Friday, July 29, 2011

Government to Track All Internet Use


Got this message from Demand Progress.org:


"A direct assault on Internet users" is what the ACLU is calling it.

Yesterday a U.S. House committee approved HR 1981, a broad new Internet snooping bill. They want to force Internet service providers to keep track of and store their customers' information -- including your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, and 25 other civil liberties and privacy groups have expressed our opposition to this legislation.

Will you join us in opposition by emailing your lawmakers right away? Just click here.

They've shamelessly dubbed it the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act," but our staunchest allies in Congress are calling it what it is: an all-encompassing Internet snooping bill.

CNet Reports: Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill said, " 'It represents a data bank of every digital act by every American' that would 'let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.' "

"The bill is mislabeled," said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. "This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes."

Please click here to join the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Consumer Federation of America, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Demand Progress and 25 other civil liberties and privacy groups in opposing this legislation.

Thanks for fighting for Internet freedom.

-- The Demand Progress team

P.S. The bill just passed committee, so it's time to push back hard. Will you please ask your friends to take action too?



A worthy cause, which I hope many will support.

Unforunately, House Republican Tea Partiers don't seem too upset by HR 1981 -- indeed, the House Republicans control the committee that passed it.

And still, some Libertarian Party activists look to the Tea Party like some sort of libertarian hope.

1 comment:

Scott Lazarowitz said...

While the bill is obviously a bad bill, and might result in some loss of privacy, Karl Denninger notes that it isn't something to be TOO worried about (unlike the Patriot Act, the TSA cancer-scanners and groping, etc.):

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=190981