Yahoo! vs. the Obama Justice Department

Yahoo! announced on Wednesday that it will only be holding on to user behavioral data for 3 months, instead of the previous 13 months, according to the Washington Post.

Unfortunately for Yahoo!, the Obama administration’s Justice Department may push for ISPs and other web companies to hold on to information for more time, rather than less. Eric Holder, a former Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General, is slated to be America’s next Attorney General and Holder has stated publicly that he thinks companies should hold on to data so that law enforcement can access it when necessary.

This is a threat to privacy, an interference in how the issue of privacy is sorted out in the free market, and will make for an interesting fight between the Obama administration and regulators in the EU who are pushing for short data retention time lines.

Read my full post on the subject at techliberation.com