CNET has reviewed, ahead of time, a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting today, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for a national Web interface linking police computers with ISP’s and e-mail host computers to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, the survey says, want to be able to “exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process” through an encrypted, police-only “nationwide computer network.”
Sampling of questions in the survey …
Q17: Nationwide security computer network for exchanging legal process between law enforcement and ISP’s?
Agree or disagree: A nationwide computer network should be established for the purpose of linking Internet service providers with law enforcement agencies so that they may exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process. Authorized user would communicate through encrypted virtual private networks in order to maintain the security of the data.
In your opinion, how long should CONTENT information like the text or images in e-mails be retained by Internet Service Providers?
Frank Kardasz, who is scheduled to present the survey results at a meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kardasz is a sergeant in the Phoenix police department and a project director of Arizona’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
In an incendiary October 2009 essay, however, Kardasz wrote that Internet service providers that do not keep records long enough “are the unwitting facilitators of Internet crimes against children” and called for new laws to “mandate data preservation and reporting.”
Current methods for obtaining search warrants and information requests are too slow for many police investigation. Of course, privacy advocates have their concerns.
Related content …
A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Request for Telephone Records
SOURCE: CNET Police want backdoor to Web users’ private data