A few weeks ago we wrote about a ridiculously cynical attempt by some in Congress (mainly, Reps Lamar Smith, Bill Flores, Randy Forbes, Dutch Ruppersberger and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) to sneak through a massive data retention bill by pretending it was an anti-child porn bill. Of course, as we noted, the bill does almost nothing to stop or prevent child porn. Instead, it adds tremendously dangerous data retention requirements that will decrease user privacy, increase the risk of data being exposed, increase the value of certain hacking targets… all because some law enforcement folks want to be able to cruise through the data at will. Thankfully there was at least some criticism of the data retention aspect of the bill, and an attempt to remove the data retention pieces from the bill… but none of it succeeded and the bill was voted out of committee, meaning it will go to a full House debate. Lamar Smith defended the bill with this bit of ridiculous insanity:

“Every piece of prematurely discarded information could be the footprint of a child predator…. This bill ensures that the online footprints of predators are not erased.”

If he actually believes that, he’s a fool. First of all, those who are actually preying on children likely already know how to disguise their “footprints” online. Second, just because some criminals might use some technology doesn’t mean we should give up all of our privacy and civil rights. I mean, it would be just as easy to say that every piece of prematurely discarded email written by Lamar Smith could be the footprint of a criminal. It might not be. In fact, it likely isn’t… but by requiring that all of Lamar Smith’s emails be made public, we ensure that such online footprints are not erased. See the problem with that logic? Tragically, Smith apparently doesn’t recognize how he’s selling out the privacy of pretty much the entire country.

Kudos, however, to those who pushed back against this aspect of the bill. Rep. Zoe Lofgren brilliantly pushed a proposal (seriously) to rename the bill the: “Keep Every American’s Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act of 2011.” She’s right. If only there were some sort of “truth in advertising” law for Congressional bills that would require such bills to be labeled properly….

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