How will this law treat VOIP telephone calls? Will call data also need to be recorded?

Because these bills are associated with "protecting our children," the legislation is likely to sail through. My bet, however, is that in practice the data collected won't be used to fight the exploitation of children nearly so often as it's used in other types of investigations.

I disagree with my PC World colleague, Scott Nichols when he says, "I wonder most about the effectiveness of this bill. It seems to me all that will be retained is the identity of who was using a dynamic IP address at a particular time. The bill is ambiguous enough that it may not include any information about that person's activity, which seems to me a crucial part of determining whether someone is engaging in illegal activities."

While Scott is right as far as he goes, my bet is the information that's collected will mostly be used when it's already known that someone has done something--like downloaded child pornography or sent e-mail to a terrorist cell--and law enforcement only needs to know who did it.

This might partially negate the obvious privacy concerns these bills raise. Instead of sifting though the surfing histories of all users looking for crimes, police would just search to see who was using a specific IP address at the specific time when an offense was committed.