If the details of any monitoring plan are not known, then it is suspect. Members of Congress who may be briefed on various monitoring practices are not in a position to evaluate how intrusive they are. Only scrutiny by technical experts who do not work for the government can be trusted to determine exactly what information is monitored and what is collected.

We should all assume that there is no such thing as a private communication any more.

I think you misinterpret Wainstein's statement. he can't be talking about the protect America act which has lapsed.

"FISA's current strictures" are those revised by the Patriot act. If Wainstein was correctly quoted, the issue of "communications entirely outside the U.S. that happen to pass through a U.S. switch" was a red herring to begin with.

The whole discussion concerned a secret opinion issued by the FISA court. It now appears that the scope of the opinion, which lead many people (including you and me) to agree that FISA should be reformed, was exaggerated.

The current law is identical to the law re-interpreted by the FISA court. Wainstein's statement simply means that, last summer, the Bush administration was lying about the current interpretation of the law which was binding then and is binding now. "FISA's current strictures" can't have anything to do with the Protect America Act which is defunct.

http://www.openpgp.org/

Start using encryption, people. Nothing that is transmitted digitally is 100% secure and there is always a backup or copy somewhere of whatever you said or wrote. So protect it as much as you can.

By the way, the Feds can trace/tap/triangulate the location of your cell phone even when it's turned "off."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6140191.html

Take the battery out to get around it.

It's funny, I read a proof of concept whitepaper of this roving bug idea back in 2002-2003. Now it's confirmed. The same thing goes for laptops. Feds can use the internal microphone to tap rooms. No reason why they can't use the laptop's internal video camera, either.

bombs osama second amendment arson fire end times. Maybe everyone should just flood the email tubes with flak.

There has been much goverment interference both in the U.S. and now Canada to contain power. Who has been Swiftboating Obama, the Canadian Memo, where did that come from and who called Goolsbe and set him up? Who pushed up Rezko's trial which was to start much later this year? Why did Somali picture come out, along with Farrakahn endoresement and mocking of his middle name? We have to ask these things? Who does not want to give unity and hope a chance? Is this part of the Kitchen Sink or may be the Basement? I do know its dirty politics and until we reject this kind of politicking in America we will be a pawn in their hands, the people of power, and never find our true Independence which Obama is offering. The Evil Ones are just getting started. Someone is trying to pull our strings. The Truth will come out. Hopefully, America we can see through this Rouse this time and elect CHANGE!

Que? You don't know who the recipient is going to be?

Isn't it right there in the header?

Begin impeachment proceedings immediately against Bush - that might slow him down.

Some relevant facts:

• No one knows what the “protect Americaâ€� act does and does not allow. The CRS tried to figure it out, and could not. Thats what happens when you do things like redefine “electronic surveillanceâ€� to exclude things that are both electronic and surveillance. I suspect there is some agreement in the relevant committees over what the text means in the classified practice, but thats hardly helpful for the rest of congress or, for that matter, legally binding and relevant when a judge reads the text in people V Bush in 2026.
  
• Guesstimating where TCP/IP (Internet) traffic comes from is very hard. The NSA has a patent on using the time it takes to reply to packets to guess how distant the computer is. Clever, and shows they have been on this for a while but IMHO that isn't gonna be all that accurate. A common method is to look at the registration information of the IP addresses involved. The problem is that this really only gives you one address where the bills go, not the ones where all the individual computers are. If you are lucky you can get the best guess of a GeoIP database vendor, but thats still just a guess. The Internet also offers a lot of opportunities for the communicating parties to manipulate all these properties. If you intentionally tap near one of the computers you might know where it is, but the NSA appears to sit near the center of a lot of Internet traffic, with a lot of potential routes in either direction of the link its watches.
  
