Government Demands More Digitial Search Authority

Another effort is being pushed by the FBI to gain more information about the digital habits of Americans.  Specifically, the government -in this case the duplicitous and hypocritical Obama administration- has stated that it wants the FBI to obtain the capacity to request an individual's telecommunications history, including but not limited to internet search records, Internet history, and other quantitative data from their service provider without judicial oversight.

With the enormous expansion of the security state subsequent to 9-11, the FBI had already gained via National security letters (NSLs) the authority to obtain people's communication, financial and credit information. As the ACLU states

These requests are not approved by a court, and the FBI does not have to suspect you of actually being a terrorist, spy or criminal; the only thing they have to do to get your records is certify to themselves (not a court) that you are "relevant" to an investigation. To make matters worse, the FBI has the power to prohibit any Internet service provider, bank or credit company from which it demands sensitive customer records from ever disclosing anything about the record demand.

The Washington Post reports that contrary to government statements, NSLs have been aggressively used with repeated frequency.  For example,

The Justice Department issued 192,500 national security letters from 2003 to 2006, according to a 2008 inspector general report, which did not indicate how many were demands for Internet records. A 2007 IG report found numerous possible violations of FBI regulations, including the issuance of NSLs without having an approved investigation to justify the request. In two cases, the report found, agents used NSLs to request content information "not permitted by the [surveillance] statute."

Given that the government has always had the authority to request this information in the case of emergencies, why would they need to circumvent legal review and authorization? The answer is obvious. Various factions within the government don't want anyone to impede or limit their questionable antics, which as their own internal review process has confirmed is corrupt.  Fishing expeditions that pull in ever greater information about people, who do not pose a criminal threat, but a political threat is the new normal.  As discussed in an earlier blog, the various and competing intelligence agencies, in association with a massive quasi-corporate infrastructure, are obsessed with collecting ever more information about ordinary citizens and controling larger domains of state decision-making authority.  Collectively, the growing demands of these organizations are meant to institute state primacy over individuals, civil liberties, and democracy itself.