The internet is fast becoming the standard for ALL communication, if it doesn't already have the title. Potentially useful terrorist information makes up a negligible portion of harvestable data, and we have no reason to believe that the powers that be will be picky about who they sic this thing on. Not every one of, or even the majority of, the above mentioned "all federal agencies," have anything to do with counterterrorism, which begs the question of exactly what the rest of them are supposed to use this "toolkit" for. If terrorists were communicating exclusively by telephone, wiretapping every line in the country would be an effective preventative measure against in-country cells communicating with out-country leadership, but it would also be a gross violation of every American citizen's privacy, which this thing could become with very little imagination- especially with the nasty "leaving no trace" bit seemingly insuring that it could be implemented on any scale without anyone noticing. You simply can't infringe the rights of many to get at the few- if Al-Qaeda exclusively used carrier pigeons, as opposed to some medium that nearly everyone in every non-third-world country uses, I'd be camped out on the roof with a 12-gage, but as it stands, there's no justification for randomly seizing information simply because it may be viable and you think you can get away with it. I don't doubt that it will take the collective geek subculture all of a week get ahold of this thing, slap it around, and bend it to their will, but the possible implications of what's been said here are more than a little scary.
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The internet is fast becoming the standard for ALL communication, if it doesn't already have the title. Potentially useful terrorist information makes up a negligible portion of harvestable data, and we have no reason to believe that the powers that be will be picky about who they sic this thing on. Not every one of, or even the majority of, the above mentioned "all federal agencies," have anything to do with counterterrorism, which begs the question of exactly what the rest of them are supposed to use this "toolkit" for. If terrorists were communicating exclusively by telephone, wiretapping every line in the country would be an effective preventative measure against in-country cells communicating with out-country leadership, but it would also be a gross violation of every American citizen's privacy, which this thing could become with very little imagination- especially with the nasty "leaving no trace" bit seemingly insuring that it could be implemented on any scale without anyone noticing. You simply can't infringe the rights of many to get at the few- if Al-Qaeda exclusively used carrier pigeons, as opposed to some medium that nearly everyone in every non-third-world country uses, I'd be camped out on the roof with a 12-gage, but as it stands, there's no justification for randomly seizing information simply because it may be viable and you think you can get away with it. I don't doubt that it will take the collective geek subculture all of a week get ahold of this thing, slap it around, and bend it to their will, but the possible implications of what's been said here are more than a little scary.