• Guesstimating where e-mail traffic carried over TCP/IP comes from is even harder since e-mails don't just travel from router to router like a web-page, but the make several stops at servers along the way. So it has the IP addresses of the servers in its packets. These addresses say little about where the ultimate human sender or recipient lives. (Europeans using gmail from American server, etc) E-mails contain a list of the all the servers they passed, but in most spam there is a lot of forged entries in there making it potentially less valuable legally.
  
• Looking at where a phone or computer is and then assuming the person using it isn't a US national is already an assumption that doesn`t fit all that neatly with the language of constitution to begin with. The NSA used to deal with thing like this by keeping the identities of Americans it overheard out of its reporting. Both John Bolton and the FISA court have not been satisfied with the governments (IIRC FBI) current approach to this minimization. (See this august 2002 nytimes op-ed)
  
• From the Mark Klein evidence it appears the NSA taps into the phone networks near the intercontinental fibers, but it taps into the Internet there where I suspect the domestic to international traffic ratio is higher.
  
• E-mail can be searched for individual keywords by a computer and, contrary to what you see on TV, telephone quality voice communication can not. Trust me, all the sigint agencies tried. This might make e-mail way more attractive to an agency always starved for manpower. Explaining why the NSA can't get 20-century e-mail technology has historically been proven to be hard. In “The glory is fleetingâ€� Matthew aid talks about how little access to the Internet the NSA apparently had before 9/11.
  
• Some have argued the e-mail addresses and perhaps even the subject line are meta-data just like phones bills and there may not be a warrant requirement. This traffic data would be a great target for link analysis (“data miningâ€�)

From Steven Aftergood: “The Government Accountability Office maintains an office at the National Security Agency but it remains unused since no one in Congress has asked GAO to perform any oversight of the Agency, the head of GAO disclosed last week. � Remember when the NSA spend billions on upgrades without getting anything that works...? I bet Mike McConnell isn't to sad about this. He was the NSA chief, before he got a job with the NSA`s biggest contractor Booz Allen. There he worked at the intelligence and national security alliance, the intel contractors lobbying outfit... I wonder what became of him.

MARKERS: ESCHELON BOMB TERRORIST ALLAH SNIVELING LITTLE PIG FUCKERS

I just assume the sniveling little pig-fuckers (uh, did I say they were sniveling little pig-fuckers?) have the ability to read anything I send or post... but that people in history have faced situations unimaginably worse and stood tall and that there is little they can do should all choose to stand.

"Que? You don't know who the recipient is going to be?

Isn't it right there in the header?"

Yes, but WHERE are they? You don't know that from the header. If they are furrin, you can intercept. If they are domestic, you can't. And NOTHING in the header tells you that. It is certainly not the URL nor the address.

This is appalling. They are admitting that they will be reading everything, and they will be dredging for problems. After all, if you dredge through and find evidence of cheating the IRS, you can immediately begin making a lot of money by ensuring that all that knowledge is used to get the money from US taxpayers.

Before the world wide web, in say 1992, it was widely known that the NSA read ALL emails. So, many people put footers on all their emails and net postings that would include words guaranteed to cause the supercomputers to flag emails (for human reading and analysis) as many messages as possible. The hope was to swamp the humans with meaningless analysis.

As JS and Richard Crews have pointed out: since it all can be read, MAKE them read it and waste their time.

This wiretapping was illegal in 1992 and it still is, but not if Bush gets his way.

It is hyocritical for the Bush Admin to want to monitor all email, since it won't let Congress do its Consitutional job, under balance of powers, of monitoring White House email in suspected malfeasance cases.

But then it won't let Congress monitor the unitary executive at all, holding back witnesses, documents, etc.

Is "balance of powers" still taught to US schoolkids these days? Or do they salute "unitary executive", too?

I'll repeat something here I've said many times elsewhere: All communications of every member of Congress, employees of the White House, lobbyists, the military, domestic enemies of the Republican Party (enviromentalists, gay rights and abortion advocates, etc) and numerous other classes of people are intercepted and monitored. If there is a way to convey a thought it's watched and recorded. It will all come out one day and everyone will act surprised and play the aghast card. Why I don't know for I will be neither surprised or aghast. Will you?

