On Wednesday, Feb. 28, Rachel Brand, a former White House attorney and current assistant attorney general for legal policy, met with Internet service providers such as AOL to discuss data retention of users’ records for a period of two years. Data retention is limited to uploading of photographs or videos. The purpose for retention is to decide whether the uploaded material is illegal.
The Bush administration and the U.S. attorney general’s office have been looking to retain the material in order to assist in prosecutions for terrorism, child pornography, and other crimes. Websites such as Google and PBWiki.com already store personal information of surfers forever. While others, like AOL, delete them after 30 days.
"Providing an additional avenue for [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales and the current administration to poke around in my life concerns me as a private citizen," noted Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition.
As it applies to chilling speech in the adult industry, Duke’s comments were even more pointed. "Add to that Gonzales’ declaring war on adult entertainment and this could bring government intrusion to a whole new level—bad for citizens and bad for the industry," she said.
It is notable that the U.S. Justice Department did not ask universities or librarians to conform to the new voluntary retention policy—in part, due to a probable public relations "pushback," as stated by a Justice Department official. While this term remains undefined, it seems the public relations backlash could reasonably be based on violation of constitutional First Amendment privacy grounds.
