The recent developments in online anti-terrorism legislation is set to have significant impacts on the communications industries, including telecommunications carriers, internet service providers (ISP's) and internet content hosts (ICH’s). Because of its decentralised nature and the relative anonymity it provides its users, the internet proves difficult for authorities to regulate. As a result, governments have largely placed the onus on ISP’s and ICH’s to be responsible for what is hosted on their servers. Internet legislation in Australia orders that ISP’s and ICH�s must remove unsuitable or offensive content on their servers, thus Australian law does not directly hold content creators or individual internet users accountable (Electronic Frontiers Australia, 2002).
New legislation introduced both in Australia and the United States (US) has given greater power to the government, security and intelligence agencies to investigate the online activities of internet users. The result has been a greater responsibility on ISP’s and ICH’s to disclose information requested by authorities for investigation in to suspicious or threatening activities. This has raised several issues amongst civil libertarians, who are concerned over the infringements to people’s online privacy and rights. The main concern civil groups and privacy advocates have is that the new legislation will become tools for the government to spy on internet users, without the user’s knowledge. McCarthy (2001, p.24) describes the new legislation as “making communications providers an arm of the police and forcing service providers to invade the privacy of their customers�. However, ISP’s have not reacted in the same way, with US Internet Industry Association CEO Dave McClure expressing the inclination for ISP’s to cooperate with authorities when required to (McCarthy, 2001, p.25).
There are some potential noteworthy effects of the online anti-terrorism legislation on the communications industries. As stated above, there are fears authorities may exploit the legislation to use ISP’s and ICH’s as surveillance tools (Cohen in McCarthy, 2001, p.25). Communications traffic data such as email addresses, and times and destinations of phone calls are now privy to police and law enforcement agencies under the terrorism laws in the US. But once ISP’s retain this communications data, it may be accessed and used by government agencies for purposes unrelated to the anti-terrorism measures it was originally collected for (Goodwin, 2003). This would contravene current data protection laws in the US, and existing legislation on the legality of accessing data for other purposes is contentious (Goodwin, 2003).
The issue of data retention also creates a potential liability for ISP’s. Any misuse of customer details or information or wrongful disclosure of communications traffic data to authorities could prove extremely costly for ISP’s (McCarthy, 2001, p.26). The anti-terrorism legislation remains untested under the American constitution and no ISP wants to be the first to be trialed under the new laws (Henderson in McCarthy, 2001, p.26). Other financial impacts on communications providers include the growing costs to ISP’s and ICH’s to retain data records. ISP’s argue there is a considerable financial burden for them to store and maintain these records for easy retrieval for government authorities (Goodwin, 2003). Consequently, ISP’s and ICH’s are left in a state of uncertainty as to their rights and responsibilities and how this could potentially affect their business and their customers.
Katrina Yuen 11:43, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
Katrina Yuen 16:46, 2 Nov 2004 (EST)
Internet Industry Association (Australia)
Online Anti-terrorism Legislation - Online Political Activism
Online Anti-terrorism Legislation - Privacy and Surveillance Issues
Online Anti-terrorism Legislation - Recent Developments
Online Anti-terrorism Legislation - Implications for Internet Content
Back to Online Anti-terrorism Legislation
Katrina Yuen 11:43, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
