Legislation and its effects in our world

Wed Feb 25 15:30:15 UTC 2009

Hi Jim,
Avoiding the politics of this issue, I suspect that many more home users
will be affected than corporate or backbone admins.  I already log all
access to my wireless, though currently I don't keep outgoing access logs
for that long.  I suspect that if this were to become law, the logging
mechanisms in the provided home wireless routers would need a revamp.  Or at
least their storage method would.
-DS

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Jim Willis <jim.h.willis at gmail.com> wrote:

> After having a brief conversation with a friend of mine over the weekend
> about this new proposed legislation I was horrified to find that I could
> not
> dig anything up on it in NANOG. Surely this sort of short minded
> legislation
> should have been a bit more thought through in its effects on those that
> would have to implement these changes. My major concern is not just for
> myself but for a much broader picture.
>
> "Republican 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."
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/20/internet.records.bill/index.html
>
>
> I understand and agree that minors should be protected and I think child
> pornography is awful, however I think how the government is going about
> catching these criminals with this new legislation will not really be any
> more efficient than there current methods. Having a log of all IP's that
> come across my or anyone in America's "home" Wi-Fi for two years is not
> going to help "police investigations" but will cause me to have to go buy a
> more expensive router.
>
> So I'm just wondering, how would this legislation effect some of you on the
> NANOG list?
>
> -Jim
>