What will they think of next? In a closed door meeting last week, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller put pressure on Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' online activities for two years. That means the feds want your ISP to hang onto a copy of what you've been doing - which could mean your emails (sent and received), records of the websites you've visited, information about what you've downloaded - every packet sent or received, just in case they need it for a criminal investigation.

What kind of investigation? Take your pick: child pornography, music downloads or terrorism are the usual suspects whipped out for making new Big Brother requirements; in this case, it's the child porn.

In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time."

"...During Friday's meeting, Justice Department officials passed around pixellated (that is, slightly obscured) photographs of child pornography to emphasize the lurid nature of the crimes police are trying to prevent, according to one source..."

As it turns out, we can blame the Europeans for being a step ahead of the US when it comes to this new wave of privacy invasion:

"...Until Gonzales' speech, the Bush administration had generally opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" about them. But after the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol providers, top administration officials began talking about the practice more favorably...."

"...The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time and duration of phone calls, voice over Internet Protocol calls or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008..."

There's no denying that child porn is one of the most vile forms of human exploitation out there, and that we have to protect kids from predators. But when these kinds of cases come up, they always focus the attention to how much the Internet has made it "easier" for bad people to do bad things, and ignore the big, fat, far-more-important fact that the Internet has made it easier for open communication, period. Enacting Draconian laws built out of fear and neo-Luddite misunderstanding of where technology takes us only serves to cripple our future.

Feds pressuring Internet companies to track you