Report: FBI conducting sweeping Internet wiretaps that mirror warantless NSA surveillance

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_FBI_conducting_sweeping_Internet_wiretaps_0130.html

"The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed," according to a story posted Tuesday on ZDNet, a technology news website.

Agents engaging in investigations appear to be amassing huge databases of data of thousands of Internet users rather than eyeing the activities of particular suspects -- similar to the sweeping approach employed by the National Security Agency. The NSA wiretaps program drew congressional uproar after it was revealed the program was taking place without supervision of a court.

"Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000," ZDNet's Declan McCullagh writes. "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.

McCullagh calls it "the vacuum-cleaner approach," a technique used when police have obtained a court order but the suspect's Internet provider can't isolate an individual by their IP address -- the series of digits that identify an individual computer.

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checked for spyware, viruses, worms, etc.

take all these massive computers, and let THEM fold proteins. jesus h christ. i am so not surprised that i can hardly get pissed off.

Obviously, they don't have enough real criminals to keep them busy. Perhaps they need to be trimmed down to a size that conforms with their real-world criminal work load.

This is so rediculous it isnt even funny.

Before I go on, let me say that I dont approve of the action the FBI is taking. But at the same time, though, I really dont care.

The applications I work on take approximately 6 million hits a day, from about 6000 users spread across the country. Think about the amount of information that is moving across the network for such a small group. Now, lets look at this in the perspective of 300 million people in the US, approximately 60% of which use the internets (my joke).

There is so much traffic moving around, that nobody, I dont care what government agency, can make any sense of it.

Now, if I was a bad guy, or a terrorist, how easily could I hide in all this traffic? No brainer. My 9 year old could send the FBI on goose chases around the globe.

I can spoof my IP address, or connect to the web at a coffee shop, or outside a motel. I can spoof my MAC address on my network device to make my computer untraceable. I can alter my IP packets to disquise my location. I can set up alternate routing tables to make my location disappear.

I can avoid all of this trouble by making a simple cypher key and sending it to you in a mail, and then encrypting all my notes to you.

In other words, by attempting this, the FBI is only proving that they really dont know what they are doing. They are grasping for straws. They must be so desperate for information, that they let someone sell them this joke of a system.

applied to advanced technologies. You really have to take a glance at Clinton in the process Its not good but its not an entirely new precedent. Universities have been fighting it for two years namely Cornell


http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-20606.htm