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FBI May Get Easier Access To Internet Activity

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-they-can dept.

olsmeister writes "It appears the White House would like to make it easier for the FBI to obtain records of a person's internet activities without a court order to do so, via the use of an NSL. While they have been able to do this for a long time, it may expand the type of information able to be gathered without a court order to include things like web browsing histories."

4 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Musing about encryption and privacy rights by presidenteloco · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here are some awkward related questions:

    1. What do you think the US government's encryption-breaking capability REALLY is these days? e.g. for example,
    are common encryption protocols and key-lengths used in, say, online banking and e-commerce readily crackable by the Feds?

    2. Do security agencies of the federal government automatically flag for further investigation all people who use "an excess
    amount of encrypted traffic"?

    3. Does the FBI, a "domestic" intelligence agency, have the right to spy on foreign residents whose net transactions
    traverse the US border? If they don't have the right, are they doing it anyway, or is that some other agency?

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  2. Re:And another disappointment by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't blame me, I voted for Ron Paul.

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  3. Terrorists! by LordSkout · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems to me that this is just moving further in the FBI's renewed interest under Obama to go after file-sharers without the need of the courts prove their need. Everybody knows file-sharers are terrorists in disguise, anyway.

    ACTA is failing on a worldwide scale, so why not make sure they can move forward in other - easier - ways?

  4. Re:And another disappointment by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Avarice and ambition will break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

    "No man's life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session." -- Benjamin Franklin. Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects." - Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy, 1787

    I wish people would start listening to these guys.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall