FBI wants to see people's internet data without a warrant...

[MKSheppard]

They said that if I voted for John McCain, we'd get stuff like this, and you know what? THEY WERE RIGHT!

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

There's more at the link; but honestly you fucking liberals...you elected a man from Chicago, and you were expecting fucking transparency and less power accumulation? BWA HA HA HA.

[Simon_Jester]

Fuck it, you're right.

Honestly, I was expecting a rollback, not a continuation, of Bush-era intrusions on civil liberty. I saw no real purpose to them, and I thought at a minimum that Obama would not continue doing such things for no reason.

That, of course, was in 2008, when it was only on my most cynical days that I thought the Democratic leaders were merely dragging the country into the mud less fast than their Republican opposite numbers.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Fuck it, you're right.

Honestly, I was expecting a rollback, not a continuation, of Bush-era intrusions on civil liberty. I saw no real purpose to them, and I thought at a minimum that Obama would not continue doing such things for no reason.

That, of course, was in 2008, when it was only on my most cynical days that I thought the Democratic leaders were merely dragging the country into the mud less fast than their Republican opposite numbers.

They are. That's the terrifying thing.

I'd have expected this sort of thing around July '08 if McSame/Painlin had won. This is still fucking inexcusable.

[darthdavid]

When the first couple of things along these lines started coming out I chocked it up to bureaucratic inertia and Bush-era appointees who hadn't been replaced yet. But this far into his term, with his party in control of congress (as much as the Democrats ever manage to be 'in control' of anything) there's absolutely no excuse for this sort of shit.

I think it bears mentioning that under McCain or, Zeus forbid, Palin we'd be seeing this and worse happening, but god damn it we should have better options than "the senile old bastard and Yukon barbie, who will sell our country out to the rich bitches while completely raping our civil liberties" and "the younger, trendier fellow and his socially inept vp who will at least have the decency to try and hide just how much he's selling out to the rich bitches and will fuck our civil liberties over at a slightly slower pace"...

[CaiusWickersham]

The government attorneys are saying this is no more invasive than a review of toll billing records or a pen register. I'm not all that savvy on Internet technology, so I would ask the better-informed denizens, how different is it? I know some sites log IP addresses that visit them, but how does it work with email addresses?

[adam_grif]

The government attorneys are saying this is no more invasive than a review of toll billing records or a pen register. I'm not all that savvy on Internet technology, so I would ask the better-informed denizens, how different is it? I know some sites log IP addresses that visit them, but how does it work with email addresses?

If it's looking at their net usage (presumably via their ISP), then it's a comprehensive list of web-traffic, upstream and down. It's very much like a phone bill, but with incoming calls as well as outgoing.

[Resinence]

A little more actually, while they are careful to weasel around getting the "content", simply knowing the addresses of the sites you have visited they can... simply go there them self and see the content. Sure they may not be able to read your email.

Or maybe just say to a judge "hey this person we suspect of illegal activity has been habitually visiting this site we would like a warrant for that users data."

It's a blatantly obvious wedge in the door since they know they wouldn't get away with anything larger yet.

[cosmicalstorm]

I only expected Obama & Co to not be a complete disaster. Nothing more. This is not surprising.

[Edi]

Sure they may not be able to read your email.

They've been able to do that for years unless you use strong encryption on it and even then it's just a question of crunching numbers to break it for the most part.

[phongn]

They've been able to do that for years unless you use strong encryption on it and even then it's just a question of crunching numbers to break it for the most part.

Both S/MIME and PGP should be highly resistant to attack ... assuming the government hasn't just raided your home and grabbed your private keys (and keylogged your password)

[Edi]

They've been able to do that for years unless you use strong encryption on it and even then it's just a question of crunching numbers to break it for the most part.

Both S/MIME and PGP should be highly resistant to attack ... assuming the government hasn't just raided your home and grabbed your private keys (and keylogged your password)

You'd know more about that than I do, but as you pointed out, weakest link in the security chain renders it useless, in this case physical access or keylogging.

[Ace Pace]

They've been able to do that for years unless you use strong encryption on it and even then it's just a question of crunching numbers to break it for the most part.

Both S/MIME and PGP should be highly resistant to attack ... assuming the government hasn't just raided your home and grabbed your private keys (and keylogged your password)

You'd know more about that than I do, but as you pointed out, weakest link in the security chain renders it useless, in this case physical access or keylogging.

Which is non viable for tracking every single person using encryption. People seem to think intelligence agencies are always out to collect information on them.

[Edi]

True. It's good for targeted information collection, not mass dragnet. But in terms of mass dragnet, just how many people who express worries about this sort of thing encrypt their email?

Very few, so in any case if they want to read your email, they can. That can be considered the rule of thumb.

The problem being that setting up encrypted email takes time and effort beyond what 99% of computer users can be bothered with (or even understand) and I don't see it becoming widely and easily available anytime soon since email is considered such a basic service and nobody will go to that effort for free. Not Yahoo, Google, Hotmail or any of the big players.

Nor ISPs, since doing it would affect profit margins. Sure, offer it as an option (with extra charges for the feature), but not for free. Then you also have to support it, which is another fucking headache entirely.

So, no easy availability of encrypted email for the masses that I can see in the future.

Even if someone did provide that, what would prevent the government from just requiring the provider to hand them the keys to the kingdom?

[phongn]

The problem being that setting up encrypted email takes time and effort beyond what 99% of computer users can be bothered with (or even understand) and I don't see it becoming widely and easily available anytime soon since email is considered such a basic service and nobody will go to that effort for free. Not Yahoo, Google, Hotmail or any of the big players.

Nor ISPs, since doing it would affect profit margins. Sure, offer it as an option (with extra charges for the feature), but not for free. Then you also have to support it, which is another fucking headache entirely.

The big problem is that you really have to do encryption client side - unless you want to store your private key on some server (I wouldn't). There are free S/MIME certificates available (e.g. from Startcomm) and PGP is, too, but all of them are kind of troublesome to use. And with certificates you have to trust that the Certificate Authority is correct; with PGP you have to pass public keys around somehow. Proper encryption is not easy to do.