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Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day
Alien54 wrote with a link to a Wired blog entry noting that May 14th is the official deadline for internet service providers to modify their networks, and meet the FBI and FCC's new regulations. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires that everyone from cable services to Universities give them access, within certain parameters, to the usage habits of customers. "So, if you're a broadband provider (separately, some VOIP companies are covered too) ... Hurry! The deadline has already passed to file an FCC form 445, certifying that you're on schedule, or explaining why you're not. You can also find the 68-page official industry spec for internet surveillance here. It'll cost you $164.00 to download, but then you'll know exactly what format to use when delivering customer packets to federal or local law enforcement, including 'e-mail, instant messaging records, web-browsing information and other information sent or received through a user's broadband connection, including on-line banking activity.'"
Get a colo service, preferably in another country; OpenVPN to it and use a web proxy running on it. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
Interestingly, this is the same kind of solution often resorted to by residents of those countries usually tagged as 'repressive regimes' by the good ole U.S. of A. Make ya think, at all?
you had me at #!
It's important to note that CALEA doesn't apply to "information services" or "electronic messaging services", only "telecommunications". Here are the relevant parts of the actual law:
Liberty in your lifetime
Unless your email is encrypted, much of your domestic and almost all international traffic is already monitored via the spy rooms installed by the NSA in core backbone network provider's facilities, such as those installed at AT&T. And with the massive bandwidth and facilities available at such centers, and the truly abysmal security of many switches and routers including documented backdoors installed for federal use, it's easy to reroute other traffic to those rooms. So let's be clear: almost all unencrypted internet traffic is monitorable by the NSA. Even though it's illegal for the NSA to monitor most domestic traffic, there are no safeguards in place to prevent it, and with the US Patriot Act in place, all they or other federal agencies need do is mumble "terrorists" to gain unfettered access to it.
I'm afraid it's going to be difficult to coordinate protests with this kind of monitoring in place. And we're still seeing people say "but if it saves one life from terrorists", not realizing that it actually encourages terrorism by ruining trust in government and making people feel that only violent action might be effective.