Domestic surveillance was revealed to be more pervasive than thought on Friday at a Stanford Law School symposium. In a program the mirrors the NSA's domestic surveillance of telephone traffic, the FBI "vacuums" entire segments of Internet traffic, including e mail and web browsing, when looking for the activity of a particular ISP. Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney with the DOJ's intellectual property and computer crime section, said that the "full pipe" technique has become the default mode of surveillance and that any non-targeted information is separated out only after interception.
Some experts think that this mode of interception violates the bureau's legal responsibility to minimize the interception of impertinent information. The principle of minimization was upheld by the Supreme Court in Scott v. United States (1978) in which Judge Reinquist said the government could go too far in intercepting communications without discriminating among the sources. The evaluation of reasonableness in the manner of surveillance depends on the circumstances. If you think your home computer is equivalent to a public telephone on a drug corner, you got no problems. But if you think you are entitled to a little privacy while you view your favorite adult site at home, perhaps you should be concerned about Big Brother's on line spies.
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