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Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: ruby123 on March 27, 2013, 10:16 pm

Title: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: ruby123 on March 27, 2013, 10:16 pm
FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014

(Clearnet) http://rt.com/usa/fbi-gmail-monitor-weissman-941/

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t have the ability to monitor everyone’s one-on-one Internet chats in real-time just yet, but the agency’s chief lawyer says all that should soon change.

FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman discussed the Justice Department’s power to put pressure on cyber-criminals during an address last week at the National Press Club in Washington, and during the engagement he opened up about what exactly the country’s top domestic police patrol wants in their bag of tricks: By the years’ end, the attorney says the FBI hopes to be able to snoop on conversations that occur over the Web by gaining access to up-to-the-second feeds of seemingly secretive chats.

Currently telecommunications within the United States can be bugged with a court’s approval thanks to 1994’s Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Weissman, however, warns that as technology advances, agencies like the FBI become increasingly out of luck in terms of tracking down criminals who’ve moved operations off the streets and onto the Web.

“The problem is where we are today. The way we communicate is really not limited to telephone nowadays and sort of the old fashioned picking up the phone and calling someone,” Weismann said.

Online services such as Gmail, Google Voice and DropBox dominate our online lives, Weissman said, but legislation does not yet exist that lets law enforcement tap into Internet accounts with the cyber-equivalent of snooping in on a phone call. While the FBI may obtain court orders to collect archived Internet conversations from the administrators of email services such as Gmail, Weissman said that won’t do. The ability to actually intercepting online chats is something the FBI wants to have, and Weissman said they are working on having it ready by the end of the year.

“You do have laws that say you need to keep things for a certain amount of time, but in the cyber realm you can have companies that keep things for five minutes,” he said. “You can imagine totally legitimate reasons for that, but you can also imagine how enticing that ability is for people who are up to no good because the evidence comes and it goes.”

Weissman said that legislation in other countries allow law enforcement there to intercept real time dialogs. With such an option overseas, tracking so-called cyberterrorists is as easy as eavesdropping on a phone cool.

“We don’t have the ability to go to court and say we need a court order that actually requires the recipient of that order to effectuate the intercept. Other countries have that and I think most people who are not lawyers sort of assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to court,” he said. “You think that you’re getting an order that says, ‘Recipient, you have to actually effectuate the communication.’ Well that’s not what you get. You get something that says that you have to provide technical assistance.”

“The problem with not having [that ability in America] is that we’re making the ability to intercept communications with a court order increasingly obsolete,” Weissman added. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations, by definition…and so this huge legal apparatus that many of you know about to prevent crimes, to prevent terrorist attacks is becoming increasingly hampered and increasingly marginalized the more we have technology that is not covered by CALEA. Because we don’t have the ability to just go to the court and say ‘You know what, they just have to do it.’”

Weissman added that the ability to obtain a court order that can track Internet chats in real-time “is a huge priority for the FBI” that, although in the works, was halted by last year’s presidential election. Now with the 2012 race out of the picture — and the country’s most transparent president ever elected for another round — the FBI aims to iron out a deal that will let Internet companies like Google tap into their data to watch what’s happening on the Web in instances where waiting five minutes just won’t do. Weissman even hinted at being able to intercept messages sent over entirely different sites, such as a game of Scrabble conducted over Facebook.

Meanwhile, that archived information is still as sought after as ever before. Google’s admitted in the back in January that government requests for user data skyrocketed by 25 percent in the last year, with the US leading the field by far in calls for data disclosure. When Google released statistics only a few weeks earlier showing the first six months of requests, the trend was already something that was hard to ignore.

“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise,” Google acknowledges in a blog post published Tuesday, November 13.
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: ruby123 on March 27, 2013, 10:16 pm
Here comes Big Brother......
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: psychedelicmind on March 27, 2013, 10:31 pm
So much for land of the free :/
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: Purple_Hue000 on March 27, 2013, 10:40 pm
wow, for reals? those (F)uckin' (B)unch of (I)diots!!
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: jorg796 on March 28, 2013, 03:11 am
The whole world is heading towards constant surveillance by "authorities."
Australia is already very far into this. if you are suspected of carrying drugs, they can strip search you and go through your phone. This is on suspicion of possessing drugs - Not actually carrying drugs. No warrant needed - Nothing. Same goes to car searches. Every year, people around the world are losing their rights due to Governments making increasingly unfair and ridiculous laws which allow them to have far too much power.

