August 23, 2005
I don't usually find myself disagreeing with Tom (of BTD) on IP/IT issues, but I'm a little puzzled by his suggestion here that legalizing the monitoring of electronic transmissions is a relatively small issue in the face of the surveillance that's already going on:
I'm not keen to let US law enforcement collect this information without oversight, but I'd be much more worried about it if IT department geeks the world over weren't already legally empowered to snoop through our electronic correspondence for personal details, company gossip or (gasp) unofficial uses of the business's precious internet resources.To me the distinction is huge, mainly because allowing this monitoring to take place legally would make it fair game for prosecution purposes. "IT department geeks the world over" might be scary, but at least they don't have the power to arrest you or send you off to Gitmo, and anyway they have some reasonable interest in how company resources are being deployed. I'm probably as much of a cynic as Tom when it comes to the enforceability of privacy protections, but that doesn't mean I think we should give this kind of information legal force in courtrooms. I'm really disappointed to see Canada considering something like this.
Tom is right that in every business I know, the company reserves the right to monitor your communications, though in practice, its relatively rare.
It used to be that as a law enforcement agency you had to get a subpoena based on probably cause to place a "wiretap" (which would cover most communications). In 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lowered the standard to merely certifying to a judge that the information gathered would be "relevant" to an ongoing investigation.
The Patriot Act actually weakened federal abilities to monitor Internet transmissions. Pre-PA, there was no restriction on the Feds. Post PA, they can't intercept the "content" of Internet communications without proper court orders, though they can analyze traffic patterns and other incidental information.
I'm not sure if it's an open secret or an urban legend, but the NSA has long been rumored to run just about every phone call and bit of Internet traffic through computers to pick out potentially "interesting" traffic.
The NSA has a $10 billion+ budget and it's all black (not itemized to Congress or the public) so it's hard to say what they do or do not do. They purchase more supercomputers than anyone else, including the National Weather Service. Logic dictates they've got some serious electronic brain power working on some complex problems and data intercepts is a good candidate to be that problem.
s far as the Feds go, the genie is out of the bottle in this country. I would prefer the powers not be extended to local law enforcement as they tend to abuse those capabilities even more than the FBI and other agencies.
Thanks for the additional info. I've actually heard this same rumor about the NSA, and I woulnd't be surprised if it were at leats partially true, but again, that doesn't get to my central point of legality and whether or not these kinds of things become relevant in the courtroom. Maybe some people won't find the distinction comforting, but I have at least some measure of confidence in the rule of law!
Post a comment