuses on cloud-based internet services). The data an ISP typically stores includes web logs, which let them know exactly what websites you have visited and when you visited them. An ISP will also store email logs (though not the contents), if you're using their email services -- or let law enforcement know about which third-party email services you use. All of this data will be linked to your IP address, which in turn is linked to your physical address and can be used to identify you.