Does this scare anyone?

[LucyBoots]

I know we are only talking fantasies here, but does anyone find this concerning? The way our posts read, do you think it is possible to be mistaken for a criminal?

The article says:

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.

Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)

That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing--or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point of a router or network switch.

The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University's law school on Friday. Ohm, who is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during the symposium.

[Tanya]

No. It shouldnt scare anyone unless they actually have something to hide

If anything they will aim this at terrorist's the FBI have bigger fish to fry that us.

[Andering REDDSON]

This has already been gone over once…

[ChiTownHoney]

I'm paranoid so yeah I have thought about that. I am scared to death of cops...I think they all act hard ass and are out to get everyone...and I dont trust them.

Well if they have me in a database for rapists.....thats funny as hell.

its more for men to be scared I think....you think you have a right to free speech but thats not so. Big brother is always watching, maybe not you but someone.

[LucyBoots]

Originally Posted by ChiTownHoney

its more for men to be scared I think.

The machine can't tell the difference between man and woman! It will investigate me either way.

[Wiz]

Originally Posted by Tanya

No. It shouldnt scare anyone unless they actually have something to hide

With respect Tanya, that's a naive perspective IMHO. In the bigger picture, innocent people do get investigated, arrested and convicted of crimes. I once passed by an interrogation room, and I overheard a cop say to someone that I couldn't see "If you're innocent, you have nothing to fear. You don't need a lawyer." What a crock!

[Louise]

I do think the line where governments can go is hugely overstated. Anyone who has seen films like the enjoyable but silly Enemy of the State will know how governments allow such overstated suggestions of their capabilities to pass about. Thats not to say covert observation happens, for it surely does, but one must not let paranoia swamp rational reality.

Frankly if someone is having a good old wank over what I or others do here back in Whitehall or Langley...or Moscow for that matter...I couldnt give a flying fuck!

[Andering REDDSON]

As a general rule, you can all relax… Let’s say I post a story about raping Condoleezza RICE. Fine.
The FBI might (maybe) actually come talk to me. And I could even spend a day or so cooling my heals in county jail…
But as the case of Julia WILSON shows us, that’s about it…
¿Now can we STOP repeating al JEZZERA’s paranoid rants? (For those who don’t know, al JAZZERA was long ago discredited as bin LADEN’S mouthpiece- They carry the same respectability as FOX News or Weekly World News among respectable journalists.)