Security, Privacy and The Law : Security & Privacy Lawyer & Attorney : Foley Hoag Law Firm : Boston, Washington D.C.

On June 4, 2009, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched TOSBack – a site that tracks changes in the terms of service for major websites such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and eBay. If you're wondering why anyone would be interested in such a thing, you may want to revisit the controversy that accompanied the revisions to the Facebook terms of service. 

At TOSBack, users can click on one of over two dozen organizations to identify changes to the organization’s terms of service and/or privacy policies. TOSBack allows users to compare new and older versions of those policies, with a side-by-side view that shows additions and deletions to the policies. Users can also subscribe to an RSS feed that will alert them to new changes in the policies. TOSBack will undoubtedly help consumers identify changes that have been made to the policies of websites they visit. Nevertheless, because TOSBack exhaustively documents all changes to the policies it tracks, some users may find themselves spending considerable time sifting through immaterial changes.

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In February, Senator John Cornyn (R-Tx.) and Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tx.) introduced the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth ("SAFETY") Act of 2009 (S. 436, H.R. 1076), which contains a proivision that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep subscriber data for "at least" two years.  Specifically, Section 5 of the bill requires that ISPs retain "all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address." According to a recent announcement from Senator Cornyn, the new retention provision is needed to enable law enforcement officers to identify individuals involved with online child pornography. Several privacy advocates have taken issue with the bill’s data retention requirements.  According to senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Kevin Bankston, those requirements “unnecessarily threaten the privacy and anonymous speech rights of every law-abiding internet user” and would “create vast new troves of data vulnerable not only to government overreaching but also to any civil litigant wielding a subpoena.”

The legislation has been referred to committee in the House and Senate. 

Links:

• The Internet SAFETY Act of 2009
• The annoucement from Senator Cornyn's office
• A National Journal article on the bill 
• The EFF comment

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