Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Government Seeks Broader Tech Snooping Powers

Lisa Vaas writes on eWeek:

The Bush administration is itching to update a snooping law to encompass new technologies, even as a DOJ report shows the FBI is using data mining on a dizzying array of U.S. citizens' non-terrorist activities: Think auto insurance fraud and Medicare claims abuse.

"Today, cellular phones are the size of credit cards, you would be hard-pressed to find a computer with memory less than 512 megabytes and our greatest threats are independent transnational terrorists and terror networks," complained Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, in a May 2007 column published by the Washington Post.

The law that McConnell and others in the Bush administration want to overhaul is FISA, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law, originally drafted to prescribe physical and electronic surveillance and spying procedures on foreign powers, came under scrutiny after the New York Times in 2005 chronicled the Bush administration's order for warrantless domestic wiretapping—called the Terrorist Surveillance Program—subsequently carried out by the National Security Agency, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Critics have crossed party lines to accuse the Administration of criminally violating FISA with the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The Bush administration has admitted that it flaunts FISA, claiming that the act is an unconstitutional infringement on executive power and that Congress implicitly amended FISA when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force on Sept. 18, 2001.

The Adminstration may well scorn FISA, but it still wants to see it overhauled to cover modern technologies.

posted by Fergie @ 7/13/2007 01:23:00 PM