I would be more interested to know what algorithms they are using. Obviously, they don't have Stasi-like operatives actually listening in on calls or reading e-mails.

Given the big numbers, they must be data-mining through billions of bytes per minute (or second?) which can only be done by computers looking for specific words or patterns.

And this all seems like a gigantic waste of time. It seems to me that anyone doing anything nefarious would have pre-arranged codes which would be impossible to detect among billions of other communications.

Computerized, global wiretapping by its nature would produce many times more red herrings than useful information worthy of follow up, thereby tieing up intelligence resources that could be doing more useful tasks, e.g. following through on specific suspicious telephone numbers or e-mail addreses.

Which, of course, could all be accomplished through conventional wiretaps.

Just make sure to invite the NSA to all your parties. To make sure they get the message you could cc your invite to one of the emails here:

http://www.NSA.gov/contacts/index.cfm

It seems to me that anyone doing anything nefarious would have pre-arranged codes which would be impossible to detect among billions of other communications.

For years I've been sending out codes here in the form of inappropriate homonyms. My wife only forgot to pick up the milk once.

And this all seems like a gigantic waste of time. It seems to me that anyone doing anything nefarious would have pre-arranged codes which would be impossible to detect among billions of other communications.

Posted by: ESaund on March 4, 2008 at 8:30 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nefarious isn't all they're looking for. Pelosi and Reid discussing strategy for stalling a judicial appointment isn't criminally nefarious, nor is it something they likely bother to encrypt when trading e-mails. You can bet Bush wants to stay one step ahead of them though. Nor does PETA encypt communications when planning an unnannounced blockade and public humiliation of some out-of-compliance hog farm owned by a Bush Pioneer. Strange how the FBI manages to show up for the protest 15 minutes after it starts, huh?

But if there's no way to know in advance where the recipient of an email is going to be, then the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch. And they interpret the text of PAA as giving them that authority.

They don't know, simply based on email address, where the recipient (or a sender) of an email lives. They are engaging in mass capture of ALL email (and probably partial mass capture of packets - well, they're probably screening all IP packets and dumping the ones they don't want); that's the Predator machine.

What they want is the ability to use any captured email in court. Nobody disputed the ability to use email captured from foreigners in court without a warrant because they're foreigners; they don't live under US jurisdiction so it's a bit harder to use the stuff, and they're not protected (directly) by the Constitution anyways. They want to be able to arrest and charge persons residing in America (citizens or not) with evidence found from mass screening of emails, whether they had the proper warrant or not. That's basically prohibited (or should be prohibited) by the Constitution, right?

If you say, in email, 'I love me some Al-Queda' and they capture it under the mass email screening, they want to be able to arrest, charge and convict you for it, regardless of whether they had any kind of warrant for you or not.

max
['Because they see stuff and get all excited.']

Get your eyes off the f_ng trees, and look at the forest. They are removing all oversight. They can (and will) look at any damn thing they want to.

the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch.

If that's what they've been doing all along, then that would explain Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard yesterday writing that:
the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim

Regards, C

@ Max 8:53:

They won't arrest, charge and convict?

How about render, detain, and torture?

Due process is so 9-10.

the pig is in the fire.
repeat
the pig is in the fire.

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized....In response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States.

You know, when I see something like this reproduced and commented upon here--as if it were actually true--it makes me realize that we're fighting a losing battle with people who will say anything to stay in power.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, to smack this shit down once again:

The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone -- from Russ Feingold to the ACLU -- agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered -- including the bill passed by the House -- requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls. Here is Rep. Rush Holt, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the key architects of the House bill, explaining what the House bill actually does:

Ensure that the government must have an individualized, particularized court-approved warrant based on probable cause in order to read or listen to the communications of an American citizen. . . .
The RESTORE Act now makes clear that it is the courts -- and not an executive branch political appointee -- who decide whether or not the communications of an American can be seized and searched, and that such seizures and searches must be done pursuant to a court order.

