I’m excited to write such a scary headline. The irony is the person spying on you is – You.  A new bill making its way through Congress will require any operator of a wireless network to maintain records of IP addresses for up to two years.  This means every cafe, park, and homemaker would suddenly have massive data requirements.

Of course, this is all done, really, to protect the child.  Senator John Cornyn summarized the importance of the bill:

While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children. Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.

The bill is even titled the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act or Internet Safety Act. Creative. A similar bill was introduced three years ago.

Of course, this bill will do nothing to protect children. Instead, it will put an undue burden on businesses and individuals to maintain huge records of unneeded data.  Jonathan Zittrain wrote about the inefficiency of data retention laws back in 2002.  Forcing so much data retention makes it harder to find the information you need.  Michael Masnick puts it, we need better data, not more data.