The Tug O’ War Between Privacy And Data Retention

It’s no secret that the government has been pushing for more stringent data retention laws, on the belief (which many question) that by forcing ISPs to collect all this data, it will better help criminal and terrorist investigations. At the same time, the recent leak of data by AOL has some pushing in the completely opposite direction, suggesting there should be laws that ban companies from collecting and holding onto too much data. In fact, I noted that the AOL leak may have caused some politicians to rethink their position on data retention.

Adam Thierer, over at the Tech Liberation Front, has also noticed these two diametrically opposed issues, and wonders how search engines are going to deal with being pulled from both sides. Hopefully, the answer is that the back and forth on these two issues has a better chance of making sure that nothing happens, and things are pretty much left as is. This may turn out to be the best solution for everyone.