Tag: Online Spying

Should The FBI Be Able To Monitor Online Communications In Real TIme?

As the current ECPA stands, law enforcement has the ability to obtain emails without a warrant. There are some laws currently making their way through Congress to change this, but law enforcement agencies obviously like things as they are. In fact, one agency in particular thinks it needs even more power to spy on your private communications.

Slate reports that FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann revealed during a talk at the American Bar Association last week that his agency is pushing for the ability to spy on communications in real time. In other words, the FBI wants to install the Internet equivalent of wiretaps on all major email and online chat services, including in-game chats on Facebook, etc, to monitor communications in real time.

Do you think the FBI should be given new spying powers? Let us know in the comments.

Why does the FBI need this new power when it can already obtain emails without a warrant? It’s all about a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. The law in its current state allows the FBI and other government agencies to install monitoring equipment on networks run by ISPs and phone companies.

The system used by the FBI is called DCSNet, or Digital Collection System Network. In a report from 2007, Wired dug through documents related to the system to find that the FBI has dramatically increased its online wiretapping operations since 2004. In fact, the numbers show that the FBI increased its wiretapping operations by 62 percent from 2004 to 2007, while the collection of emails grew over 3,000 percent in the same time period.

The last record of DCSNet activity came from 2007 so we can assume that the FBI has upped the ante since then in terms of data collection. All of which begs the question – why does the FBI need new spy powers when it can already siphon off all of our data anyway? If you ask the FBI, it’s quite simple really. The bureau wants real-time monitoring, and it wants it bad.

Weismann says that his ideal world would feature an FBI that would be able to monitor services like Dropbox, Facebook, in-game chats, Gmail, Google Voice and others in real time. This can’t be done under current law as the FBI must essentially acquire permission, or as the law calls it “technical assistance,” under Title III of the Wiretap Act.

The FBI thinks that Title III is so out of vogue, and doesn’t reflect the necessities of modern law enforcement. Slate points out that Weismann’s predecessor, Valerie Caponi, was harping on this back in 2011 when she said that Title III needs to give the bureau the power to essentially force service providers to cooperate with any real-time monitoring requests.

What’s worrisome is that the FBI already has these powers, but it wants more. A Google spokesperson confirmed with Slate that Gmail can’t be intercepted by the CALEA, but a request under the Wiretap Act may do the trick. The thing is – the Wiretap Act, even if Title III were to be reformed, would require the FBI to approach Google and only install wiretapping tools on the necessary accounts.

Under a reformed CALEA, the FBI could essentially watch every piece of email flowing in and out of Gmail without any kind of oversight. It would lead to overly broad surveillance of all communications in the hopes that maybe just one of the emails being sent contains something relevant to a criminal investigation.

Do you think a reformed CALEA could potentially be abused? Would you be concerned for your privacy? Let us know in the comments.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the FBI has wanted to expand its powers in recent memory. In December of last year, law enforcement, including the FBI, passed on a proposal to the Senate that would require wireless carriers to retain all text messages for two years. From there, these text messages could be perused through at their leisure with the sender or receiver of said messages being none the wiser.

Beyond just texting, mobile devices have become a primary target of law enforcement as it attempts to remove any shred of privacy contained in such devices. There are efforts on the state and national levels to require warrants before obtaining this information, but its unlikely to go through. Law enforcement does a good job of spooking congressmen into thinking that the bad guys will win unless every civil liberty enshrined in the Constitution become nothing but pretty words.

All of this is likely to come to a head this year as Weismann says that CALEA reform is a priority for 2013. You can expect to see these other attempts at broadening the powers granted to the FBI and other law enforcement groups to come up as well in these talks.

There is, however, one little sliver of hope. Weismann admits that talk of any new powers should be brought before public debate. By that, we can only hope he means the public at large instead of what public debate usually means in Washington – a couple of congressman that have no idea what they’re doing.

Would you be in favor of the FBI obtaining new surveillance powers? Or do you think it already has enough power? Let us know in the comments.

March 28, 2013
U.S. Government Releases List Of Words They Look For Online

It’s pretty obvious by now that the U.S. government wants to desperately spy on our online activities. Reports that the NSA is building a giant facility to intercept and record our communication are pretty bad, but groups like the NSA and FBI already watch for certain words online all in the name of protecting you from the bad guys. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now know what those words are.

