Rattle wrote:
For reference, this is the actual proposed amendment in the house and senate bills:

(h) Retention of Certain Records and Information- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.

DHCP address on the resources mentioned are usually in rfc1918 space and s-nat'd or proxied out to the public Internet.

I'd guess that people who are using NAT are usually not authenticating access or not correlating IP addresses with identity. How will this law be interpreted in the case where no information pertaining to the identity of a user is available to retain? Are people required to have it? Does this law ban anonymous use of open wireless access points? Must coffee shops start photocopying people's drivers licenses before giving them a one time use web surfing password? The last time I worked on a project that attempted to correlate DHCP addresses with domain credentials it failed because the software products involved did not actually work in practice.

In regard to all the other logs that would need to be retained, the law is technology agnostic. If the logs "pertain to the identity of a user" they would need to be retained, regardless of whether they are DHCP logs or gateway logs.

Regardless, the text of this bill is not well thought out. The people who crafted this did not consult with people who actually understand how computer networks work, which is simply unprofessional. The bill should die for that reason. Go back to the drawing board and come back with something that is actually practical in this universe and then we'll discuss the civil liberties issues.

I suspect they will, and I suspect that when they finally get it right, it will pass. The ship has already sailed on the question of whether or not its reasonable for the government to collect evidence about everyone all the time so that it can be used against them in court if someone accuses them of a crime or civil tort. This is just another brick in the wall.

Data Retention: You have the right to remain silent, and everything you say or do on the Internet can and will be used against you in a court of law.

RE: Bill proposes ISPs, Wi-Fi keep logs for police | Politics and Law - CNET News