O'Brien
Posted on 04/25/2008 4:59:19 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The FBI on Wednesday called for new legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for "illegal activity."
The suggestion from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which came during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, appears to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks. Mueller seemed to suggest that the bureau should have a broad "omnibus" authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well.
The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, "whether it be .mil, .gov, .com--whichever network you're talking about." (See the transcript of the hearing.)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com ...
Stay off of MY network!
...
I always assumed they had this ability already. Apparently I was mistaken.
“the bureau should have a broad “omnibus” authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well.
The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said”
This is nothing less than ominous. It must be stopped at all costs.
ability to read is one thing.
this is the FBI the are about collecting admissible evidence. Inteligence does not worry about the courts.
these are the same buffoons who needed back doors to be able to tap digital cell phones.
“Stay off of MY network!”
Hopefully, a whole range of voices will shout that.
The Bush Justice Department ain’t got the balls to do anything good with this.
outsourcing American jobs to China, insourcing the Chinese police state to America.
Lovely.
/shudder
“Imagine the FBI having these powers in a Obama or Clinton presidency.”
That really is cause to shudder.
bump
If it’s so scary why don’t they just turn the darn thing off!?
I too assumed they could do this. I don't really understand why they can't snoop the internet forums and the like. Emails and private chats, I'd assume would or should be off limits.
Turning off the computer limits one’s access to information that they couldn’t find elsewhere.
The FBI already has the capability to monitor private internet traffic as does the NSA. However, they lack the permission to do so legally without a court order. Now, they want to monitor freely without constitutional protections such as free from unreasonable search.
Amendment IV: Warrants and searches.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Google - Combating Terrorism Act of 2001 sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
“The FBI has since created a network of links and electronic hubs for collection purposes amongst the nation’s largest telecom carriers and internet providers “and about 40 FBI offices and Quantico, according to interviews and documents describing the agency’s Digital Collection System,” according to the Washington Post.
These revelations mirror those of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, who revealed that the super secretive National Security Agency had been given access by AT&T management to install “splitters” for the Agency hard-wired to an NSA “secure” room in the company’s central office in San Francisco. According to Klein,
“In short, an exact copy of all internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables—emails, documents, pictures, web browsing, Voice over-internet phone conservations, everything—was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room. In addition the documents reveal the technological gear used in their secret project, including a highly sophisticated search component capable of quickly sifting through huge amounts of digital data (including text, voice and images) in real time according to pre-programmed criteria.
It’s important to understand that the internet links which were connected to the splitter contained not just foreign communications but vast amounts of domestic traffic, all mixed together. Furthermore, the splitter has no selective abilities—it’s just a dumb device which copies everything to the secret room. And the links going through the splitter are AT&T’s physical connections to many other internet providers (e.g., Sprint, Qwest, Global Crossing, Cable & Wireless, and the critical West Coast Internet Exchange Point known as Mae West). Since these networks are interconnected, the government surveillance affects not only AT&T customers but everyone else—millions of Americans.
I also discovered in my conversations with other technicians that other “secret rooms” were established in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. One of the documents I obtained also mentions Atlanta, and the clear inference in the logic of this setup, and the language of the documents, is that there are other such rooms across the country to complete the coverage—possibly 15 to 20 or more.” (Mark Klein, “Reject Amnesty for Telecoms,” Electronic Frontier Foundation)
As a key networking hub of the national security state’s electronic driftnet, the “Quantico circuit” enables the FBI and their CIA and NSA partners in crime to literally target any one or any group with highly-intrusive and silent monitoring of all electronic communications. Under the Bush administration’s repressive “public-private” police state architecture, privacy rights join Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture as yet another “quaint” notion, a “phantom of lost liberty,” in the memorable phrase uttered by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2001.”
Many—perhaps most—agencies of the federal government can no longer be trusted, including especially the FBI, CIA and ATF. Accordingly, I am completely opposed to giving them any more powers. All of them need far more oversight to ensure our constitutional rights are protected.
Imagine that this photo is really in 2009.
I don’t support this under any administration. Get a warrant.
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