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Oppose Government Surveillance
of All Internet ActivityThursday, March 20, 2008
By John Birch Society
Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, is drafting a plan calling for the federal government to secretly watch America's cyberspace, a proposal that will raise obvious personal privacy issues. McConnell tells The New Yorker in the issue which just hit newsstands that his plan will make the current debate over surveillance law look like "a walk in the park."
McConnell acknowledges that, in order to accomplish his plan to protect the Internet from being abused, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet throughout the United States. Congressional aides have reported that they are anticipating a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Part of what has irked members of Congress, according to aides, is the meager amount of information the administration has provided. The cyberspace security initiative was first reported in September by The Baltimore Sun, and some congressional aides say that lawmakers have learned more from the media than they did from the few top secret briefings they have received. Basically, McConnell wants to funnel everything that happens online through the National Security Agency, which would deprive everyone of anything resembling online privacy. According to the author of The New Yorker article:
In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"
That would be a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures, and requires that any searches be conducted only upon issuance of a warrant under conditions of probable cause.
The Executive Branch has already been working for many years in almost complete secrecy, with nooversight and no recognition of legal limits, to spy on Americans, first in the name of the War on Drugs, and then in the name of the War on Terror. Despite the blatant illegality of its actions, the federal government wants to see the present situation not only continue, but grow even larger.
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