Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Christian Stalberg" <cstalberg AT internet-lab.com>]

http://agonist.org/josh_nelson/20070211/action_congress_wants_to_monitor_all_emails_ims_etc


A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is 
beginning to raise eyebrows.


 [It] would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM 
conversations and email traffic indefinitely.
The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican 
congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on 
ISPs which failed to keep full records. (emphasis mine).

....

Under the guise of reducing child pornography, the SAFETY (Stopping Adults 
Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act) Act is currently the 
gravest threat to digital privacy rights on the Internet.  Given the 
increasing tendency of people, especially young people, to use the Internet 
as a primary means of communications, this measure would effect nearly all 
Americans in ways we are only beginning to understand. Also, given the fact 
that the Act requires all Internet Service Providers to record the web 
surfing activity of all Internet users, this amounts to the warrantless 
wiretapping of the entire Internet.



--
"Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great 
interests which now dominate our development." "No matter that there are men 
in this country big enough to own the government of the United States. They 
are going to own it if they can." "There is no salvation in the pitiful 
condescensions of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of 
freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance."

Woodrow Wilson, 1913