Big Brother Is Watching By Lance Ulanoff, PCMag.com
A recent Associated Press article about the FBI raiding an Ohio-based chat host company’s offices and confiscating its servers sent
a chill up my spine. The FBI acted on information that someone may have used the service for hacking. It was within its jurisdiction,
obtaining a warrant for the search and seizure. But it’s what they could do with those servers and the information stored on them that
really has me spooked. …
Who gets to draw the line about what the FBI can see? A warrant to confiscate a server is like giving
the FBI a warrant to search every house in the state of Maine. The level and kinds of information that could be on the servers is
certainly as varied as what you could find in a few thousand homes. …
Right now, I’m envisioning a series of frightening
home raids where the FBI confiscates personal computers from anyone they think may have been involved.
This new Big Brother-ish
environment is fueled, to some extent, by the Patriot Act, which is giving federal authorities far more latitude in their pursuit of
cybercriminals. I have no love for jerks that create viruses and attack or take over other people’s PCs, but I worry that the Feds
now have more power than they know what to do with. I believe this is primarily because they don’t understand just how twisted the
thread of cyberterrorism can become and how hard it can be to trace an attack to its correct origin.
All of law
enforcement has such expanded powers these days. This article is one of many showing just how real the threat to us all is. It is sad
that the author’s conclusion is not that we need to re-assert the Bill of Rights and curtail unrestricted policing; instead, he
says stay away from certain Internet resources because you may get implicated in spite of your innocence. mjh
Chat Room Company
February 24, 2004
POWELL, Ohio (AP) — Federal agents conducting an Internet crime investigation confiscated
computer equipment and data files from a company that hosts private Internet chat rooms, an FBI spokesman said Tuesday.