The Obama internet plan has expanded to include something besides more broadband for everybody. The Obama administration, along with intelligence and regulation enforcement agencies, want even more surveillance powers online, which could be part of a new bill going before Congress sometime in the near future. The bill is not anywhere close to done. That said, the surveillance powers of the federal can be dramatically expanded if it does. Washington already has access to a broad array of communications for surveillance purposes, and this will expand that access.
Obama web surveillance agenda
A bill will propose more access for wiretap and monitoring purposes for intelligence and enforcement officials, according to the New York Times. The White House is on board, and the Obama Internet surveillance bill will likely go to Congress next year. A great deal of communications is already mandated to allow federal access for surveillance purposes. The list will simply get bigger. Land lines and cellular phones are easy enough to get into. However, there are some forms of electronic communication which are private and encrypted.
Law is in opposition to boutique developers
Rules tend to favor the companies that can afford to keep up with them. A large tech firm with a generous engineering staff will hardly be fazed, whereas a small startup could be disadvantaged. The recent ban of the Blackberry in several countries was due to Research In Motion having intended the phone so e-mails and texts are encrypted, private communications. RIM is working double time to comply with surveillance needs of governments. Other businesses, for instance Skype and other voice over web protocol or VOIP businesses can have to re-engineer their products to keep up also. Regulation enforcement and intelligence services do rely on monitored communication to catch criminals, and as a result of the decreased access, have seen their capabilities “going dark” to do their jobs.
All hearing ears
Except for sign language, few methods of communication are exempt from the ability of federal to listen in. Obama has been mum about repealing some of the almost Orwellian laws which were part of Bush domestic spying controversies. The government maintains that its requests for access aren’t unreasonable, nor unprecedented. You will find people that do pose a threat to public safety that can be caught using these methods. However, this type of power is very easily misused.
Information from
NY Times
nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?pagewanted=1
