FBI Sweeping Up Records Of Your Activity Online Without a Warrant

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

The report, published in the increasingly consequential ZDNet / CNet news service, goes on to detail the manner in which the FBI is collecting broad swaths of information on the online activities of innocent people, and then doing keyword searches to find evidence of nefarious intent. Because warrants related to these database activities are issued only for suspects, and not for the broader set of citizens involved, these end up being searches of innocent citizens’ “papers and effects” without a warrant.

What’s the problem? The problem is that sort of activity is in clear violation of the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The FBI wants you to ignore this activity — that’s why they’ve changed the name of their program from the scary sounding “Carnivore” to “DCS1000″ to … well, we don’t even know what the name of this latest program is.

Will you do what the FBI wants, and simply ignore this threat to your liberty?

In case you didn’t know, the FBI is a subsidiary of the Bush administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice. But the Democratic party, dominated by “practical” politicians and not by liberals and progressives as FOX News would have you suppose, looks to do little or nothing about the Bush administration’s unconstitutional practice through the FBI. That’s why it’s less important to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 than it is to vote for a candidate that makes a specific commitment to liberal and progressive values — which include taking the Constitution more seriously than a piece of useful toilet paper.

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