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FBI director Robert Mueller is still keen to get US internet service providers to keep their customers' web logs for up to two years.

What is not clear is whether the director is talking about which websites are visited or the specific URL - which would require deep packet inspection and probably break US wiretap laws.

Greg Motta, boss of the FBI digital evidence section, said his director wanted "origin and destination information for non-content data", according to CNet.

Motta said the Feds simply want to keep powers they already have - since 1986 phone companies have been obliged to keep records of who makes calls, who they call, when they call and how long the call lasts. It's just that now, the Feds want to explicity include web activity as well. He said the FBI did not want to store the actual content of calls or emails.

Motta was speaking to the Online Safety and Technology Working Group.

It is not clear exactly what the Feds want; logging IP numbers or web hosts would be relatively simple for an ISP, while keeping track of exact URLs would be harder and more expensive.

The proposals will sound familiar to anyone familiar with the UK's Communications Capabilities Directorate - responsible for what was formerly known as the interception modernisation program. The UK approach has also sought to preserve existing spook powers, by extending them to cover any new comms capability that comes onto the market.

No, honestly it's abundantly clear what the FBI wants. It just happens that what they "want" and what they want are two different things. They want what just about every government agency of a similar sort wants. They want unfettered access to the data, they keystroke logs, the identity of all participants, the content of every mail. They want to have everything so you can hide nothing.

Of course eventually they'll end up with that sort of power anyway, just because there's enough sheeple in the world who will look at it and go "Well if you have nothing to hide..."
</paranoid conspiracy theorist mode>

Nominally the "if you have nothing to hide" counter would have some logical basis. If you're not doing anything illegal then it would, presumably, be harmless to permit greater surveillance over you as part of a wider regimen of surveillance to catch criminals in the act.

Save, of course, that as the Walgreens commercials used to say, it's not a perfect world, and even staying away from "RAR GOVERNMENTS EVIL" mentalities, governments are comprised of individual persons, and if you give them unfettered access to the facts of your lifestyle and tastes it might permit them to act inappropriately. Blackmail/extortion comes to mind, of varying sorts.

Frankly, from the outside looking in at the US; I wouldn't trust any of your government agencies to organize a group shit in an outhouse.

If the previous eight years have shown me anything, it's that there are folks more then willing to piss all over everyone else.

Steve wrote:Nominally the "if you have nothing to hide" counter would have some logical basis. If you're not doing anything illegal then it would, presumably, be harmless to permit greater surveillance over you as part of a wider regimen of surveillance to catch criminals in the act.

IMO, there is no logical basis for the 'if you have nothing to hide' argument. It's a gateway argument at best that does nothing more than open the door for ever greater removal and repression of individual rights, liberties and freedoms. It's on the same level of justification as 'its to protect the children' and 'its to fight the terrorists.' It's a police state mentality push wherein you're guilty and have to prove your innocence by giving up your privacy and self-respect.
'Well, if you're not a terrorist, prove it. Let us read your email. Let us search your computers. Let us strip you naked and perform a cavity search prior to boarding the plane. Oh, you don't want to let us do that? Sounds like something a terrorist would say to me.. You're looking awfully Al-Qeada-ish* there..."

'Harmless' or not, I have no desire and see no need for the government to snoop on my computer and know who I am and what I look at/do online. I don't, to be frank, give two tugs of a dead dog's dick whether or not the government thinks it should be able to. It doesn't even matter if what I have on my computer is harmless and benign and that I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter. The government still has no right nor need to know what the hell is there.

The machinations of your average intel jockey are minor and small compared to the higher ups who have much much bigger uses for knowing how and what the people think, feel and do. But again this is just my usual paranoid angry anti-governmental rantings, so ignore them as you see fit.

I just firmly believe that the sort of people who still believe that just because you have nothing to hide still means that somehow you're innocent in the government's eyes, are the sort that still believes that we're from the government and we're here to help you and the check is in the mail.

*note: I have no clue how one looks Al-Qeada-ish in particular.

This is my view. We are innocent until proven guilty. Alot of this seems aimed to reverse that. If we want to reverse that and have everyone guilty until proven innocent, then let's do so openly.

Also my private affairs are just that. Private. I opposed anything that gives the government the ability to change that.