The full document containing the keywords is called the “Analyst’s Desktop Binder.” The document comes from 2011 so we can consider it to be pretty recent. The people who use the document as a guideline are those working at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Operation Center. Those working at the center look for words to spot signs of danger so they can stop attacks before they happen, or so that’s what they say.

The Daily Mail reports that the document was forced into the open after people questioned the true reason behind the monitoring. There are those who believe that the U.S. government is only monitoring online activities and keywords to find those that criticize the government online and spread dissent. The government obviously denies those claims and sticks to its claims that they’re only trying to protect its citizens.

The words that the government actively looks for are split into a number of categories. The categories range from the usual suspects like “Domestic Security” and “HAZMAT & Nuclear” to things like “Southwest Border Violence” and “Weather/Disaster/Emergency.” All of these categories contain some bizarre words that you wouldn’t even think about when it comes to these categories like “pork” in the “Health Concern + H1N1” category. Sure, H1N1 is swine flu, but pork is a common enough word that it’s used outside of talking about a specific illness.

The most interesting category of all, however, is “Cyber Security.” Oddly enough, Anonymous is not listed in the group of keywords although I assume the term will be there in the updated keyword list for this year. Some of the terms in the category include “China,” “2600,” and “DDOS.”

According to the DHS, they don’t just look at these words and go into high alert every time a person talks about cooking up some pork on Facebook. Speaking to The Daily Mail, a spokesperson said that they review the context before they start firing signal flares.

That’s a relief, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the word “Anthrax” to refer to the legendary metal band. Hopefully the DHS doesn’t employ people who think listening to metal is tantamount to social disorder.

Check out the full list of words below. I’ve set up the document to skip to the list of words immediately, but it’s worth checking out the full report to see how the DHS monitors what you say on social media.

Analyst Desktop Binder_REDACTED

May 29, 2012
Windows 8 Makes it Easy For Parents to Spy on Their Children

Microsoft has unveiled the Family Safety features that are built into Windows 8. One of the main features of the software is a weekly report, seen below, that is emailed to parents detailing their child’s computer use. The report details what websites the child visits, what they are searching for, what they are downloading, and how much time they spend doing various computing activities. Parents can then, directly from links in the email, block or limit their child’s activities through a simple web interface. Windows 8 requires logging in with a Windows Account, which is cloud-based, meaning all activity on any computer logged into the child’s account will make it into the report.

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division at Microsoft, detailed how the Family Safety software will work over at the Building Windows 8 blog. Microsoft is touting Family Safety as a good way to teach children about internet safety and limit the amount of time they spend playing video games. From the blog post:

Windows 8 gives you a “monitor first” approach, which provides informative activity reports for each child. As previously discussed on this blog, signing in to Windows 8 with a Microsoft account makes setup much simpler: just create a separate user account for each child and then check the box to turn on Family Safety. As soon as you do, you’ll receive a welcome email followed by weekly email reports summarizing your child’s computer activities. We expect you’ll find activity reports a great tool for teaching your kids about responsible computer use. Of course, you can also easily add restrictions by just clicking a link in the activity report. With the simplicity of activity reports, we believe more parents will adopt Family Safety, resulting in a safer computing environment for children.

The sentiment is nice, and the software looks well-designed for this purpose. But there is no getting around the fact that these Family Safety Reports leave children no shred of privacy on their Windows Accounts. Perhaps that is OK for most parents, who will responsibly monitor their child’s computer use with an understanding of childhood curiosity. However, there are parents who will use the software to keep their children trapped in a cloistered web of insular ideas. Parents who will punish children not for looking at porn, but for looking at ideas and world-views that contradict their own.

Also, while it’s true that children aren’t necessarily entitled to privacy from their parents, the feature could easily be abused to surreptitiously monitor the activities of an unsuspecting spouse or roommate. Like any tool, the Windows 8 family safety software can and will be used for both good and evil.

Take a look at the video demonstration fo the Family Safety features in Windows 8 and see for yourself just how easy the software makes it to monitor a user:

May 17, 2012