Again, Twitter proves to be a useful blogging tool… Paul Alfieri, formerly of Motorola and now with Limelight Networks, directed followers this morning to CNET’s coverage of a proposed sweeping network bill:
politicians on Thursday called 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. “A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”
Dave Eckert points out the technical challenges for novices in creating and maintaining those logs. To which I agree, and will take it a step further – nearly five months after instituting a 250GB broadband usage cap, Comcast (CMCSA) has yet to provide customers a means of tracking data usage. They also appear to have difficulty managing their own inventory, sending DMCA notices to the wrong household. And give out other customer’s passwords OnDemand. So, if a commercial ISP is incapable of accurately monitoring and controlling network access, it’s probably safe to assume that most individuals and small businesses would be unable to document access point authorizations.