Feds' Net-wiretap order is going to start soon
 

By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

On Monday, the clock starts ticking for broadband and Net-phone providers to make it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on users of their networks.

According to a final order issued by the Federal Communications Commission in late September, all broadband Internet service providers and many Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, companies will have 18 months--until spring 2007--to ensure their systems have backdoors that allow police to eavesdrop on their customers' communications for investigative purposes.

The 59-page order (click for PDF) followed years of pressure from the FBI, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It would broaden the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), an 11-year-old wiretapping law that currently applies only to "telecommunications carriers."

The FCC has justified the expansion on the basis of terrorism and homeland security concerns, echoing Bush administration officials who have warned, for example, of the perils of VoIP services in rogue hands.

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http://news.com.com/Feds+Net-wiretap...6880&subj=news

************

Ok,
Bring out the tinfoil hat photos. Because in all honesty, I'm starting to believe that this entire war on terrorism is pure bullshit.

Nothing more than crap desgined to take away personal freedoms and go back to cold-war world economics.

If I recall correctly, yesterdays newspaper made mention of 30,000+ US citizens being checked out by the FBI without apparent cause due to changes made to telecommunications laws under the Patriot Act.

Now you are getting the picture.

Because we all know that the guys that flew the planes into the world trade center came into the US illegally, used computers and Voip to communicate, and were from Iraq.

George Orwell had it peg'd long ago...


SilentKnight

What a mess. This will get out of hand.

yup its too bad the older generations didn't read that book in school

Don't forget that they were funded by Porn :winkwink:

and Mary Wanna

Interesting article in the washington post

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A01

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.

National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.

Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. Criticized for failure to detect the Sept. 11 plot, the bureau now casts a much wider net, using national security letters to generate leads as well as to pursue them. Casual or unwitting contact with a suspect -- a single telephone call, for example -- may attract the attention of investigators and subject a person to scrutiny about which he never learns.

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress bought time and leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on 16 provisions. The changes involving national security letters were not among them. In fact, as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and Congress prepares to renew or make permanent the expiring provisions, House and Senate conferees are poised again to amplify the FBI's power to compel the secret surrender of private records.

The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also impose a prison term for breach of secrecy.



CONTINUED
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...0501366_2.html

basic cliff notes..

The f.b.i has this "letter" they can give anyone that demands they follow the unstructions of whatever the f.b.i. want and they arent allowed to tell anyone. There are no "checks" on this process , and once a person is investigated and found to be "innocent" those records aren't destroyed like in the past , they are collected and shared with numerous other government agencies.

Things are out of hand and getting worse.

What do you expect?

The majority of people in this country want to be left alone, until it's time to suckle big mama's government teat at first chance. Want security and don't care how it's achieved. Etc.

Repeal the 16th amendment and see how fast things change.

I like my broadband phone. My number could be in any area code and ring at my house. :)

i thought they could already monitor internet activity? or is just this about voip?

if you arent doing anything illegal, what are you afraid of?

Its just never a good thing when any government agency gains too much power. Right now its just monitoring the phones but that could easily go to censoring or limiting people's access to use the phones. All you have to do is throw out god, children, and terrorists and people will vote for whatever you throw out

Hopefully they'll soon get our firearms and make us 'subjects'.

if you don't think our government is already reading EVERY email/IM/ICQ you EVER send, you're high.

Why would anyone in their right mind assume that the net was suitable for ANY kind of secure or private communications.

Anyone with the right skill set and a packet sniffer could in theory intercept communications. How can it be an invasion of privacy when there is no privacy on the net to begin with?

LOL you would need billions of employees to do that.. They use devices that select "keywords" and such and even those are huge and bloated and cant do a very good job, they want a simple tap between isp and user.

What are they afraid of, if you arent doing anything illegal?

You don't like a right to privacy? Rush Limbaugh was totally against it until it came to the State investigating his medical records.

So let me play devil's advocate here...

Let's assume the state gets the right to wiretap without good cause or the court's permission.
Let's us assume they can do it randomly now on private citizens.

So one day you watch an old movie that show people planning to blow up some goverment building and your friend calls.

