hey, here’s some fun news for those of you who like the idea of every search engine inquiry you make, every web page visit you vist, and every email you send retained as a record for the US government to review: In a radical departure from earlier statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that requiring Internet service providers to save records of their customers’ online activities is necessary in the fight against terrorism. exactly how it is necessary or how this would translate to catching terrorists or thwarting terrorism is not explained. does just the term ‘terrorism’ or suspected terrorist give a probable cause for such interference? where do you draw the line in the name of safety & security? i think this quote from the news article is a good perspective in terms of government regulation:
“A monumental data trove is a crazy thing from a privacy perspective,” said one person familiar with Friday’s discussions. “It’s crazy that the U.S. government is going to retain more data than the Chinese government does.”
UPDATED / RELATED:
great follow up/tie-in article titled how to protect yourself from big brother posted on the website traveling forever. in depth with ‘how to’ charts from the electronic frontier foundation. found via the mighty digg.
and now on wired, read crashing the wiretapper’s ball, where wired sneaks in a reporter to the ISS World Conference, a no-press-allowed conference for companies that sell wiretapping equipment to law enforcement, ISPs, telcos, and repressive governments. be sure to check out the photos of evil internet/cellular spyware gadgets from the conference. via boingboing.
that’s very unsettling .. thanks for the heads up, … now i KNOW they’re watching us.
I heard an interesting speech by Al Gore (given to the Civil Liberties Union) where he made the point that after the 9/11 attacks the terrorists were identified within a matter of a few days.
The fact is that the relevant data was already sitting around, but the intelligence community didn’t know where to look or what to look for until after the attacks. The weakness in the intelligence community was never in GATHERING data but in ANALYZING it.
If searching for baddies is like looking for a needle in a haystack then these expanded info-gathering powers will just be piling more straw onto the haystack…
Now, in addition to whatever else was already on his plate, some poor CIA dude is going to have to sift through all my filthy GOOGLE searches before he can find Al Qaeda