Just in case you thought you were safer online than on the phone, once again our rulers are giving us reason to doubt. According to CNET news, the FBI is in the middle of drafting legislation that would require ISPs to provide wiretapping hubs for police surveillance operations and makers of networking products to build in backdoors that would allow eavesdropping. This bill would do a number of downright creepy things:
• Require any manufacturer of "routing" and "addressing" hardware to offer upgrades or other "modifications" that are needed to support Internet wiretapping.
In other words, this means that they want manufacturers to dupe unsuspecting customers by offering them "upgrades" for their software, when really all it's going to do is open the machine's back door to somebody else.
• Authorize the expansion of wiretapping requirements to "commercial" Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the "public interest." This privilege would likely include in-game chats offered by Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming system as well.
So, they get to listen to your instant messages too.
• Force Internet service providers to sift through their customers' communications to identify, for instance, only VoIP calls. (The language requires companies to adhere to "processing or filtering methods or procedures applied by a law enforcement agency.") That means police could simply ask broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon for wiretap info--instead of having to figure out what VoIP service was being used.
Your phone records wouldn't be private either, since they would be able to just ask for them, without any real cause or reason, because the law says they can. Don't we have principles about a "warrantless search"?
• Eliminate the current legal requirement saying the Justice Department must publish a public "notice of the actual number of communications interceptions" every year. That notice currently also must disclose the "maximum capacity" required to accommodate all of the legally authorized taps that government agencies will "conduct and use simultaneously."
In other words, they'd like to eliminate that bothersome clause that says they have to report when and how often they wiretap and how much capacity they use for these wiretaps. Wait, doesn't this amount to a warrantless search?
"People expect their information to be private unless the government meets certain legal standards," says Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute and member of a Homeland Security advisory board. "Right now the Department of Justice is pushing the wrong way on all this." Harper also said the proposal would "have a negative impact on Internet users' privacy."
This is a really serious problem lately. In the interest of rooting out supposed terrorists and continuing Bush's War on A Word, it is becoming increasingly possible for the privacy and rights of innocent Americans to be infringed upon in the name of "safety" and "national security." The FBI claims that it is necessary to expand the provisions of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) because criminals have now turned to using other sophisticated technologies like VoIP and instant messenging.
I've got serious problems with this. I support keeping Americans safe, just like anyone else does, but I don't support it at the expense of the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment proclaims the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Allowing all of these people in the back of our computers and onto our networks is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Don't tell me that you have to get into everyone's business just to root out terrorists. We're catching plenty without these measures in place. We've worried more about terrorism in the past five years than ever before in the history of this country, and things happened every year. Remember back a decade or so ago when there would be a hijacking story on the news? It was just a little blurb about some extremists, usually from a Middle Eastern nation, who hijacked a flight. It would be a 30-second blip, and that's it. Now they're all major news items, since every single one is assumed to be a serious threat to "Homeland Security" and every one is assumed to have some connection to Al-Qaeda. Well, I've got a little theory here. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but it seems that the current administration (not just the guy in charge, but Our Government in general) has done an awful lot of work on bringing us all "under control", and things like a terrorist attack served as some great little ways to pass legislation that wouldn't fly otherwise. This place is increasingly running like a totalitarian dictatorship, although it's all passing under our radar because it's being disguised as "safety measures." Dictators rule through fear; so does Our Government. If they can keep us scared of something (big bad terrorists, nukes in Iraq and Iran, etc.), they can pass whatever they want if they can convince the American sheeple that they need this stuff to be safe.
And what security measures would we be forced to compromise in order to be further "protected" from terrorists? Wouldn't making it easier for the Feds to browse our networks also make it easier for hackers and wardrivers? Seems to me that making it easier for one to get in just makes it easier for all, and then we've got a circle that just made it easier for "terrorists" to do what they were supposed to be prevented from doing in the first place.
Currently, this legislation is a little late in the timeline to make it in this year, but some version of it could be seen as early as next year. This is said to be a "top congressional priority" for 2007. The FBI is showing it to industry reps, hoping something will happen. So just in case you've been wondering who's breathing heavy on the other end of your phone, it could be Your Government. It could also be them breathing heavily on the other end of your ISP connection.
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