OT: Don’t Press the Panic Button

[John Starta]

National Review [1]: "The DOJ bill would expand pen-register/trap-and-trace 
power to include surveillance of Internet surfing and of e-mail. (A similar 
measure was included in a bill hastily passed by the Senate on September 
12, with hardly any discussion.) This means that the FBI, the BATF, the 
DEA, the INS, or any other federal law-enforcement agency could — without a 
search warrant -- survey a citizen's e-mail and his web surfing. The web 
surveillance can include every URL that the person visits, and also 
includes (by virtue of including URLs created by search engines) the key 
words of every search the person submits. The e-mail surveillance would not 
include the text of messages, but would include the to/from information, as 
well as the subject line of a message, and also the size of the message."

[1] <http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopelprint092101.html>