Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Sensenbrenner wants a log

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNET News)--A prominent Nazi on Capitol Hill has prepared legislation that would eliminate Internet privacy rules by requiring that logs of Americans' online activities be stored.

The proposal comes just weeks after Attorney General Alberto (Torture Boy) Gonzales said Internet service providers should retain records of user activities "until we've had a chance to go through them," a move that represented a bold new front in the Bush Crime Family's War on Privacy.

Wisconsin Representative F. James (Shit-eyes) Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "whip up criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year, with the hoods and the beating and everything.

In addition, Sensenbrenner's legislation--expected to be announced as early as this week--would also create a brand-new federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and other enemies of the state. It's aimed at any site that someone-- anyone--might have "reason to believe" facilitates access to the new communism, Child Pornography, through, for instance, random links inserted into political comment threads by ruling party trolls.

Speaking to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last month, Torture Boy warned of the dangers of pedophiles and Democrats using the Internet anonymously and called for new laws from Congress, since the old ones are impossible for Bush Family hacks to obey. "At the most basic level, the Internet is used as a tool for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography on a relatively anonymous basis," Torture Boy said. "In a post-9/11 world, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been attacked in broad daylight by Child Pornography, I can't think of anything more important than keeping that bandwidth where it belongs, in the hands of senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security."

Until Torture Boy's speech, the Bush Family had explicitly opposed laws requiring data retention, saying it had "serious reservations" about anything being written down, ever. But after the potential for blackmail and extortion was explained in words of two or fewer syllables, top administration officials began talking about it more favorably.

The drafting of the data-retention proposal comes as Republicans are trying to do more to please their fascist masters before the November election. One bill announced last week targets MySpace.com and other social networking sites lacking major corporate backing. At a meeting last weekend, social conservatives called on the Bush administration to step up action against pornography, especially undocumented teenage Mexican pornography taking jobs from American kids.

Sensenbrenner's proposal is likely to be controversial. It would substantially alter U.S. laws dealing with privacy protection of Americans' Web surfing habits and is sure to alarm Internet businesses that could be at risk for linking to illicit Web sites, as well as anyone who has ever navigated away from the Yahoo home page, for any reason, even for a minute.

A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee said the aide who drafted the legislation was not immediately available for an interview on Monday due to a serious hookers & gack binge over the weekend.

U.S. Justice Department spokesman Drew Wade said the agency generally doesn't care enough about law as an abstract concept to comment on legislation, though it may "issue a letter of opinion" later, but backdate it to simulate contemporaneous integrity.

One unusually totalitarian aspect of Sensenbrenner's legislation--called the Internet Something Adults Something Something Something Youth Act--or Internet Safety Act--is that it's vague enough to allow Bush Family hacks to come in later and make it say whatever they want it to say.

Instead of describing exactly what information Internet providers would be required to retain about their users, the Internet Safety Act gives Torture Boy broad discretion in drafting regulations. At minimum, the proposal says, user names, physical addresses, Internet Protocol addresses and subscribers' phone numbers must be retained, as well as viewing preferences.

That generous wording could permit Torture Boy to order Internet providers to retain records of e-mail correspondents, Web pages visited, and even the contents of communications. "We would never, ever use this information in any way that would conflict with established Republican practices," he said, smiling that little smile that makes you want to slap him.

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