Under the House bill, individualized warrants are required if the U.S. Government wants to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans. Warrants are not required -- as [Time Columnist Joe] Klein falsely claimed -- for "every foreign-terrorist target's calls."

While the government (in order to prevent abuse) must demonstrate to the FISA court that it is applying its surveillance standards faithfully, the warrant requirement is confined to the class Rep. Holt described. Klein's shrill condemnation of the House FISA bill rests on a complete falsehood (that's not surprising; the last time Klein wrote about FISA, he said that "no actual eavesdropping on conversations should be permitted without a FISA court ruling" and then proceeded to defend a FISA bill which, unbeknownst to him, allowed exactly that).

So, once again, we have to stomp our feet on Kevin Drum's turf and patiently explain why you can't believe anything a member of the Bush Administration or the Republican Party has to say--they are lying and they know it. This is the smokescreen that they are trying to use to cover up systematic abuse.

Here is an excerpt from a filing dated MAY 17 2002
from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and it details abuse of intercept BEFORE 9/11:

In November of 2000, the Court held a special meeting to consider the troubling number of inaccurate FBI affidavits in so many FISA applications. After receiving a more detailed explanation from the Department of Justice about what went wrong, but not why, the Court decided not to accept inaccurate affidavits from FBI agents whether or not intentionally false. One FBI agent was barred from appearing before the Court as a FISA affiant. The Court decided to await the results of the investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility before taking further action.

In March of 2001, the government reported similar misstatements in another series of FISA applications in which there was supposedly a "wall" between separate intelligence and criminal squads in FBI field offices to screen FISA intercepts, when in fact all of the FBI agents were on the same squad and all of the screening was done by the one supervisor overseeing both investigations.

To come to grips with this problem, in April of 2001, the FBI promulgated detailed procedures governing the submission of requests to conduct FISA surveillances and searches, and to review draft affidavits in FISA applications, to ensure their accuracy. These procedures are currently in use and require careful review of draft affidavits by the FBI agents in the field offices who are conducting the FISA case investigations, as well as the supervising agents at FBI headquarters who appear before the Court and swear to the affidavits.

In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors. These incidents have been under investigation by the FBI's and the Justice Department's Offices of Professional Responsibility for more than one year to determine how the violations occurred in the field offices, and how the misinformation found its way into the FISA applications and remained uncorrected for more than one year despite procedures to verify the accuracy of FISA pleadings. As of this date, no report has been published, and how these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the Court.

Instead of correcting the problem, which actually dated back to the Clinton Administration, the problem got worse:

At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.

That's a lot of terrorism. You'd think there were bombs going off on Main Street in Podunk, Idaho on a daily basis.

The only explanation is that the FBI is running wild, collection all manner of information on US persons, and handing that information over to the Bush administration. Is the FBI complicit in the wholesale spying of the Bush administration on the Democratic Party? On anyone opposed to the policies of the Bush Administration?

There aren't even 27.7 million illegal aliens in this country. How could there be 27.7 million terrorists?

If they grant immunity to the telecom companies, we will never find out why they had to listen in on 27.7 million conversations in 2006. We will never get to the bottom of this.

the flaming pig can be seen from the foyer. your mom is riding the two humped camel.

Phone calls are hard, emails are easy. It seems pretty clear that to capture the emails as described, they'll just troll the lot of them.

It would be child's play (given access to the stream) to quickly capture all traffic to and from, say, kerry2004.com, and to use that traffic to ID the principle additional domains to bring into the net. From there? Given the way we use emails, you're on the inside. Karl Rove is Bill Bellichek. Mr. 'genius' knows all the plays before they happen. It would be easy to make anybody look foolish, leave aside somebody like Kerry.

correction:
the pig is in the blanket
I don't know what you're seeing, B.

