Two new bills in the House and Senate have been proposed that would force Wi-Fi hotspots, including personal users, to log data and keep it for up to two years.

There are several interesting notes consumers should be aware of.  The bill is sponsored by Lamar Smith, who claims that this bill will protect children.  He is also well known for taking money from RIAA and MPAA affiliates, who, in turn, want to eliminate open wifi and P2P.

If one looks at the law, it’s not even clear what is to be kept in the logs.

SEC. 5. RETENTION OF RECORDS BY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS.

Section 2703 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(h) Retention of Certain Records and Information- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.’.

Is this just forcing you to keep DHCP logs?  Or is it the information stored in RAM?  If it’s DHCP, then there isn’t any user information in the logs, only IP or MAC addresses.

This is unenforceable and major grandstanding by those who wish to appear they are doing something for the children, concerned about their constituents, and want to be reelected.  DHCP, proxies, MAC spoofing, and dynamic IPs are just a few ways to get around this bill if it should ever become a law.