Comcast says to keep Internet records for 180 days By Peter Kaplan Wed Jun 28, 1:21 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060628/wr_nm/media_comcast_records_dc_1 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An executive with U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp. told lawmakers on Tuesday the company will hold on to Web address records for a longer period of time under a new policy to help law enforcement. Comcast Vice President Gerard Lewis said at a House of Representatives hearing that Comcast would retain records on Internet protocol addresses assigned to computers connected to its network for 180 days, up from 31 days under its current policy. "We are confident that this policy will enable Comcast to become more responsive to valid law enforcement requests for IP address information," Lewis said in a statement before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on combating online child pornography. The new policy will take effect on September 1, Lewis said. Lewis, who is Comcast's chief privacy officer, said the records retention policy has been a key topic in discussions between Internet providers and U.S. authorities on how to enhance child pornography investigations. At Tuesday's hearing Rep. Diana DeGette (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat from Colorado, said she would introduce legislation that requires companies to retain Web address records for one year. DeGette cited a child pornography case last year in which she said investigators were hindered by destruction of Comcast records. Lewis said the company had problems responding to some requests from investigators last year because of technical problems. But he said those problems had been fixed. Also testifying at the hearing were executives from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Verizon Communications Inc., Microsoft Corp. and EarthLink Inc.. Their records retention policies range from three months to seven years. All the companies touted their past cooperation with law enforcers and pledged to work to find new technologies to thwart online predators and purveyors of child pornography online. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller met recently with executives of many of the same companies and asked them to retain Web address records for up to two years to aid investigations into pornography and terrorism, sources have said. The IP address is key to unlocking what a person does online, what site they visited, what terms they searched, who they e-mailed and what they downloaded. However, Lewis said any records the company would keep under the new policy would be "strictly limited." It would not include any information on customers' Web surfing habits, he said. Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
