FBI Wants More Power To Monitor Internet Activity

from the because-they're-so-trustworthy dept

The FBI, which still can't even get its own computer network working properly, would rather just have more widespread access to spy on the computer network everyone else uses: the internet. Talking to Congress today, the FBI proposed a few different things, including the right to more widely spy on internet activity as well as legislation to force ISPs to retain log file data for an extended period of time. While the Congressional reps in attendance seemed to respond by saying "sure, sounds great" to both of these suggestion, both should actually be looked at much more closely.

More freedom to spy on internet usage potentially violates the 4th Amendment as well as federal wiretap laws. Given the evidence that the FBI has widely abused its ability to wiretap, this should be a major concern. As for data retention, problems with such an idea have been chronicled for years. It tends to put a tremendous expense on ISPs for no real reason -- and it tends to make it even harder to find the type of data authorities actually need to deal with criminal activities. If you're in the FBI, it's no surprise that you'd want both things in place, but that hardly means Congress should roll over and give them to the FBI.

Filed Under: congress, data retention, fbi, internet, monitoring, wiretap
Companies: congress, fbi

Italy Says P2P Monitoring Firm Broke The Law -- But This Might Not Be A Good Thing

from the there-goes-that-evidence dept

There have been various accusations in the US that the techniques used by various P2P monitoring firms that the entertainment industry uses are an "illegal investigation." While we're still waiting to see the outcome of such cases, over in Italy, the government organization in charge of privacy has determined that, indeed, the efforts to monitor P2P use violates local privacy laws. This comes just a few months after a similar finding in Switzerland. With the EU recently saying that IP addresses are private information, you can see why these types of rulings are coming through.

While I will argue vehemently over the fact that the entertainment industry's tactics are wrong, short-sighted and unfair to many of the people it accuses of copyright infringement, I'm not so sure that merely collecting information that someone's computer broadcasts about themselves should be considered a violation of privacy. I do agree that ISPs shouldn't just hand over data on who's account is attached to a certain IP address (that's a privacy violation. But, to simply collect the data, which is publicly "broadcast" by the user, hardly seems like a privacy violation. There are plenty of arguments against the entertainment industry's tactics -- but you get into dangerous territory when you start declaring publicly broadcast information as somehow "private." While it may be appealing in that it makes life more difficult for short-sighted entertainment industry execs hellbent on suing customers, the unintended consequences of such things could be dire. It raises serious questions about how other types of publicly broadcast info may be judged later.

Filed Under: ip address, italy, monitoring, p2p, privacy