Summer School?

Are the 5 ISP’s being asked to keep a year of historical data on all subscribers regardless of whether child porn is involved or not? If all data is warehoused can they not scan IM, social network sites, photo sites etc, or is it just email as initially proposed? AOL suggests it will be very difficult to manage the data and very costly.

Internet providers divided on anti-porn plan
By Kurt Eichenwald The New York Times
Published: June 28, 2006

In hearings before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this was part of the testimony given by AOL.

"Warehousing of data requires the allocation of enormous resources," John Ryan, the chief counsel of compliance and investigations at the AOL unit of Time Warner, said.

"Creating such a voluminous database will actually frustrate law enforcement's goal of locating and identifying the suspects they are pursuing," Ryan said.

Ryan said an analysis by his company showed that storing and maintaining such data for a year would cost AOL about $44 million

Glance at this PDF and you will see 2005 was not to bad of a year for AOL.


Is cost really an issue? Maybe a redirection of some of the current taxes, surcharges and fee's could provide the funding?