Full-Pipe Surveillance
Jan 31st, 2007 at 3:12 pm by Chris
Privacy is just so inconvenient:
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.
Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI’s Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what’s legally permissible [...]
That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing–or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider’s network at the junction point of a router or network switch.
I’m too busy to give this the full “holy mother of all dogs this is so fucked up” treatment it so richly deserves. I’ll try to make some time for a little outrage this evening.
Sometimes I think the Democratic Party would do great if they just ran on a plank of the Bill of Rights in 2008.
You know, it truly surprises me that there isn’t more outrage to this. I blogged this yesterday not only on my own blog, but also on Dailykos.
It got some recommends and some people seemed to truly be concerned. I even asked Rep Louise Slaughter in a diary she put up shortly after mine if she could at some point try to relay to the public what the new Congress is doing or will be doing in order to ensure the program is legit and not rife with abuse.
Think I got a comment back from her?
The way it works is so very similar to the way the NSA wiretapping thing works. I can see why some people might glance at it and think “oh, this shit again” and move along. Time to get busy shouting into the wind.