Reply #53: Government Presses to Turn Internet into Giant Spy Machine - By Ryan Singel [View All]

[L. Coyote]

Government Presses to Turn Internet into Giant Spy Machine; AP Reports Citizen's Rights Being Protected
By Ryan Singel - August 01, 2007
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/government-pres.html

The Associated Press's Laurie Kellman leads off her Tuesday story .... "Congress and President Bush's aides worked on Monday to expand the government's surveillance authority without jeopardizing citizens' rights, aides to lawmakers and the White House said."

Did Kellman read the proposed bill? The bill (.pdf) that would change the nation's surveillance laws so that that the government would be free to spy on the contents of an Americans' phone or emails so long as the government "reasonably believes" the person is not in the country.

.....

In the age of the Internet, a significant number of those conversations, even between foreigners in the same country, now come through switches in the United States. So the Administration wants the right to build spy bases inside the nation's domestic communication infrastructure and be able to listen in on any email conversation or phone call that it suspects is overseas to overseas, regardless if any American is involved.

For another, the Administration's proposed bill would let the government order the nation's telecoms and internet providers to open their networks so that the government can build out spying complexes on their networks. The law would only require that foreign intelligence gathering be a "significant purpose" of the installation. So in essence the government could order the nation's backbone providers to let the government turn the internet into one giant monitoring device and examine internet traffic for signs of copyright infringement, domestic political dissent, pornography and parking ticket violators, so long as the NSA's computer algorithms also scan packets for the term "Al Qaeda." .....