Lots of opposition killed the short-lived Hawaii state bill.
By Suzanne Choney
Say "aloha" ? in this case, "goodbye" ? to a proposed law in Hawaii that, if passed, would have forced Internet service providers to keep track of all state residents' activities on the Internet for two years.
One of the goals of the legislation, supporters said, was to help understaffed and underfunded police agencies that are investigating cyber crimes, including identity theft and harassment.
The bill, H.B. 2288, was sponsored by state Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu, and would have made ISPs keep data including individuals' Web browsing history and IP addresses, whether they were accessing the Internet from a smartphone, coffee shop Wi-Fi or from a home computer.
But an avalanche of organizations opposed the bill, saying it went too far and wasn't needed.
"Existing efforts already achieve the goals of HB 2288," said Steve DelBianco, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based NetChoice, an e-commerce trade association, in written testimony to the state legislature.
He said data preservation laws already require all ISPs to keep data "pertaining to a customer when approached by law enforcement." That, he said, gives the police time to "gather additional evidence and secure the necessary court orders to obtain the evidence preserved and retained by the ISP."
And, he said, the reality is "when tracking illegal Internet activity today, law enforcement is 10 times more likely to ask ISPs for the person behind an email address or chat name, compared to requests for an IP address used to post something to a public website."
The bill had a short life; it was introduced last Friday, and quickly squelched by the state legislature Thursday.
If passed, the law could have hurt local government's own efforts at offering free Wi-Fi around the city. Gordon Bruce, information technology director for the city of Honolulu, testified that the bill would force the city to shut down its free Wi-Fi service on Oahu, a service provided through various voluntary partnerships with businesses.
"The requirement of capturing and storing this data will make it cost-prohibitive to those who volunteer to participate in this very successful program," he testified.
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