Category: Data retention - Technology & Democracy Project

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivers remarks as President Donald Trump looks on during an “Investing in America” event, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Cross Hall of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

^{George Gilder
November 4, 2025
Data retention

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The Microchip Era Is About to End

_{George Gilder
November 4, 2025
Data retention

2}

The following excerpt is from a George Gilder article in The Wall Street Journal November 4, 2025. The themes he writes about will be presented at COSM, our annual technology conference. Join us November 19-21 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The price of registration will increase this Friday, November 7.

Register for COSM Here

We are in the microchip era, which promises an industrial revolution that will bring artificial intelligence to almost all human activity.

The exemplar of this era is Nvidia Corp. Its market capitalization of around $5 trillion makes it the world’s most valuable company. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and CEO, dazzled the audience at the company’s AI conference in Washington last week. In his keynote address, Mr. Huang detailed the advances Nvidia’s chips have wrought. He thanked President Trump for bringing chip fabrication back to the U.S. from Asia with energy policies that enable domestic AI microchip production.

Nvidia’s latest chips are mostly encased in plastic packages and resemble an ant or a beetle with copper wires for legs. Each chip holds as many as 208 billion transistor switches and costs about $30,000. In a revolutionary breakthrough, these data-center chips no longer act independently like the central processing unit in your laptop. Instead, enmeshed by the thousands and even the millions in data centers, they function as a single “hyperscale” computer, with their collective thinking designated AI. The world’s supreme data center is Colossus 2 in Memphis, Tenn., engine of Elon Musk’s xAI. As the source for Grok and self-driving cars, Colossus 2 integrates an estimated one million Nvidia chips in one vast computer.

The “chip” has so captivated the minds of our time that even makers of new devices call its potential successor a “giant chip” or “superchip.” But the new device is in fact the opposite of a microchip, lacking separate processing units or memories in plastic packages with wire “legs.”

Can NSA Force Telecom Companies To Collect More Data?

_{Hance Haney
April 6, 2014
Data retention

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Recent reports highlight that the telephone meta-data collection efforts of the National Security Agency are being undermined by the proliferation of flat-rate, unlimited voice calling plans. The agency is collecting data for less than a third of domestic voice traffic, according to one estimate. It’s been clear for the past couple months that officials want to fix this, and President Obama’s plan for leaving meta-data in the hands of telecom companies–for NSA to access with a court order–might provide a back door opportunity to expand collection to include all calling data. There was a potential new twist last week, when Reuters seemed to imply that carriers could be forced to collect data for all voice traffic pursuant to a reinterpretation Read More ›

^{Hance Haney
December 8, 2009
Data retention, Online commerce, Privacy

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Behavioral advertising: Poor excuse for regulation

_{Hance Haney
December 8, 2009
Data retention, Online commerce, Privacy

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With U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and now the Federal Trade Commission holding hearings on privacy and online advertising, it seemed like a good time to visit the Google Privacy Center to see what categories Google believes I fall into based on my online behavior. My interests were:News & Current EventsThat was it. I could opt out of interest-based advertising or manage my ad preferences at the Google site, but, I figured, what’s the point? A Google representative told the New York Times that the Privacy Center pulls in tens of thousands of visitors each week. For every one person who opts out, four people change the categories they have fallen into, and 10 people do nothing, just look over Read More ›

^{Hance Haney
February 15, 2007
Data retention

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Will data retention make our communities safe?

_{Hance Haney
February 15, 2007
Data retention

4}

Legislation in the House of Representatives would require Internet service providers to store subscriber data specified by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. The Attorney General would also get to decide how long the data would be stored. The bill, H.R. 837, provides: SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS. (a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to Read More ›

^{Hance Haney
February 7, 2007
Data retention

2}

Data retention bill reintroduced

_{Hance Haney
February 7, 2007
Data retention

2}

A proposal to require Internet service providers to preserve a complete record of customer online activities has been re-introduced in the House of Representatives. Although a Justice Department spokesman recently said that certain safeguards would apply to protect the innocent (“The actual content that customers looked at on the Web will not be stored; all data will be stored by the companies, not the government; and the government will have access to the data only by current means, such as warrants and subpoenas”), the legislation says nothing about it. SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS. (a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations Read More ›