The possibility that Internet users will be able to hide what they do from the ubiquitous ad tracking is a big win for consumers concerned with Internet privacy. 
Lawmakers have heralded the bill as a companion to the “Do Not Call” registry that was introduced in 2003. The registry prevented telemarketers from calling consumers who chose to opt-out from telemarketing calls. The “Do Not Track” bill would similarly force advertisers to respect the privacy of users who do not want their online activity to be subject to ad network tracking for marketing purposes.
According to Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), the bill’s sponsor, “Consumers have a right to determine what if any of their information is shared with big corporations, and the federal government must have the authority and tools to enforce reasonable protections.”
The “Do Not Track” bill would give the FTC eighteen months to come up with a set of enforceable privacy protection regulations for online ad network tracking. Some, like Ryan Calo, director of Stanford Law School’s Consumer Privacy Project, believe the bill does not go far enough. For one, he said, the bill only applied to those who chose to opt-out from ad network tracking. It does not affect those who do not know that they can or do not know how. This objection is partially overruled as the newest edition of the Firefox browser makes prevalent a “Do Not Track Me” option said to be the response to this and other similar bills.
FBI Wants to Expand Internet Wiretapping
The FBI, in an effort to keep up with the changing landscape of the Internet, is calling for a push to expand its capabilities in intercepting online evidence. Citing advances in “webmail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer services,” the FBI’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni, addressed Congress to discuss the increasing difficulty in tracing electronic communication in ongoing cases. According to Ms. Caproni, “In the ever-changing world of modern communications technologies, however, the FBI and other government agencies are facing a potentially widening gap between our legal authority to intercept electronic communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to actually intercept those communications. As the gap between authority and capability widens, the government is increasingly unable to collect valuable evidence in cases ranging from child exploitation and pornography to organized crime and drug trafficking to terrorism and espionage.”
The FBI argues that the current limitations on their wiretapping are antiquated. Many statutes have not been updated since the early nineties. Some of the statutes allow the FBI to read e-mail stored on a local server that is more than six months old. These laws date back to a time when users fetched their mail from a single computer almost daily, so e-mail that had been on a server for six months was considered abandoned. In the age of webmail, users keep most of their emails forever. 