FBI May Get Easier Access To Internet Activity 276
olsmeister writes "It appears the White House would like to make it easier for the FBI to obtain records of a person's internet activities without a court order to do so, via the use of an NSL. While they have been able to do this for a long time, it may expand the type of information able to be gathered without a court order to include things like web browsing histories."
Weep for America .... (Score:1, Interesting)
I weep for the freedoms that America once enjoyed.
Enjoy your fascist state, the rest of the world is laughing. You've lost the war on terror, and now sit huddled in a corner.
And, fuck you FBI, with your domestic spying and stupidity.
Musing about encryption and privacy rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are some awkward related questions:
1. What do you think the US government's encryption-breaking capability REALLY is these days? e.g. for example,
are common encryption protocols and key-lengths used in, say, online banking and e-commerce readily crackable by the Feds?
2. Do security agencies of the federal government automatically flag for further investigation all people who use "an excess
amount of encrypted traffic"?
3. Does the FBI, a "domestic" intelligence agency, have the right to spy on foreign residents whose net transactions
traverse the US border? If they don't have the right, are they doing it anyway, or is that some other agency?
Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:2, Interesting)
If you have said it before, why not save us all the trouble and just keep your mouth shut then?
Re:Lesson for big-government cheerleaders (Score:3, Interesting)
We have exactly two choices for how to organize society: oligarchy or anarchy.
Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:2, Interesting)
Storage is so cheap anymore that it is quite reasonable that any agency (or entity for that matter) that had the desire to monitor the complete transaction history of any particular individual on the internet could do so easily and very cheaply assuming they had the proper access. Mind you, ISPs and phone companies could already be doing such things, I don't think that there is a particular law against doing so. If that is the case, then true privacy is, since telephones have been around forever, and has been an illusion for many decades. The only real question that remains is what are the permissible use cases for the data that is collected.
Re:And another disappointment (Score:5, Interesting)
Terrorists! (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that this is just moving further in the FBI's renewed interest under Obama to go after file-sharers without the need of the courts prove their need. Everybody knows file-sharers are terrorists in disguise, anyway.
ACTA is failing on a worldwide scale, so why not make sure they can move forward in other - easier - ways?
Re:And another disappointment (Score:5, Interesting)
"Avarice and ambition will break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
"No man's life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session." -- Benjamin Franklin. Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects." - Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy, 1787
I wish people would start listening to these guys.
Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree, except for what is implied by what you aren't saying (and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I want to make it clear that this is something you appear to be inferring, and is obviously what others have seen as well given prior responses to your post).
Your statement sounds like the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" meaning you appear to be OK with things going, as you say, screwy, because it won't affect you due to your discretion.
First, your sense of discretion is probably not quite as effective as you think it is. Aggregating data is a pretty scary science. Get a temporary job working for a marketing or other aggregation firm. You'd be surprised how easy it is to gather data these days.
Second, what is acceptable today may not be acceptable tomorrow, and your government should not obligate you to live in a post-Miranda-rights condition ("anything you say can and will be used against you") until someone actually reads those words to you because you are actually suspected of a crime based on, you know, real evidence and due process and innocent until proven guilty and all that "wishy-washy namby-pamby terrorist-lover" stuff that is so out of vogue these days.
It's important to hold your cards close and not offer up information that could be used against you. On that we agree.
However, it's equally important to limit the control and power of those who are supposed to serve in the cause of our freedom rather than demand that we serve them by offering the same freedoms up to them (our Government).
So, by all means, treat your actions as if "they" were watching. But don't depend on that discretion, and don't use it to dismiss the real threat that its very necessity implies.
If I have put words in your mouth, I humbly apologize.
Re:And another disappointment (Score:3, Interesting)
You think they're answerable now? How would that be any different? Politicians are never really answerable to the vote, except in extraordinary circumstances. Like cockroaches, they just keep popping up. Even when they don't, they live out the rest of their lives living comfortably on public largess.