Seems some folks in Congress believe that all access point providers should maintain a log of users to be accessible by law enforcement.

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

…Translated, the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on–but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses. (That method is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP.)

• S. 436 Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act of 2009′ or the `SAFETY Act’
• H.R. 1076 – `Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act of 2009′

Good synopsis by DeClan McCullagh.

And this headline sums up the Congressional approach to problem solving that the two bills above represent:

New Congress SO last century

And one last comment, taken from Scott Cleland at precursor, indicating where policymakers should be focusing their energies:

Out of sight — out of mind.

It is very troubling that in all the public discourse about the future of the Internet, cloud computing, and appropriate Internet public policy, there is so little discussion or coverage of the real and growing threat of Internet cyber attacks on our people, economy, government, and network-infrastructure.