Radical writer and free thinker Thomas Paine once wrote, "An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Paine crafted these words for the last paragraph of Dissertations on First Principles of Government in 1795.
How true these words have always been, and no more so than now, for the U.S. government is intent on embarking on one of the grossest violations of liberty in some time, though this is hard to believe in this Post-9/11 world which we inhabit.
The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are both considering bills that would create massive internet user databases to which the government would have access. This is, in technological corridors, known as "data retention policy" and it has become a cause célèbre from the WikiLeaks #NOLOGS campaign against Twitter data retention to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) concerns about the same in AOL's instant messaging policy.
The offending pieces of legislation are disguised within the morally impregnable title "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″—H.R. 1981 in the House and S. 1308 in the Senate. To oppose such legislation, equipped as it is with such pathos, one is rather immediately on the defensive. However, as The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reports in "Compliance with a Data Retention Mandate – Costs Will Skyrocket with Trends in Internet Addressing," the data retention policy contained in the bills is troubling.
The bill makes plain its pursuit of those engaged in the internet distribution of child pornography, and that user data would be gathered at the ISP level across America; but, its sponsors have not been forthright with the American people by willfully neglecting to state that the legislation, as it currently exists, would create a sweeping dragnet to which all would be subject.
As CDT writes, "The mandates would impact hundreds of millions of individuals who have no connection whatsoever to the sexual exploitation of children or any other criminal activity." This is the very essence of the matter. That there is no dialogue to this effect in the mainstream media, or via politicians to their constituents and the country at large, is vileness of the highest order.
It's also worth noting that imposing expansive data retention mandates on ISPs and mobile carriers is not cost-effective, which has been an obstacle to similar legislation in the past.
As CDT writes, "The high capital and operating costs associated with data retention mandates have long been identified as barriers to legislation. However, changes in technology in recent years will raise these costs to new highs."
It should come as no surprise as well that the bill's House sponsor is Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who also happens to be the chief sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would also violate civil liberties in its misguided attempt to stop online piracy—a fool's errand if there ever was one. Smith, as it seems, is a one-man wrecking crew of internet totalitarianism.
As Paine's words make so abundantly clear, and as I have noted in several articles relating to Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the original intent of a law can be wise but its application over time can be perverted (no pun intended).
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