PornCon 5

As unlikely as Gonzales' and/or Mueller's resignation might be over this Jefferson document fight, news arrives that strongly suggests such action would probably suit us all rather well:

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities....

In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years.

All of this is to be done, of course, in the noble cause of striking a blow against child pornographers everywhere. In covering his police state tracks with an air of respectability, Gonzales spoke at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and insisted that ISPs "must retain" customer records for a "reasonable amount of time." Presumably, this means for as long as it takes the DoJ to sniff through them.

But Gonzales sought to assure those at the talk, though the rest of the country is loathe to buy it, that they simply mean well and that they really don't intend to trounce all over rights of privacy. Heaven's no!

Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed.

These words from the man who delivered to the White House the delicious reasoning that torture wasn't torture unless organ failure occurred. By extrapolation, I take the above statement to imply that a violation of privacy isn't a violation of privacy unless similar organ failure occurs. And even then, it's iffy.

Given Gonzales' short but odious history in the service of this administration, you have to believe this is pretty much a carte blanche statement veiled with an air of legitimacy -- something it certainly doesn't have. Because to Attorney General Gonzales, there simply are no legitmate privacy rights. At least none that would get in the way of the Bush adminstration poking around wherever it wants to poke. They're either doing such things to protect us from terrorists or because they're saving the children.