“The FBI says you will not notice anything different”

Seriously, why are people outraged, since when was the Internet considered a private area?

I’m curious how they accomplish this (technically), other than at the isp level. If privacy is a concern online, use Gnu PGP for encrypting your email, http://tor.eff.org for surfing, and ssh for file transfer, ssl/https for banking and encrypt *all* your communication. These tools ensure that only the intended recipient can unencrypt the data, although you’re still at the mercy of what the recipient does with it.

__BEGIN SECURITY RANT__

For what it’s worth (and I’m bored, and had a big brain fart…):

Nothing online was ever private anyway, your isp has the ability (and the right as the user-agreement states) to track where you go (unless you use an anonymous network like tor.eff.org, which theoretically makes it impossible).

Of course, you can always go down to the the local coffee roasting co. or the free wifi access in the park to continue what may be construed by a CIA mainframe server farm crunching all this bs as “terrorist sympathizing” emails, at least that’s what they’d have you believe is happening.

Funny, how requiring a driver’s license at the local library before getting online is in someway supposed to be a deterrent…if someone wanted to do some damage, they’d simply steal a laptop and logon at a free-wifi hotspot. Heck I even ran a free hotspot at my apartment, which brings to mind the need to encrypt at the harddrive level too, incase of theft the thief wouldn’t be able to boot up a stolen laptop and access your data until the password was entered. Reminds me of when it was suggested we Americans run down to the store and stock-up on ducktape, to tape up the cracks around the closet door when and if a chemical attack occurs…I mean c’mon fellas, that’s worse than having a librarian be the first line of defense.

At home when I do a wireless internet scan, I usually get at least 2 unencrypted hotspots from neighbors, in public places there’s even more. With the 5-15 mile range *omni* directional antennas for a few hundred bucks, why even leave the house?

There’s no way to make data %100 secure. I’m more worried about Foo, Inc. using an old/unpatched version of some exploitable database application or web server, and suddenly 50,000 social security numbers are now in the public domain.

There was an incident at a university recently, where the student found a hole in the school’s online registration system, and gained access to not only student social security information and bank records, but their parents as well. After 30 days of being notified, the university’s IT manager still had not fixed the hole, nor responded in good faith.

__END SECURITY RANT__