But only people with something to hide will worry, right?

Congressman James Sensenbrenner wants to know where you've been visiting on the web. He's so curious that he's planning a new law to make sure he can find out:

Note how vague the child pornography provision is written:

Whoever, being an Internet content hosting provider or email service provider, knowingly engages in any conduct the provider knows or has reason to believe facilitates access to, or the possession of, child pornography shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

Now think about what that means. If you run a discussion board or a blog, and someone posts a link to child porn in your comments, perhaps deep in your archives, if federal prosecutors determine you "had reason to believe" that link exists, you could well be looking at 10 years in prison.

I'm pretty vigilant about deleting spam comments and porno trackback links, but even on a small blog like this, it takes time and attention to keep ahead of the 'bots. On a big blog (and most adult-oriented sites are much larger than even the big blogs), it might not be possible at all.

No, I don't think U.S. attorneys would use that language to go after Joe Blogger. But I could certainly see them using it to go after a sex blog or porn-related discussion board. And the idea that the government wants to create a database of the websites you're visiting ought to creep you the hell out. What's left that wouldn't be subject to data mining?

Chilling? Probably not to the kind of folks who think the government isn't doing enough to keep tabs on the rest of us.