The FBI is pressing ISPs to increase the rentention logs to two years to help combat child pornography.  The FBI has been using surfing logs since 2006.

While I do not condone the breaking of any laws, the use of surfing logs to combat illegal activities is fast encroaching the emlimination of our privacy (for those that are not breaking the laws).

Some of the records that Law Enforcement is seeking do not require indepth monitoring, some of the requesteed records require the use of deep packet inspection in order to deteremine the actual website that was visited.  Quoting a Cnet Source.

What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain name such as cnet.com, a host name such as news.cnet.com, or the actual URL such as http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html.

While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd, which pioneered it inside the United States.

The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that required the logging of outbound URLs.

"Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged," a staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of the FBI's request was to identify visitors to two URLs, "to try to find out...who's going to them."

A Justice Department representative said the department does not have an official position on data retention.

While I have always supported the efforts of Law Enforcement, I am also concerned about the loss of provacy we have seen in the country.  The presumption of innocence does not seem to apply if there is going to be wide spread monitoring of everyone's internet activity.