Proposed Child Porn Bill Earning Ire from Internet Privacy Advocates

From the Florida Independent:

A new bill intended to crack down on child pornography and co-sponsored by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-[FL], and Ted Deutch, D-[FL], is drawing criticism from Internet privacy advocates.

Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Deutch co-sponsored the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 28.

The bill would amend U.S. code covering the obscene representation of children and financial transactions that involve child pornography, as well as penalties for child exploitation offenses. It also calls for Internet providers to ”retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account.”

“We have worked with several Congressional committees to strengthen protections for children on the Internet and we support the efforts of this Committee to reduce and prevent harms to children,” wrote Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a statement to the Judiciary Committee about the bill.

But Rotenberg added his organization has a “specific objection to the data retention provision” of the bill. Rotenberg wrote that “these provisions would undermine basic Fourth Amendment safeguards, create new risks to Internet users, and are unlikely to solve the problem that Congress seeks to address.”

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