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'Full-Pipe' FBI Internet Monitoring Questionably Legal
CNet is running a piece looking at what they refer to as a 'questionably legal' internet surveillance technique being employed by the FBI. In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible, the FBI has taken to 'full-pipe' surveillance: all activity for a bank of IPs is recorded, and then data mining is used to attempt to isolate their target. The questionable legality of this situation results from a requirement that, under federal law, the FBI is required to use 'minimization'. The article describes it this way: "Federal law says that agents must 'minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception' and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations." Full-pipe surveillance would seem to abandon that principle in favor of getting to the target faster.
Oh wait this in USA? Sorry my mistake carry on.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
1. For the most part they have never followed the rules. They may be careful about what they do in public view, but in private if they have felt the need, they have always done what they felt was necessary - even if blatantly in violation of some do-gooder law. I used to make fireworks, and I can tell you as can any other pyro that my phone (and theirs) was tapped, that there have been unlawful entries into my house, etc., etc., etc., going back decades before 9/11. (I had a friend get really mad at me when we had a hooraahing conversation we felt very likely to be bugged and talked about the magical properties of resorcinal wood glue and a very expensive and brand new guart can of it went missing from his basement while he was out. I used to leave dust in my storeroom and other tell tales to check for entry, which occurred from time to time. Paranoid delusions don't make marks!)
2. The technology has existed from the mid-1960's to tap virtually any phone in the country from, say, the field office in Missoula, Montana. The technology is related to blue boxing, for those of you who remember the cheating the phone company of the 1970's. Not illegal from the phone companies point of view if you do it using a wide area telephone service line, where you have paid for the bandwidth, etc. This is why the White House went to a switchboard in 1967-8: to tap the oval office phone, you would have to tap 1500 or so lines, and this will attract attention (especially if there is a special watch for that kind of thing).
3. It is the stated policy of both the FBI and Homeland Security to look at the capability of an individual, and pay no attention whatsoever to motivation or likelyhood of their being a bad ass. You will be surveilled if you are capable of making trouble. The head of the FBI publicly reaffirmed this on camera within the last month or so - I didn't take note of the date. Meaning: if you have a tech degree and are thereby capable of making trouble, you will be watched as a matter of publicly announced government policy.
4. When I was in the military I had a high level clearance. I have had one (bullshit) traffic ticket in my life, and my only crime ever has been making pretty lights in a garage instead of a licensed fireworks facility. Yet I was subjected to objectively verifiable illegal surveillance for years before and after. Your name is on a roster of "usual suspects" and will stay there probably for life. This should give most tech college grads pause - if you have a tech degree, you are undoubtedly on a list of "usual suspects" and have been looked at from time to time over the years. (Back in the 1960's - before Viet Nam got to be a big deal even - in many states the FBI used to interview the school science teachers to find out who the bright kids were, "so they could track them so when they got a defense job it would be easier to give them a clearance.") Like I am confident is the case in my own situation, there is probably no way of following all of this, there is now and for decades has been so much, but if you are very observant there will probably be incontrovertable signs ("proof") on rare occasions, like the disappearance of that can of wood glue left in a definite location just after purchase and befofre leaving the house empty for a weekend - and which had been the subject of a staged phone call. (My first hint was back in the days of my mispent youth somebody solved a labor dispute in a nearby town with dynamite wired to a car starter and every pyro I knew suddenly got a reverberation and feedback on their telephone. An obvious old fashioned tap, not like the nice taps they have everywhere today.)
5. Most FBI agents notes are kept as personal files, and are not discoverable under FOIA, etc., because of this legal nicety - even if typed up by an FBI secretary and indexed for the agency, so if a message came through that they needed info on Billy Bad the secretary could tell the agent that he had info indexed on Billy Bad and it was wanted by someone somewhere. I was told this from