The country’s largest broadband provider, Comcast Cable Communications LLC, on Tuesday announced the company will begin keeping records identifying account holders for a period of 180 days. The policy change will be implemented later this year.
The decision came after Colorado investigators traced a case of child pornography to a computer in that state. Authorities were unable to retrieve information on the sender because Comcast had not retained records on the account holder’s identity.
Congressional outcry hit the cable television provider earlier this year, when Flint Waters, lead special agent for the Wyoming-based Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, testified at a hearing of an investigative subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Waters stated that due to the Comcast policy in effect on recordkeeping for IPs at the time, he was unable to locate the sender of a video depicting the rape of a child. At the time, Comcast retained account holder’s IP records for 31 days; a significant difference from the seven years’ retention Net service provider EarthLink enforces.
“I’m sure that just makes all your employees around the country feel sick,” committee member Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver said to Comcast’s chief privacy officer, Gerard Lewis, at a follow-up hearing on Tuesday.
Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas called the 31-day policy “almost criminal.”
Comcast does not plan to retain specific email messages, histories of visited websites, or similar types of information.
