The reports posted are also very unclear on WHAT information they want kept.
There are different kinds of info that have a lot different potential for abuse. Info needed to track who was using what IP address at what time (customer name, address, credit card info, and login records for dialup lines) to track down who posted that horrible child p*rn is one thing. Most ISPs need to keep this info (for a short time, anyway) so they can turn off customers who cancel their accounts and possibly bill for time used. It can be used to correlate victim server logs to determine who launched that attack or posted the evil child p*rn. But in order to use this info, it has to be matched against someone else's logs (e.g. they have to get logs from Ebay on what IP and when searched for "weapons of mass destruction") .
Tracking every web URL accessed and envelope info for every email sent or received is far more abusable and is something that most ISPs not using proxies don't keep and don't care about (unless the server involved is one of theirs). It's also extremely invasive and abusable and can reveal sensitive information (passwords, and all sorts of info on one's taste in reading). It's great for fishing expeditions. They can find out if ANY customers of this ISP, such as George Bush, searched for "weapons of mass destruction" on any search engine without going to the search engines.
The difference between the two is much like the difference between "John Doe lived at 15 Maple Street, Anytown, State of Confusion between June 1999 and May 2005", and a log of everyone who came and left during that time and when.
So what kinds of info are they asking for?
Gordon L. Burditt