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FBI Wants Authority To Filter Net Backbone

Posted by kdawson on from the say-please dept.

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes "There are places where criminal activity is centralized: the backbone hubs located in hosting facilities across the country. All of the Internet's activity, legal and illegal, flows through these 'choke points,' and the feds, of course, are already tapping those points and siphoning off data. What Mueller wants is the legal authority to comb through the backbone data, which is already being siphoned off by the NSA, in order to look for illegal activity."

3 of 413 comments (clear)

  1. Public has a short attention span by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back around the turn of the millennium, the U.S.'s monitoring of Internet traffic was a big topic of discussion on the Internet, spurred on by James Bamford's Body of Secrets and the European Union's report on ECHELON facilities. Except for some of us Slashbots, the public seems to have lost interest in this troubling phenomenon.

  2. Re:And how do we break the backbone? by _KiTA_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    George Walker Bush

    Richard Bruce Cheney

    Larry Edwin Craig



    Oh, you wanted pictures, too. Okay. How about this one? The big banner says it all.



    The people who have the most to fear from this are the politicians. After all, if the FBI can snoop it, guess what will inevitably follow? One word: Net-Watergate. Your political enemies won't cave in to your demands on that anti-terrorism bill? Threaten to expose that they visited hot-young-underage-nymphos-with-bags-over-their-heads-and-bushy-underarm-hair.com on twelve separate occasions in the last year.



    Yikes.

    Or just claim they did. Remember, anything digital can be faked.
  3. Re:And how do we break the backbone? by unlametheweak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That reminds me, I once had a (few) interviews with an "off shore" (and a rather large multi-billion dollar) bank (I never got the job, but it came damn close). They never marketed themselves as an "offshore" bank, but the more questions I asked during the interviews it became apparent. One question I asked about the bank's history is that they evolved from various European banks and financial industries during the Nazi era to elude government (Nazi) interference. To this day this bank (and I'm sure many others) are still active in keeping the flow of cash moving. When it all comes down to the bottom line money talks. History and more specifically economics will show that creating artificial barriers to commerce (however illegal that commerce may be) will never work.