Web hosting, e-mail and potentially other service providers could...

Republicans of Texas. The Internet SAFETY Act (HR-1076, S-436) also requires electronic communication service providers to store for two years all information identifying the user of a “temporarily assigned network address,” or so-called dynamic IP addresses. Anyone who “knowingly conducts, or attempts or conspires to conduct, a financial transaction … knowing that such transaction will facilitate access to, or the possession of, child pornography,” can be fined or imprisoned up to 20 years. “Internet content hosting providers” and “e-mail service providers” who do the same can get up to 10 years in prison. The definition of a hosting provider would appear to include any company that temporarily stores bits in transit, not necessarily just those that let users upload and store content. A broad range of criminal penalties involving child porn would be changed to allow for life prison terms and raise the minimum prison time available. The bills would authorize $30 million a year from fiscal 2010 through 2014 for the FBI’s Innocent Images National Initiative. John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told us that Internet service providers would fall under the “facilitates access” language and could be criminally liable for child porn crossing their networks. “As such, the bill language is extraordinarily overbroad and almost certainly unconstitutional,” he said.