Are Wi-Fi owners in trouble or not?
The House voted almost unanimously in favor of a bill that would criminalize anyone who does not report illegal images crossing their networks, upon pain of fines of up to $300,000.
Declan McCullagh has the story about the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act, or SAFE Act, passing the house by the narrowest of margins at 409-2.
He wrote:
This is what the SAFE Act requires: Anyone providing an “electronic communication service” or “remote computing service” to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s “CyberTipline” and (b) “make a report” to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves. (By the way, “electronic communications service” and “remote computing service” providers already have some reporting requirements under existing law too.)
McCullagh expects that home Wi-Fi owners “probably won’t have to worry about the SAFE Act’s additional requirement of retaining all the suspect’s personal files if the illegal images are “commingled or interspersed” with other data.” ISPs, on the other hand, probably need to call their storage device providers and start talking about upgrades.
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