A lot of people think this is fair, because "if you aren't breaking the law, you ave nothing to worry about."
For one - Breaking the law or not, it is unfair to be strip searched for drugs, especially if you don't even have any on you.
Secondly - Many people don't question the law. Drugs are illegal for no good reason. Alcohol is much more harmful than some illegal drugs, yet it is freely available.

I fear than in a decade time, citizens houses will be randomly searched for drugs, drug testing will be very conducted to anyone just walking down the street.
I hope it never gets like this, but I think it will.

Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: blahblah1234 on March 28, 2013, 03:24 am
There are some troubling things on the way.  Google glasses are one of them, they will be taking pictures constantly and sending them to google.  Just what I need is some dumbass wearing google glasses at the bar when I am trying to have some fun.

Also interesting is the recent research into FMRI lie detectors.  They can now look at a real time brain scan and tell if people are lying about a task.  Zoom ahead several years, they will be able to see our brain waves from a distance, and tell if we are on drugs, have altered mind state, are anxious, sexually aroused, etc...  Bad news for privacy...
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: ruby123 on March 28, 2013, 03:59 am
I personally see the drug laws within the United States relaxing in the upcoming years. We are in serious debt,no longer can we afford to lock up individuals for drug related crimes;attitudes are changing. Drugs are a personal choice, I believe there should be age restrictions, but other than that, you should be free to do what you want to your body.
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: astor on March 28, 2013, 04:07 am
It's worth noting that at the same time that the FBI is asking for this surveillance power, legislation has been introduced in Congress to update ECPA and require warrants for access to all email (that protection expires after 6 months under the current outdated law). We'll see how this shakes out, but the cloud providers like Google actually want better legal protection of the data stored on their servers so people have more confidence in giving them that data. In Google's view, Google's ability to spy on everything you do is better than the government's ability to spy on everything you do.
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: kmfkewm on March 28, 2013, 04:52 am
There are some troubling things on the way.  Google glasses are one of them, they will be taking pictures constantly and sending them to google.  Just what I need is some dumbass wearing google glasses at the bar when I am trying to have some fun.

Also interesting is the recent research into FMRI lie detectors.  They can now look at a real time brain scan and tell if people are lying about a task.  Zoom ahead several years, they will be able to see our brain waves from a distance, and tell if we are on drugs, have altered mind state, are anxious, sexually aroused, etc...  Bad news for privacy...

They can already tell if we are anxious from a distance, that technology has been incorporated into many airports. Very likely they can tell other things from a distance as well. They have extremely accurate lie detection tools now as well, as you mention, and even have fairly accurate mind reading tools as well (requiring direct links to the brain though).
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: kmfkewm on March 28, 2013, 05:01 am
I personally see the drug laws within the United States relaxing in the upcoming years. We are in serious debt,no longer can we afford to lock up individuals for drug related crimes;attitudes are changing. Drugs are a personal choice, I believe there should be age restrictions, but other than that, you should be free to do what you want to your body.

As time passes and more and more old people die and more and more young people are allowed to vote, there could be some serious change in the drug laws. Old people are mostly irreparably  indoctrinated , young people are mostly wise to bullshit and lies (probably largely thanks to the internet!). It is too bad that we don't have upper age limits on voting as well, since we have lower age limits. Although I favor anarchy, I also favor revoking peoples right to vote when they turn , I dunno, 60? People start to get really out of touch. I listened to some old people a while ago and they pretty much said "Praise the good Lord Jesus, may he save us from the coloreds, the homosexual agenda and the druggies!." Once the majority of people like that are confined largely to the history books, maybe we will have a chance at living in a somewhat freer society. Chances are it will also be quite socialist though, which sucks, but given the choice between libertarian-socialism (freedom of life, financial slavery to the collective) and fascist theocracy (no freedom at all, Biblical laws) it really is a pretty obvious choice.
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: jorg796 on March 28, 2013, 05:39 am
I personally see the drug laws within the United States relaxing in the upcoming years. We are in serious debt,no longer can we afford to lock up individuals for drug related crimes;attitudes are changing. Drugs are a personal choice, I believe there should be age restrictions, but other than that, you should be free to do what you want to your body.

