WASHINGTON, DC — Since its birth, people worldwide have viewed the internet as a convenient, democratizing, infinitely useful mode of communication and entertainment.Not so the FBI, evidently. J. Edgar Hoover’s children see threats everywhere, and in the internet they perceive a vast cesspool of illegal and insurgent behavior. FBI Director Robert Mueller in April put forward a proposal that Congress mandate all internet service providers — and possibly search engines, domain registrars and social-networking sites — maintain logs of internet users’ IP addresses and Web activities for two years.
He also wants the authority to filter the internet’s backbone.
During a hearing last week before a congressional committee, Mueller said, “I think legislation has to be developed that balances, on one hand, the privacy rights of the individuals who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the internet.”
Aside from giving rise to concern that one day Mueller may expire from hypoxia after speaking such a long, convoluted sentence without pausing to breathe, his comments have provoked concerns among privacy advocates. Here’s why.
Currently, law enforcement agencies at all levels use a variety of means to monitor chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks and other Web-based communications for evidence of criminal activity specific to a crime they believe is in progress. The pursuits are wildly divergent in methodology and involvement because alleged criminals in different out-of-the-way corners of the Web use a diverse assortment of protocols and media. According to Ars Technica co-founder and Senior Editor Jon Stokes, that most likely is what Mueller meant by illegal activity being “diffuse on the internet.”
Mueller would like to centralize not only enforcement efforts, but also the crimes. In order to accomplish this, the FBI already has established what it calls the Fusion Center, which Stokes described as “low-profile, highly secure sites where federal and state officials with top-secret clearance meet in order to collect, analyze, and redistribute information on ‘all hazards, all threats.’” The center addresses the law-enforcement portion of the centralization equation, but not the criminal portion.
However, the modern FBI is hardly a collection of technology challenged goons. The bureau realizes there are locations through which all internet traffic must pass as it makes its way from Point A to Point B. Those collection points are backbone hubs, typically located in hosting facilities. The National Security Agency already makes use of the hubs to siphon off reams of data under a program called Carnivore.
Mueller wants Congress to grant the FBI the legal authority to comb through the NSA’s siphoned data in case it contains evidence of illegal activity that drops below the NSA’s higher-level radar.
Stokes makes a few salient observations about that idea.
“…[T]his centralization of legal and illegal activity at network hubs will be a persistent part of all of our lives as we live more and more of them online,” he wrote at Ars Technica. “Thus, the government’s desire to tap those hubs and filter them for criminal and hostile activity will never go away. The current debate over who gets to do what and how with network hubs is akin to the foundational debates over property and taxes with which we started America, so it’s important that we have it in the light of day and that we all participate.”
