Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: (e blaterano sulla libertà in CINA!!!!) FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited
WASHINGTON--The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record
which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a
requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in
investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin
and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task
force meeting on Thursday.
  As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention
on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years
later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it
mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking
companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which
few if any currently do.
The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET
reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime
investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the
idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the
Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea
during the task force meeting.
Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that
the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct
criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least
1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a
period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and
telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time
and length of the call."
At Thursday's meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology
Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S.
Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking
that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.
"The question at least for the bureau has been about non-content
transactional data to be preserved: transmission records, non-content
records...addressing, routing, signaling of the communication," Motta
said. Director Mueller recognizes, he added "there's going to be a
balance of what industry can bear...He recommends origin and
destination information for non-content data."
Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association
of Chiefs of Police, which called for the "retention of customer
subscriber information, and source and destination information for a
minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be
available to the law enforcement community."
Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both
practical and privacy objections.
"We're not set up to keep URL information anywhere in the network,"
said Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general
counsel for law enforcement compliance.
And, Arena added, "if you were do to deep packet inspection to see all
the URLs, you would arguably violate the Wiretap Act."
Another industry representative with knowledge of how Internet service
providers work was unaware of any company keeping logs of what Web
sites its customers visit.
If logs of Web sites visited began to be kept, they would be available
only to local, state, and federal police with legal authorization such
as a subpoena or search warrant.
What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The
possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the
Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain
name such as 
cnet.com
, a host name such as 
news.cnet.com
, or the
actual URL such as 
http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html
.
While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep
packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could
run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in
a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd,
which pioneered it inside the United States.
The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an
attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said
one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that
required the logging of outbound URLs.
"Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged," a
staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of
the FBI's request was to identify visitors to two URLs, "to try to
find out...who's going to them."
A Justice Department representative said the department does not have
an official position on data retention.
Disclosure: The author of this story participated in the meeting of
the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, though after the law
enforcement representatives spoke.
.

 FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited
ma come può blaterare di democrazia in qualsivoglia paese chi è
contento di essere ancora invaso da truppe straniere dopo 70 anni?