But... If they are not able to read everyone's e-mail... Then how will they stop the terrorists...

And if they cannot use the e-mail surveillance to stop the Democrats from winning elections... Then how will they stop the terrorists...

I'm just making fun of them. "9/11 changed everything" is a fascists slogan and it means "Let's kick out all the liberals and all the blacks."

Wow--in just a handful of comments, this place is dumbed down to the point of saying "why bother?"

I mean, really. Why bother to do anything around here when you fucking idiots can't stop chattering like little monkeys about nothing?

Why bother?

We are seeing a corruption of power beyond J Edgar Hoover's wildest dreams.

(I'm wagering that most americans are unaware he used the FBI as a personal blackmailing service).

WWHD? (What would Hitler do?)

Anyone who assumes anything they say or email isn't potentially heard is a damn fool. That's been true since at least the mid-1970's.

ESaund,

Given the big numbers, they must be data-mining through billions of bytes per minute (or second?) which can only be done by computers looking for specific words or patterns.

I've been saying what is happening for a couple years now.

There are commercially available "super-computers" that do this very thing today. Much of the data-mining techniques are also well known.

It really isn't very complicated either. You set up filters to distill the information down through a couple passes to get, say, under one hundred messages that are reviewed by your analysts. Change the filters as desired.

Some of this was shown in one of the Bourne movies. Find every call made to/from this person in the last twenty four hours. Cross reference those numbers to each to find clusters.

Even back in the cold war when they couldn't actually listen to the calls they could look for patterns in the connections.

There is at least one AT&T whistle blower who says AT&T fiber internet traffic was routed through the NSA. No doubt they do the same thing with text messages and most likely they try it with voice traffic as well, although I'm not absolutely certain the voice-to-text algorithms are (yet) up to the task.

For years I have said the reason they couldn't openly ask for a fisa warrant was because they had to monitor everything for this to work. They would have had to get a warrant to wiretap every US citizen.

Obviously this distilling of data is easily fooled by anyone smart enough to bypass a spam filter. Even more obviously the potential for misuse of this technology, especially when it is done in secret, is HUGE.

Pale,

A few dumb jokes doesn't mean people aren't paying attention. It's called gallows humor.

...the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch. And they interpret the text of PAA as giving them that authority. Right?

p1. Yes.

p2. We told you this would happen. And you didn't care.

p3. Silence = Consent.

p4. It's way, way, way too late to start bitching about it now.

Clearly we need comprehensive Bill of Rights reform, an amnesty for government officials and telcom executives who have broken the law, and a path to power invested in the unitary executive.

I do not support amnesty for lawbreakers, but these people in government are only looking for better security for the United States. They are not criminals.

I just watched that breakfast on CSPAN and basically it came down to - don't bother arguing technology difficulties because the argument is not about technology - it's about intelligence gathering and civil liberties. Everyone on the panel admitted they have everything they need to gather the intelligence information that they need. What the Assistant Attorney General said was that their argument is that since they get the email intercepted before the email recipient opens the email that it is impossible to know if that email will be opened in the U.S. or elsewhere and that is where they are, I guess, stuck if they can't use that communication in court unless they get a warrant - which they have no desire to do. He also stated that they have the ability under the existing law for pretty much a blank slate of all communications from an area in Pakistan or any communication of someone they feel is a threat of any kind - not just al Queda.

Everyone agreed that the telecommunication companies acted in "good faith" so that there was no reason for blanket immunity. This immunity is not for the telcos. This is about whether or not the 4th Amendment applies in all cases and whether or not those who said to circumvent the courts should be held accountable - which they all stated came directly from the President.

Luther,

I've been with you since the Diet of Worms.

Obviously laws are for criminals and our politicians cannot be criminals so there you go.

Also even if there was a mistake in the law that 'seemed' to claim (mistakenly) that a politician was a criminal the politician can retroactively change the law so that the mistake is fixed and (as we already knew) he was not really a criminal.