You discuss the movie and half way into the conversation the Feds click into listen. They hear "Blow up, smuggle dynamite, meet at the waterfront, etc."

Tomorrow they come and detain you under the powers of terrorist legislation and you aren't allowed access to an attorney and you aren't charged. In order to make certain you are "safe" they interrogate you for as long as required.

So my questions are this:

1) Given the above not-so-far-fetched example, do you really think if you aren't commiting a crime you should have nothing to worry about.

2) If this did happen to you, would you remain loyal to the state?

3) Lets assume you are found innocent after several weeks and released... but you notice this happens more often than you believed. What would you do to stop it. Or would you even try?

And keep in mind that ALL goverments watch protest rallys very carefully. They like to keep track of who is at them and who might be potential enemies of the state or there to recruit new souls.

They would have been labeled conspiracy theorists just as is happening today when such things are mentioned...

http://semiskimmed.net/bushhitler/gwbdotnet.jpg

HEIL BUSHLER!!!!

I clicked and nothing happened???
:(

Okay, sorry, it's late. I'm tired...

Well, after all, they have to find those damned WMD's ....

In the old country, during the cold war, if someone didn't like you all they had to do was say that you were a communist and you would end up in a prison doing hard labour.

You had no ability to question or challenge the charges.

What will happen to you in the US if someone says you are collaborating with terrorists?

As it stands you can be investigated in secret, and then you can be arrested and held without charges for an extended period of time. Your ability to question or challenge these charges is questionable at best. All because you are under suspicion of being a terrorist.

Should you be afraid?

It's been a requirement for Australian Federal Police to be able to tap into a data stream at an ISP for at least a few years now. I don't know whether it's ever been actioned as I have never seen mention of it in practice.

Uhhh.... yeah..... And WTC falling was what then?

Almost as crazy as here in the Philippines. It's common knowledge that the phone companies monitor network traffic (usually to crack down on illegal voip connections). Given the recent brouhaha re 'cybersexdens' (aka cam operations), there might be action afoot re these types of businesses.

Alright before I even answer this let me start by saying this....

9/11 was a tragedy and I wish it had never happen. I furthermore feel sorry and sad for anyone that has lost a loved one in those towers. As for the victims and survivors I can only offer prayers and kind words.

Do NOT think that anything I type is an attempt to take away or minimize the events of that day.

-----------------

Ok, let me say that 9/11 did not give any goverment the right to suspend civil liberties in the name of safety or security. Or to make it "non-answerable" to the people IT serves.

Living in a "Free society" comes with certain risks. Sure, give the state enough power and they can make your society very safe.

All criminals will be tried and gotten rid of, obscene material will be removed, immigrants won't be able to get a large foot-hold in the country, etc etc.

You might feel and believe you are really safe but we sure as hell won't be free.

(And 80% of pornographers will either become McDonald's employees or criminals... Think about it before you say you support this because you might be pissing in your own cornflakes.)

But to futher indulged this,
Tell me what happens when...

1) The obscene material is the christian bible. (Ever read some of it?)
2) The immigrant is you.
3) The crime you commit is protesting for your freedom of speach.

Okay, regarding the first part, Im off your back :)

The second part quoted, yes, I have read it 20 times at least (Catholic School)

are you retarded? why would they accuse you of collaborating with terrorist if you DO NOT do anything illegal?

they can survey me all they want - i'm not worried because i'm clean....


P.S.
if the gov would want to fuck you up for some reason, they have more than enough ways to do it.

What we need in America is our own modern day Ghandi to lead us agasint and get rid of the current administration.

In case anyone is wondering why the goverment gets away with what it does.

Trust me....

Once they declare that they have this "terrorist" thing down pat. They are going to start looking for "other forms" of threats to the state. Wait until you say, "I think the president is an idiot" and they come for you.

Wouldn't that be nice...
A more brave man has never existed prior or since.

You're just starting to belive it now? What about the $1.8 Billion dollars that was awarded to Chainey's company and is missing? What about the mention after the election that there were no WMD or ties to terroist organizations in Iraq? What about the increased terror alerts every time Dubya needs a distraction? How much more obvious could it possibly be?

Not shocked at all. It was only a matter of time.