One step closer to a Total Surveillance Society

This administration is just relentless when it comes to domestic surveillance of law abiding Americans. Al Gonzales wants all your internet archives.

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.

That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.

...Often invoking terrorism and child pornography as justifications, the administration has argued that Internet providers must install backdoors for surveillance and has called for routers to be redesigned for easier eavesdropping. President Bush's electronic surveillance program, which was recently modified, has drawn an avalanche of lawsuits.

It's always to fight terrorists and for the children and to fight other crime. Are we forgetting the Patriot Act provisions were supposedly enacted to be solely to find terrorists? Rare is the instance these subversions of due process are being used for that purpose. We already have plenty of laws addressing crimes against children and society. In practice, the Patriot Act was just another end run against accountability in our government.

Justin at Know Views adds context to the story with this post.

And of course we have our Republican friends (and Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat) to thank for this wonderful piece of legislation:

All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican "law and order agenda."

Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever.

Whenever you see law and order and Republicans in the same sentence, you can be sure your civil liberties are at risk. When these "law and order" GOPers preach small government, they mean less oversight over political graft and more nanny laws.

A wide sweep databank like this could be used for any purpose from tracking gun owners to trans-fat consumers. Do we really want to give our government the ability to round us up according the next personal behavior the "law and order" nannies decide to make illegal in the future?

It's notable that Justice will exempt universities and libraries from the law.

"There's a PR concern with including the libraries, so we're not going to include them," the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. "We know we're going to get a pushback, so we're not going to do that."

If that's the case, I'd suggest we all start acting more like librarians.