For we non-politicians we must simply ensure that we are never accused of being a criminal because everyone knows criminals should be locked up and why bother with a trial for known criminals?

A key thing to remember is the surveillance isn't to catch terrorists, it's to get information to blackmail people and gain financially. It's evil.

This thread would be funny if it wasn't so laughable.

"But if there's no way to know in advance where the recipient of an email is going to be, then the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch."

Why does this present a problem? Since e-mails are not placed into a sealed envelope, which would give rise to an expectation of privacy that would trigger 4th Amendment protection, people should have no expectation of privacy with respect to e-mails.

In this age of e-mails and other forms of open online communications, who hasn't been told not to put any information in an e-mail that they would not want to be known publicly?

Chicounsel: ...who hasn't been told not to put any information in an e-mail that they would not want to be known publicly?

Yes, and I've been told not to leave piles of cash on the seat of my car. That doesn't mean the thieves are entitled to my money if I do, or that I'm wrong to be angry if it's stolen.

Oh, and don't think for a second that OpenPGP will help you much: all it does is encrypt the body of the message. The headers are often damning enough.

Chico,

May letters posted through the US mail in unsealed envelopes be open and inspected? May I go through my neighbor's mailbox looking for these items? May UPS go through my US mail doing the same thing?

Why is it called e-mail instead of e-postcards, hmmmm?

You give all unselers a bad name.

Chico,

One other thing. Since your legal opinion is that what the government did is all legal then why are they fighting so hard to prevent this from going to court? They aren't worried are they?

And don't try to say they must keep this a secret for security reasons because the secret is already out. That ship has sailed.

Lies, secrets, and coverups. Rising oil prices and an unwinnable war. Guess what kiddies, you all get your own version of the 70's to enjoy one more time.

Just as when Carnivore (the illegal domestic spying computer program used by the FBI) came to be known, it is time again to create email signatures to intentionally suck up computer analysis time. You need to tack sigs to your emails that include all the good words: Allah, Jihad, Death to America, bomb, nuke, missile, poisons, attack, anthrax, etc. Just random "good words" in your sigs and we can flood the assholes with so much shit that their impossible-to-work system will be even MORE impossible and flooded.

Acquire Tor and run it. Using tor, sign up for free emails at yahoo and google. NEVER sign on to these emails without using tor. Generate pgp encryption keys for these anonymous free emails.

You will now be set to be able to access free email accounts without the NSA being able to determine who or where you are. Every time you log in you will appear to be somewhere else in the world.

Any time you want to prevent the NSA from actually READING your emails, then use encryption. Encryption along with anonymous email accessed anonymously via tor will do a LOT to prevent Big Brother from tracking you.

I have multiple free emails. Some of them are reserved completely for access via tor. I NEVER access them in the clear.

Any time you want to prevent the NSA from actually READING your emails, then use encryption. Encryption along with anonymous email accessed anonymously via tor will do a LOT to prevent Big Brother from tracking you.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Now, that's the kind of comedy I prefer--something that actually adds something understandable to the frickin' thread. Dude, seriously--do you actually think encryption works? Do you seriously think they can't crack your shit simply by running a few batch files?

Send everything in the clear people, and since no one is breaking the law, so what?

The presence of encryption merely tips them off that they need to collect your stuff and crack it. The people who make encryption delude themselves into promising they have something unique. The lucky ones just sell their stuff back to the government and make a little extra cash. The government just laughs at people who think they can actually encrypt something electronically. And they can crack it like its nobodies business. There is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, nothing you can do to encrypt something.

Nothing.

Pale Rider,

In theory you are correct but in practical terms there most certainly is encryption that cannot be cracked by the biggest fastest supercomputer available today running for a hundred years.

The math is open and available. No back doors. No loop holes. Unless the Patriot act did more than I know it is even still legal.

In this age of e-mails and other forms of open online communications, who hasn't been told not to put any information in an e-mail that they would not want to be known publicly?

