WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department is in negotiations with national Internet service providers to make it easier to monitor the Web sites consumers visit.
Designed to help national authorities track down child pornographers, the proposed Internet regulations would allow officials to establish surveillance of Web site traffic for U.S. online users, McClatchy newspapers reported.
Many privacy rights advocates are opposing any rise in tracking, saying it would decrease individual rights and increase government surveillance.
"I don't think it's realistic to think that we would create this enormous honey pot of information and then say to the FBI, 'You can only use it for this narrow purpose,'" Center for Democracy & Technology exec Leslie Harris told McClatchy. "We have an environment in which we're collecting more and more information on the personal lives of Americans, and our laws are completely inadequate to protect us."
The FBI already is allowed to ask an Internet provider to maintain online records pertinent to an investigation, without a court order.
