April 24, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- A report published Wednesday on News.com said FBI Director Robert Mueller and certain members of Congress are lobbying for laws that would require Internet service providers to keep records of their subscribers' activity online for two years.

The latest comments renew a call for this kind of legislation that has been in development for a few years.

There is widespread opposition to these kinds of laws within the general population of Internet users, who tend to value privacy as a matter of principle. But Mueller says that records of Internet activity stretching back over two years would be valuable in investigating sexual predators who frequent chatrooms or child pornographers who distribute illegal material online.

Laws that require data be retained for only 15 or 30 days, he says, would allow useful information to get away.

A list of senators that included Florida Republican Ric Keller, Texas Republican Lamar Smith and Michigan Democrat John Conyers threw their support behind the proposal for broader record retention laws.

According to News.com, the material from Wednesday's and other hearings leaves the precise details of what kind of data would have to be retained. While it might be something as unspecific as tracking what IP addresses are assigned to which users and when, it could be as intrusive as logging email and instant messaging content.

The renewed push for data retention laws comes as other government bodies seek to define their roles in legislating the Internet.

Last week, we reported that the FCC had held its second 2008 hearing on the issue of net neutrality, attempting to decide whether ISPs should be able, by law, to prioritize Internet traffic, or to block or limit the performance of bandwidth-hungry applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing software.

http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/0424 ... n_Laws.cfm