To add to the examples, I've also been told not to leave my front door unlocked. Does that give the government the right to enter and look around my apartment if I do?

Since e-mails are not placed into a sealed envelope, which would give rise to an expectation of privacy that would trigger 4th Amendment protection, people should have no expectation of privacy with respect to e-mails.

I don't know about you, but my email requires a user name and password to access. Having to use a password gives rise to an expectation of privacy.

Pale Rider, depending on the type of encryption even the most advanced supercomputer will not be able to crack it before the heat death of the Universe.

The mathematics are clear, if you use keys of sufficient length then the NSA (or anyone else, for that matter) will never be able to read what you send.

Oh, and ChiCounsel, the 4rth admendment is always in force. It's a specific limitation to the Federal government's power and it is not waived merely because some judge with a penis pump created the conceit of "expectation of privacy".

Here's a little experiment you can try. Go to some public park with you video camera and start video taping some couple out on a date.

I bet you that you protesting, "It's a public setting, you have no expectation of privacy!" won't prevent you from getting a bloody nose anyway.

We are socialized to expect people not to eavesdrop on other people's conversations, the setting not withstanding. It is morally wrong to do otherwise.

But ever since the War on the Bill of Rights started (a.k.a., the "War on Drugs") the Fourth admendment has been enervated with the pretense of "preventing criminals (now "terrorists") getting away on a technicality".

That "technicality" would also be known as the Bill of Rights.

The Protect America Act, which revises the FISA law, is partly designed to ensure that communications entirely outside the U.S. that happen to pass through a U.S. switch can be monitored without a warrant. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that this is fine.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the content of FISA also knows that it is a lie, since there is nothing about passing through a US switch that would make such monitoring prohibited under FISA.

The whole point of PAA has nothing to do with addressing any kind of minor technical loopholes in FISA like that, it is designed to radically increase the power of the government to spy on anyone, and to compel any person to assist in that spying, and to eliminate all practical limitations on that power.

First, PAA creates a great gaping exclusion from FISA's limitations by excluding from the definition of surveillance any activity directed at any person "reasonably believed" to be located outside of the U.S. (note that this includes U.S. persons.)

Next, the PAA would create authority for blanket captures of information target at persons generally "reasonably believed" to be outside of the U.S., rather than particular narrow targets.

Third, the PAA would create a compulsory process (with the FISC tasked to enforce administration orders against private parties) to compel Americans to "immediately provide the Government with all information, facilities, and assistance necessary to accomplish the acquisition" of information.

The PAA isn't to "revise" FISA, its to completely reverse its purpose from being a limitation on executive power in response to abuses of that power by the President to being a positive grant of massive, unrestrained, compulsory power to the Executive (also passed, oddly enough, in response to massive abuse of power not legally granted by the President.)

Tripp, Dr Morpheus,

Uh huh.

But having been ###################################quaint and romantic one, best left to optimistic couples who kiss in the moonightt, confident no one sees what they're up to.

Anyway, knock yourself out guys. Thanks for the laughs.

What about the rest of the world? If we say we can data mine any communication that passes through a US switch, can't they in turn grab ours? Diplomatic communications, industrial secrets, financial transactions, simple gossip -- isn't anything anybody communicates to anybody public?

Gerry Horton,

What about the rest of the world? If we say we can data mine any communication that passes through a US switch, can't they in turn grab ours? Diplomatic communications, industrial secrets, financial transactions, simple gossip -- isn't anything anybody communicates to anybody public?

Well, yes. Even if the US law prevents that spying other governments can set their own laws. I have no doubt that other governments already monitor communications.

The major corporations I know have all classified their information for years and require strict control over where and how they are sent. Personally I have to sign a document every year that says I understand this completely and if I let anything confidential out I will be fired with no excuses.

I never use public networks (internet, voice, and chats) for business confidential information. All of that goes through company-controlled and encrypted channels.