September 28th, 2010 
admin Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Obama administration is preparing legislation that would expand the government’s authority to wiretap Internet communications.
The proposal is a response to law enforcement agencies that say they are limited in their ability to track down criminals as telecommunications increasingly move from telephones to the Internet.
The authority they seek would give them wider access to social networking Web sites like Facebook, e-mail transmissions such as Blackberry and peer-to-peer messaging sites such as Skype.
Civil rights advocates say the proposal creates huge concerns about whether the privacy of Internet users will be trampled by government investigators.
So far, federal court rulings have largely held that e-mail and other electronic communications are protected from government intrusion as a matter of Constitutional law.
In a June 2007 ruling, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that government investigators must get a subpoena based on probable cause to believe e-mail contains criminal evidence before they can peer into someone’s Internet messages.
The ruling struck down part of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that allowed investigators to read other people’s e-mail when it was not likely to contain criminal evidence.
Privacy groups say the proposal the Obama administration plans to submit to Congress next year would strip away Fourth Amendment protections granted under the 2007 federal court ruling.
Officials from the FBI, the Justice Department and the National Security Agency still are working out details of the proposal.
For example, they are trying to define which companies are Internet service providers that would be subject to subpoenas.
The proposal is likely to require communications services to develop methods of unscrambling their encrypted messages, according to unnamed Justice Department officials quoted by The New York Times. Foreign and peer-to-peer Internet service providers would need to install equipment to allow intercepts by law enforcement agencies.
“They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function,” James Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told The Times.
Internet service providers would face fines for not complying with the rules.
The computer industry Web site PCMag.com questioned whether the proposal is realistic in a commentary Monday.
“It’s possible that some services are not capable, in their current designs, of meeting these requirements,” PCMag.com said.
Law enforcement agencies want any new law to extend as broadly as possible, such as for communications over wireless Blackberry e-mail devices. Blackberry communications currently are encrypted, which means computer codes block them from being intercepted.
The new proposal is likely to mimic provisions of the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, which allows the government to monitor telephone and broadband networks, Justice Department officials said.
The 1994 does not allow the same access to Internet services.
The FBI says their limited authority to intercept Internet communications might have contributed to the attempted Times Square bombing in May.
The suspect, Faisal Shahzad, used an Internet communications service whose equipment would not allow messages to be intercepted. As a result, the FBI had no way of knowing about his communications with suspected al-Qaeda leaders who directed his car bombing plot.
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