Saturday, February 21, 2009

Bill Proposes ISPs & Wi-Fi Owners to Keep Logs

If you are one of the millions of people that own a Wi-Fi router a newly proposed bill in Congress could make your life a little more difficult.

Republicans have introduced two bills that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and operators of Wi-Fi access points keep records about users for two years.

The bill in the Senate is S.436. In the House it is H.R.1076.

Read the story about the "Internet Safety Act" from CNN.


What would this mean to you? If you own a wireless router and the bill passes, you would have to keep a record of all users that have accessed your Wi-Fi network. You would also have to keep those records for two years.

This would also impact your cell phone if you have it enabled to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

I'd like to hear what you think about the proposed legislation.

1 comment:

Cheryl said...

Wow! That's crazy! It would not impact me with my home router much as mine is password protected and I know exactly who accesses it. However, it might impact me if I had to sign in to access public wi-fi's, such as at McDonald's, before I could use them, just so they could have a record.

There would no longer be any drive-in access as it would all have to be password protected for the sake of records and you would have to sign in to get the password at public places.

I do drive-in access all the time when I'm on vacation. I've been known to pull into a hotel parking lot for a while during a camping vacation.