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Qwest Says Data Retention Laws Are A Great Idea
from the huh? dept
The federal government has wanted to enact data retention requirements for some time, and now Qwest has taken the curious position of saying it supports the legislation, making it the first broadband provider to do so. It's a slightly curious position for the company, which gained a lot of consumer goodwill when it refused to cooperate with the NSA in the wiretapping imbrolgio that sucked in other major telcos. It's unclear why Qwest thinks the laws are a good idea, the company's chief privacy officer not giving any reasons beyond saying that Qwest wants to be present in the discussions in hopes of coming up with something reasonable -- but given lawmakers' involvement, that's wishful thinking. What's a little more striking is her admission that the company keeps logs of "more than 99 percent of its services" for a year, which doesn't seem to really jibe with the privacy-protector image Qwest cultivated with its NSA stance. It doesn't look like the recent AOL search data leak clearly enough illustrated the downside of data rentention, while Qwest's support of new laws doesn't change the fundamental problems with it, including its costs and technical challenges -- but most crucially, how data retention just creates more data, not better data for law enforcement to comb through. Update: Qwest says hang on, that it doesn't support the federal legislation, and that its counsel misspoke -- confusing federal data-retention proposals with a much less onerous state plan a Colorado legislator proposed.
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Govt: We want you to supply us with July 16th, 2004
ISP: huh?
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Listening too closely...
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Re: Listening too closely...
:)
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RE: Listening too closely
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yeah like thats gunna actually work
oh and the account was 'padded' with a huge range of garbage too.
can see this happening, gov suit walks up to jonny ISP and says "what ho! we need all records of data transmitted in the Derby area for 07/07/2005..
which they then get... does anyone (gov suits especially) have *any idea* just how much data that will be? and in god alone knows how many formats, since you can bet ISP logs will vary over time in what they store..
the only peeps i feel for are the poor sods whose desk all this lands on to 'sort through' presumably with some thing they are expected to find, and told to search until they do.
job for life one feels but it sounds more like a prison sentance to me.
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Re: yeah like thats gunna actually work
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