Two lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would require Internet service providers to retain subscriber information for up to two years. The reason for their taking such measures is to tighten the law against child pornography.

Congressman officially unveiled two bills that call for Internet service providers to keep record about every user of their services and store the data for at least two years. The two bills, under the same title "the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY) Act of 2009" were proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith 

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) jointly introduced legislation requiring Internet service providers to retain subscriber information for up to two years.

Smith, in a statement on his Web site, cited issues with graphic child pornography as the reason for the bills. "Of the nearly 600,000 images of graphic child pornography found online and reported to law enforcement officials, only 2,100 of these children have been identified and rescued... Investigators need the assistance of Internet Service Providers to identify users and distributors of online child pornography," Smith wrote in his statement.

Language requiring ISPs to preserve user data for two years (as this most recent bill would) first appeared in the ambitious Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Act of 2002, which passed the House by an overwhelming margin but stalled in the Senate. A series of subsequent attempts—most recently the Internet SAFETY Act (that's "Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth")—have all died in committee. Many of the earlier bills, however, were far broader in scope, packed with provisions that drew objections that wouldn't be applicable to the narrower legislation introduced last week.