Fbi Pushes for Surveillance Backdoor in Web 2.0

FBI pushes for Surveillance Backdoors in Web 2.0

Jashala Long

XBCOM/275

11/11/2012

Jim Bartvett

FBI Pushes for Surveillance backdoor In Web 2.0

In the 2011 Wired Magazine article, "FBI pushes for Surveillance Backdoors in Web 2.0 Tools," Ryan Singel explains how the FBI has pushed for companies to leave backdoors in software for law enforcement door provide the FBI with plain text of any material requested. This understandably leaves many companies and online portals to many more dangerous threats including those induced by hackers, foreign nation spyware and the like. It also lessens the chances of data integrity and completely prohibits any kind of privacy. While the FBI recently recognized the need for strong encryption to thwart any of the aforementioned threats, the FBI Counsel Valier Caproni argued that few situations would actually meet the conditions to assure such data security.

As evidenced by the complete turnabout since the 1990s in which such efforts were dismissed, (Singel, 2011) "[...] the FBI is pushing for more online-communications companies to build real-time spying software into their software." This not only contradicts the First Amendment, its freedom of speech and freedom of the press but also substantiates the U.S. is a police state. After all, Harris (2012) reveals that Twitter notified him that "The New York District Attorney's office had filed a subpoena requesting [his Twitter] account information and all of [his] tweets from last September to the end of the year."

Harris (2012) adamantly objects, "My tweets refuse to be subpoenaed."

Although Harris' (2012) detective work has led to the discovery that all of the subpoenas for Twitter users were involved in the "Occupy Wall Street" or "Occupy" any financial district, the subpoenas demonstrate something more. The First Amendment is non-existent; the Fourth Amendment is null and void, as are the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments (Mount, 2010). Arguably, one could also assert that the virtual hosting of the state and national government agencies through one's communiqué, network, portals and/or computers and electronic communication devices also voids the Third Amendment (Mount, 2010). The FBI mandates, Web 2.0 and the recent flood of subpoenas for online communications show that the FBI and governmental agencies already invade homes, conduct perpetual surveillance and do not need just cause. Rather, they invoke the crime control model instead of the due-process model upon which the Constitution was based.

To demonstrate the need for such FBI Web 2.0 tools