FBI ‘full-pipe’ data mining
p2pnet.net News:- The FBI is collecting information on Net users and then loading it into a searchable database, says CNET News.
“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,” says the story. “That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.”
The revelation came from two US Justice Department Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section personalities: trial lawyer Paul Ohm, now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief. They were speaking at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University’s law school last week.
“In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents’ default method for Internet surveillance,” says CNET, which has him stating:
“You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment. If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don’t throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact. You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you’re trying to monitor.”
Federal law says agents must “minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception” and keep the supervising judge informed of what’s happening, says CNET, going on, “Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations.”
And Ohm, “the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment,” said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording, says the story, quoting him as saying:
“The question that’s interesting, although I don’t know whether it’s so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it’s constitutional,” he said.
“Is Congress even aware they’re doing this?”
Also See:
CNET News – FBI turns to broad new wiretap method, January 30, 2007
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January 31st, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I think they are doing this in the name of terrorisim….kind of like communisim in the 60’s…..
It seems that everything the government does is OK as long as they use terrorisim as an excuse……but people are not as stupid as they think and just as it did not work then , it won’t work now either.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Most likely, congress is aware of it. Usually these round about ways come up in some rider to a bill, worded in a vague way and then thrown on some must have legislation that has nothing to do with the rider.
What’s been done with the republicans having the majority vote is that its tabled as a quicky action without much time to take a look at what is really within the bill. Then it comes up for a vote in a fast manner that doesn’t allow much time for the opposition to even spot the problem much less have the ability to do something about it.
There’s been a lot of skulduggery that’s went on in this present administration in this manner and the actions stink because most of it is for the corporations and businesses and not for the good of the country. Wrapping such packages into the flag of patriotism, for the children, or against terrorism doesn’t make it any more legal. It just sounds good and brands those with common sense to vote against it as being against whatever bandwagon theme is being used, usually with negative connotations. When used as political trickery, you wind up with just what is being discussed within this article and it leaves the average citizen realizing just what a crook invested political machine looks like. No wonder dang few US citizens actually trust their own government.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:20 pm
nuff said