An interesting a somewhat frightening development from the FBI and the Justice department. Top law enforcement officials have apparently told Internet Service Providers that they must keep records of customer web surfing under the guise of helping child pornography and terrorism cases. Why I completely understand this motivation, I’m concerned about this information being misued. This reminds me of the movie Se7en where a presumed FBI agent provides Morgan Freeman’s character a print out of library users who had signed out certain books. What is to say that little Billy, who is doing a school research essay on terrorism, or reading a weblog, isn’t going to be picked up by Feds? It may seem a little far fetched but, under the Bush administration we have seen that anything is possible.
The subject has prompted alarm from some executives and privacy advocates, especially after Gonzales’ Justice Department took Google to court earlier this year to force it to turn over information on customer searches.Civil liberties groups also have sued Verizon and other telephone companies, alleging they are working with the government to provide information without search warrants on subscriber calling records.
Article Link - MSNBC
Article Link - LA Times (reg req)
Article Link - Reuters UK
Tags: Gonzales, Bush, Weblog, News, FBI, Websurfing, Google, AOL, Comcast, Microsoft, Verizon, Privacy, Congress
