Pardon me as I dabble in politics for a moment – Congress introduced two bills yesterday, S.436 and H.R. 1076, both entitled the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act’. See how nicely they spelled out SAFETY? Them Congress Critters are always looking out for us.
Per CNet – the bill calls “for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.”
To which I respond with – WTF? Can I have a unicorn too? Cuz it’s about as likely to happen.
Two years ago, I drove out to Walmart, a 3 mile journey from my house. I took a Canary, a device that detects wireless signals. It found 19 networks, 14 of which were open and not secured in any fashion. That is 73% percent of the networks. Three out of four people who did not secure their networks. Do you honestly think they’re going to figure out how to log the data?
The techno-morons in Congress, however, won’t recognize that. I’d like to say this would be laughed off the floor and never pass. It may not. But it does have ‘Youth’ and ‘Safety’ in the title so I don’t hold out much hope.
Then again, maybe this is part of the Stimulus Package. After all, there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of hard drives purchased to store all this data.
Moose and Ink 