As time passes and more and more old people die and more and more young people are allowed to vote, there could be some serious change in the drug laws. Old people are mostly irreparably  indoctrinated , young people are mostly wise to bullshit and lies (probably largely thanks to the internet!). It is too bad that we don't have upper age limits on voting as well, since we have lower age limits. Although I favor anarchy, I also favor revoking peoples right to vote when they turn , I dunno, 60? People start to get really out of touch. I listened to some old people a while ago and they pretty much said "Praise the good Lord Jesus, may he save us from the coloreds, the homosexual agenda and the druggies!." Once the majority of people like that are confined largely to the history books, maybe we will have a chance at living in a somewhat freer society. Chances are it will also be quite socialist though, which sucks, but given the choice between libertarian-socialism (freedom of life, financial slavery to the collective) and fascist theocracy (no freedom at all, Biblical laws) it really is a pretty obvious choice.

+1

I am 100% Libertarian. I believe people should be able to choose exactly what they do with their lives as long as it causes no harm to others. All drugs should be legal, anyone should be able to marry anyone, etc. There are so many restrictions placed on everything (it's terrible in Australia - the laws are so confusing. It is on the Australian governments agenda to ban tobacco and alcohol here and there is very little positive outlook for any chance in drug laws).

Why am I a criminal because I use MDMA, marijuana and other drugs occasionally? It makes no sense, and most people just agree that drugs are bad because "they are illegal."
But the questions comes down to, 'Why are they illegal?" I am a good person -I am nice to others, help others and I cause no harm to anybody intentionally. But despite this, if I were to tell a random person I use drugs, I am stereotyped to be a thief, drug addict, etc.

With surveillance, people have the same attitude, "If you aren't doing anything illegal, it doesn't matter if your conversations are being read by police." It is personal, and privacy these days doesn't exist. I don't want police reading my personal conversations.The only reason police should interfere is if you are a suspect in a crime against another person (theft, rape, murder, etc).
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: masterblaster on March 28, 2013, 03:25 pm
OTR

RIGHT IN YOUR FBI'S
Title: Re: FBI to monitor online chats in real-time by 2014
Post by: ruby123 on March 28, 2013, 10:31 pm
I personally see the drug laws within the United States relaxing in the upcoming years. We are in serious debt,no longer can we afford to lock up individuals for drug related crimes;attitudes are changing. Drugs are a personal choice, I believe there should be age restrictions, but other than that, you should be free to do what you want to your body.

As time passes and more and more old people die and more and more young people are allowed to vote, there could be some serious change in the drug laws. Old people are mostly irreparably  indoctrinated , young people are mostly wise to bullshit and lies (probably largely thanks to the internet!). It is too bad that we don't have upper age limits on voting as well, since we have lower age limits. Although I favor anarchy, I also favor revoking peoples right to vote when they turn , I dunno, 60? People start to get really out of touch. I listened to some old people a while ago and they pretty much said "Praise the good Lord Jesus, may he save us from the coloreds, the homosexual agenda and the druggies!." Once the majority of people like that are confined largely to the history books, maybe we will have a chance at living in a somewhat freer society. Chances are it will also be quite socialist though, which sucks, but given the choice between libertarian-socialism (freedom of life, financial slavery to the collective) and fascist theocracy (no freedom at all, Biblical laws) it really is a pretty obvious choice.

+1

I am 100% Libertarian. I believe people should be able to choose exactly what they do with their lives as long as it causes no harm to others. All drugs should be legal, anyone should be able to marry anyone, etc. There are so many restrictions placed on everything (it's terrible in Australia - the laws are so confusing. It is on the Australian governments agenda to ban tobacco and alcohol here and there is very little positive outlook for any chance in drug laws).



I had no idea Australia was turning into a complete Orwellian Dystopia until reading through these forums.That is the problem with socialism; it sounds great on paper until your rights conflict with the masses.