Here We Go Again

cNet is reporting that on Thursday a bill was introduced to require ISPs, coffee shops, even home users to keep logs of wireless internet access for at least two years.  The bill itself is titled “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act”, which does indeed sound like a good thing; however, two years is a long, long time to keep log files on everyone who connects to a dhcp enabled wireless network.

By default, most wireless routers are set to DHCP to make them more ‘plug and play’ friendly and most log files are not stored by default for longer than a few days.  So what this means is you’d need to educate most of the general public on how to properly secure a wireless network, and how to schedule log files so they’re dumped to an external source and stored for two years.  Imagine keeping track of everyone who connected to an access point at a park or a Starbucks for two years.  You’d need at least an additional server just for log storage.  That’s just too much for most people to handle.  I’m no betting man, but I’m thinking this will get shot down.  I mean, we’re already having problems upgrading to digital TV and now they want wireless dhcp logs for two years… Yeah, I don’t see this going too far.

One thought on “Here We Go Again

Leave a Reply