Opponents Slam Hawaii Effort to Track Web Usage
01/26/2012
Chad Blair/Civil Beat
Internet privacy advocates, web entrepreneurs and business owners turned out in droves on Thursday to denounce a bill before the Hawaii Legislature that would require Internet service providers to keep a record of every website visited by subscribers for no less than two years.
Law enforcement agencies want House Bill 2288 to pass to help them prosecute cybercrimes, a troubling and growing trend in the Information Age. They say emails, text messages and the like are often deleted by ISPs and cell phone companies, effectively terminating investigations.
But ISPs, cell phone companies and privacy advocates told House Economic Revitalization and Business that the cost to retain records would hurt businesses. They also said HB 2288 could put those records at risk of hacking. Opponents said the bill would allow the government to invade privacy in an extraordinary way.
"This is Big Brother made real," said Robert Brewer, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Hawaii and co-founder of LavaNet. "Your entire browser history, for every person in Hawaii ... is at risk."
The House committee voted to defer action on the measure, but the issue is sure to surface again. There are other cybercrime bills before the Legislature this session, and many lawmakers are sympathetic to offering greater protection to their constituents.
Still, HB 2288 may also live to be heard another day.
Committee Chair Angus McKelvey asked Honolulu prosecutors to "immediately" work with ISP companies on compromise language for legislation. Pointing out that similar legislation is being heard before the U.S. Congress, McKelvey said the Legislature would wait to see how the federal bills fare.
"We will act if Congress will not," he said.
