One bill, aimed at protecting children from online predators, limits their usage of social networking sites, chat rooms and internet messenger programs to virtually nil - which campaigners complain violates their constitutional right to free expression.Another is a mandatory data retention law, which states that all ISPs must keep track of their users' search history for at least one year. It is argued by the bill's proponents that this will be used for anti-terrorist, national security reasons. However, the non-profit group Center for Democracy & Technology strongly disagrees. It believes that the government may use the data for non-legitimate purposes, or that the data will be sold on illegally. Additionally, they worry that once the ISPs routinely collect this amount of data, it can easily leak - and that the cost of holding such a huge amount of data will have to be borne by the ISP and eventually passed on to be made up by customers.
Anyone who doubts this eventuality has only to remember the story of AOL earlier this year. One of the company's employees intentionally released the search histories of 650,000 AOL users. The potential for loss of privacy in such a case is huge - although, at the time, rival search engine company Google stated it would never do such a thing.
The amount of money being thrown at Congress to change the bill is staggering: large American broadcasting, telecommunications and media companies who are displeased with the lack of control they have over the internet and the level of anonymity it provides to users spent over $100 million last year alone on anti-net neutrality lobbyists and political action committees. The level of profit that can be gained if these companies achieve their aim and restrict vast portions of the internet is apparently worth that cost.
Perhaps the most worrying bill is that which allows the NSA limitless access to wiretap anyone's internet phone line for any reason at any time without needing to apply for a warrant to do so. Whether the broad coalition of organisations and internet users arrayed against the legislation manage to convince the new Democrat Senate that these bills, paid for by big business and initially allowed to be discussed in Congress by the previous Republican Senate, should pass or not is a matter of debate - although previous efforts to crack down on rogue users have been, at best, sporadic in their success.
