Posted by Phil Giraldi on 11/11/09 10:27 AM [Newer: Clueless on the West Bank] [Older: Speed Cameras Enforced by Tasers]

Most Americans are unaware that there is a technological explosion taking place that will enable the government to intrude in the lives of every citizen at an unprecedented level.  Surveillance technologies have been around for a long time, but it is only recently that storage of and rapid access to vast amounts of information has become possible.  Government can now monitor many activities that most Americans would regard as private and protected by the constitution without any real oversight process involved.  American telecommunications companies already retain detailed records of customer activities.  If you use the internet, some internet providers record every single action taken, to include individual keystrokes. 

In Britain this process of corporate and government intrusion is far advanced even though it is bitterly opposed by a large part of the public.  A new law is about to go into effect with the wonderful euphemism name of the Intercept Modernization Program, part of the equally splendidly dubbed Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.  It will require telecommunications providers to collect and retain all information on subscribers' activities for a period of six months.  Employees of 653 public agencies, most of which have no law enforcement or intelligence function, will have access to the information with no judicial oversight whatsoever.  At each agency all that is needed is a supervisor to sign off on the request for information.

In the United States, such records are maintained in a haphazard fashion by the various service providers and can be accessed by the Justice Department through the issuance of a national security letter.  The security letter is particularly dangerous from a civil liberties perspective because it does not have any judicial review and it has legal penalties for anyone who even discloses that he has received one.  The number of security letters issued each year has been growing dramatically because it is an easy way to obtain information without going through any real due process. More than 35,000 were issued last year.   In a recent case in Philadelphia, an internet service provider was asked for detailed information relating to all internet traffic on a certain date, to include IP addresses, times, e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, and credit card numbers.  There is no sign that the Obama Justice Department and FBI will behave any differently than their counterparts under George W. Bush, quite the contrary. - Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance

Posted 11/11/09 11:08 AM Jonathan Kovaciny Mankato, MN

The Citizens Council on Healthcare has lots of information on health-related data collection and warehousing. http://www.cchconline.org/

Posted 11/11/09 11:43 AM RhysW ann arbor, MI

The government will always be one to one hundred step behind. Funny how they want to "modernize" the fricken internet... what's more modern than the internet? Just use Tor if you don't want your ANYTHING to be monitored. I've been working on a way (in my down time) to hack someone while they're on Tor and it's so hard that I think God would need tech support. http://www.torproject.org/ Basically, it's called The Onion Router (Tor) and adds layered encryption at every hop and then forgets where it came from. It's like in the movies when the hacker bounces his signal all over the world... this does that and encrypts and forgets which parts of the world it's been in already. Only downside is, it's slow.

Posted 11/11/09 1:08 PM Kyle Plymouth, MI

Good comment from RhysW about TOR. I tend to browse the 'net using an SSH tunnel, this keeps me semi-private. I want to comment specifically on the following statement: "If you use the internet, some internet providers record every single action taken, to include individual keystrokes." Keystrokes are not by default sent over the internet unless: 1) you are directly interfacing with a system that transmits the keys, or 2) your system, whether via software, or hardware, has been tampered with to transmit these keystrokes. Last year, Cisco estimated the "speed" of the internet to be 160 TB/s. Extrapolated out for an entire year yields approximately 5 zettabytes. This is 14 exabytes, or 15 billion gigabytes, per day. Logistically, I find it very difficult to believe that they are actually keeping track of all this data. Even if we can assume they are storing all of it, or even half of it, actually doing something useful with any of it is another topic altogether.

Posted 11/11/09 7:29 PM wanderyr Reno, NV

Kyle's right about keystrokes not generally being transmitted. Be aware, however, that newer web browsers (i.e. Chrome, and perhaps others) do, as a feature, transmit everything typed into the address field, as it is typed. Of course, this isn't a huge problem for most, since you are going to submit this info anyway when you press the Enter key. But it's good to know :)

Posted 11/11/09 7:46 PM Mark Thomas Willis, VA

Kyle: "actually doing something useful with any of it is another topic altogether." Here's what I worry about: http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2009/10/26/cynical-epiphany-1

Posted 11/12/09 11:49 AM aliciala gas hills, WY

I use ixquick, not as pretty as google, but they don't record your ip address or make records of your searches.