From everything I've been able to read[1], this bill requires ISPs to track IPs that they've assigned to users, but does not require storage of all Internet traffic. This hardly seems like it would "kill Internet privacy for good."
And if it was the bill introduced two months ago that would be fine. Govtrack, as great a resource as it is, is often days to weeks behind. According to the cnet article linked from the Atlantic article a few changes were made by the committee:
"A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."
Has anyone actually seen the text of this "last-minute rewrite"? I'm skeptical, because I've been seeing this fear broadcast about this bill since day one. Maybe I'm naive, but it seems like a pretty large leap from temporary ip addresses to bank account numbers, names, phone numbers, etc. Every reference I can find to this bill still only contains the text for the initial retention of ip addresses.
Would love to see verification of the broader scope.
So far information is only coming from interviews with congress-critters on the committee that passed the bill(19-10). It takes awhile for Thomas (and from there GovTrack) to get updated with the revised text.
I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I read it too. Also, the amended code talks about requiring a warrant, so really all this would do (if I read it correctly) would be to require ISPs to keep assigned IP logs for longer than are currently required to.
If this is not the case, the original article should explain why a straightforward reading of the bill is not correct.
IIRC there were data retention proposals in Europe that included URLs and email headers, so when someone says "data retention" in the US people connect the dots. Even if they're the wrong dots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...
[1] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-1981&...