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Experts Debate Data Retention
Center for Democracy and Technology Policy Director Jim Dempsey and Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, weighed in on the hot-button issue of high-tech firms and data retention during a Tech Policy Summit panel today.
Dempsey said he believes some policymakers will continue to advocate for last year's controversial Justice Department proposal to preserve certain data on Internet activity. The good news, he mused, is that "Europe is further down the wrong road than the U.S. is."
As the momentum builds for Internet service providers to store data for law enforcement use, federal agencies "are drowning in information," Dempsey pointed out. "They are getting referrals from ISPs that they can't follow up on. Their response is 'give us more information so we can drown even quicker,'" he said.
As lawmakers and stakeholders contemplate how such a data retention mandate would be implemented, Gelman said it is important to realize that technology has changed over the years. "A lot of privacy protections we had 10 years ago were based on frictions in the system [that no longer exist]," she said. It used to cost more money to keep data for longer periods of time but "those disincentives have gone away," she said.
Posted by Andrew on February 27, 2007 04:40 PM | Permalink
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