Should the FBI be able to monitor online communications in Real
Time?
by Zack Walton
As the
current ECPA stands, law enforcement has the ability to obtain
emails without a warrant.
There are some laws currently
making their way through Congress to change this, but law
enforcement agencies obviously like things as they are. In fact, one
agency in particular thinks it needs even more power to spy on your
private communications.
Slate reports that FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann revealed
during a talk at the American Bar Association last week that his agency
is pushing for the ability to spy on communications in real time. In
other words, the FBI wants to install the Internet equivalent of
wiretaps on all major email and online chat services, including in-game
chats on Facebook, etc, to monitor communications in real time.
Do you think the FBI should be given new spying powers?
Let us know in the comments.
Why does the FBI need this new power when it can already obtain emails
without a warrant? It's all about a 1994 surveillance law called the
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. The law
in its current state allows the FBI and other government agencies to
install monitoring equipment on networks run by ISPs and phone
companies.
The system used by the FBI is called DCSNet, or Digital Collection
System Network. In a report from 2007,
Wired dug through documents related to the system to find that the
FBI has dramatically increased its online wiretapping operations since
2004. In fact, the numbers show that the FBI increased its wiretapping
operations by 62 percent from 2004 to 2007, while the collection of
emails grew over 3,000 percent in the same time period.
The last record of DCSNet activity came from 2007 so we can assume that
the FBI has upped the ante since then in terms of data collection. All
of which begs the question - why does the FBI need new spy powers when
it can already siphon off all of our data anyway? If you ask the FBI,
it's quite simple really. The bureau wants real-time monitoring, and it
wants it bad.
Weismann says that his ideal world would feature an FBI that would be
able to monitor services like Dropbox, Facebook, in-game chats, Gmail,
Google Voice and others in real time. This can't be done under current
law as the FBI must essentially acquire permission, or as the law calls
it "technical assistance," under Title III of the Wiretap Act.
The FBI thinks that Title III is so out of vogue, and doesn't reflect
the necessities of modern law enforcement. Slate points out that
Weismann's predecessor, Valerie Caponi, was
harping on this back in 2011 when she said that Title III needs to
give the bureau the power to essentially force service providers to
cooperate with any real-time monitoring requests.
What's worrisome is that the FBI already has these powers, but it wants
more. A Google spokesperson confirmed with Slate that Gmail can't be
intercepted by the CALEA, but a request under the Wiretap Act may do the
trick. The thing is - the Wiretap Act, even if Title III were to be
reformed, would require the FBI to approach Google and only install
wiretapping tools on the necessary accounts.
Under a reformed CALEA, the FBI could essentially watch every piece of
email flowing in and out of Gmail without any kind of oversight. It
would lead to overly broad surveillance of all communications in the
hopes that maybe just one of the emails being sent contains something
relevant to a criminal investigation.
Do you think a reformed CALEA could potentially be abused? Would
you be concerned for your privacy?
Let us know in the comments.
Of course, this isn't the first time the FBI has wanted to expand its
powers in recent memory. In December of last year, law enforcement,
including the FBI, passed on a proposal to the Senate that would require
wireless carriers to
retain all text messages for two years. From there, these text
messages could be perused through at their leisure with the sender or
receiver of said messages being none the wiser.
Beyond just texting, mobile devices have become a primary target of law
enforcement as it attempts to remove any shred of privacy contained in
such devices. There are efforts on the
state and
national levels to require warrants before obtaining this
information, but its unlikely to go through. Law enforcement does a good
job of spooking congressmen into thinking that the bad guys will win
unless every civil liberty enshrined in the Constitution become nothing
but pretty words.
All of this is likely to come to a head this year as Weismann says that
CALEA reform is a priority for 2013. You can expect to see these other
attempts at broadening the powers granted to the FBI and other law
enforcement groups to come up as well in these talks.
There is, however, one little sliver of hope. Weismann admits that talk
of any new powers should be brought before public debate. By that, we
can only hope he means the public at large instead of what public debate
usually means in Washington - a couple of congressman that
have no idea what they're doing.
Would you be in favor of the FBI obtaining new surveillance
powers? Or do you think it already has enough power?
Let us know in the comments.
About the Author:
Zach Walton is a Writer for
WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. Follow him on
Twitter,
StumbleUpon,
Pinterest, and Google+
+Zach Walton |