SAN FRANCISCO — Big Internet and telephone companies are girding to fight an unprecedented call by the Bush administration for them to keep detailed records of customers' online activities for two years.
The request by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III would dramatically expand the government's ability to track what people do online and with whom they communicate.
It follows disclosure this year that the Justice Department had solicited potentially billions of online search queries from some of the same companies and that the National Security Agency had requested calling records of virtually all U.S. customers.
Gonzales and Mueller asked Google Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and other companies to preserve the data at a May 26 meeting, citing their value to investigations into child-pornography distribution and terrorism. Internet companies typically keep customer histories for only a few days or weeks.
The Justice Department said Thursday that it was not seeking to have e-mail content archived, just information about the websites people visit and those with whom they correspond.
Beyond law enforcement, though, the trove also could be available to lawyers arguing civil lawsuits -- including divorce cases and suits against people suspected of swapping copyrighted movie and music files online. Privacy advocates fear the user histories could be exploited by criminal investigators conducting inappropriate exploration or pursuing minor cases.
"This is not simply limited to kiddie porn or terrorism. It's a real break with precedent," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Data retention is open-ended. The government is saying, 'Keep everything about everyone and we'll sort it out later.' "
Individual legal battles increasingly include court-approved requests for records from Internet access providers who might have online evidence of criminal activity or an affair. Often those requests yield little because the target can no longer be linked to a specific computer's Internet address or because the e-mails and records of website visits have been deleted.
None of the Internet companies has publicly opposed the request. But they noted concerns over privacy in statements Thursday. People familiar with the company executives' reaction to the Justice Department's request described alarm -- tempered mainly by assurances from Gonzales and Mueller that the discussions were preliminary.
