Monday, May 14th marks the deadline for all Internet providers – from dial-up to DSL, broadband and satellite providers – to be equipped with back-door surveillance technology allowing law enforcement agencies to more easily monitor and eavesdrop on all Internet communications.
An extension of 1994′s Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which applies to voice communications, the new “enhancement” and widening of scope is the result of a petition filed by the Department of Justice and the FBI and will allow law enforcement agencies (and as Boing Boing pointed out, criminals and corporate spies as well) access to all ‘net-based communications including “e-mail, instant messaging records, web-browsing information and other information sent or received through a user’s broadband connection, including on-line banking activity.”
Some universities will also be required to install these back-door access points, which promise to give law enforcement agencies with court approval access to data in less than a day. Just how long will it take to for illegal wiretaps?
Not only does this issue raise surveillance state concerns and fuel the ongoing (and growing) fear of illegal wiretaps and monitoring, but the integration of back-door access to our private data into the very infrastructure of our communications networks creates a justified fear of hacker access to the private data of the nation, be it sensitive or not.
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