The technological shift from landline telephone communication to cellular phones and the internet has made it more difficult for the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to conduct wiretapping surveillance on American citizens.
Now, the FBI wants internet service providers (ISPs) to support their proposal that would require corporations like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and others to have backdoors installed specifically for US government surveillance purposes.
The FBI’s outline called “Going Dark” references law enforcement’s difficulty when ISPs are not required to install built in “backdoors” prior to court-authorized eavesdropping by federal and local agencies.
Valerie Caproni , FBI general counsel, wants police to be enabled to wiretap “Web-based e-mail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications technology.”
The Obama administration is behind this push for a federal law justifying ISPs provide encryption for “backdoors”.
Caproni maintains that their proposal will only be used to conduct wiretaps on criminal suspects and terrorist; however, the FBI, in their “ communities against terrorism ” suspicious activity reporting flyers, has created such a broad definition of who could be a suspected terrorist that all American citizens could be surveyed legally if a law supporting this proposal were passed.
Some examples of suspicious behavior include:
- Paying with cash for goods and services
- Wearing blue jeans
- Anyone nervous or impatient
- People not appropriately dressed
- Environmental or antigovernment slogans on vehicles
Based on these examples, literally anyone could be construed as a possible terrorist.
“We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security,” says Caproni.
Regardless of whether or not Congress passes a law, federal agencies and local law enforcement have other options to conduct unadulterated surveillance.
- Special warrants can be obtained allowing police to enter an individual’s home or office and install keystroke-logging software and record passphrases.
- The FBI can send spyware, called computer and internet protocol address verifier (CIPAV) that allows the FBI to siphon data from computers without warrants.
Caproni claims: “Most our interception challenges could be solved using existing technologies that can be deployed without re-designing the Internet and without exposing the provider’s system to outside malicious activity . . . the Going Dark problem does not require fundamental changes in encryption technology.”
While the FBI is working on convincing Congress to write them a law making invasive technological surveillance legal, AT&T and Google are supporting the amendment of federal laws to include protections within customers use of cloud computing and cellular phones.
The Department of Justice is asserting that they require ISPs to keep records called data retention; which is all data collected on their customers that is readily available to federal and law enforcement agencies.
Caproni stresses that solutions to the Going Dark problem need to include judicial approval of a wiretap request as long as “the government is technologically able to execute that court order in a timely fashion.”
The Obama administration, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies are moving toward the right to survey any individual at any time for any reason.
Their justifications for this right are based in fear-mongering and in direct violation of American citizen’s US Constitutional rights.
