Unlawful Eavesdropping is like search without warrant

The New York Times reports eavesdropping helped to break up a terrorist plot in Germany.

John Scott Redd, the head of US Counterterrorism Center states "But we are not safe. Nor are we likely to be for a generation or more". Seems like we should all get ready to allow governments the mechanisms to protect us and protect their power...for a very long time. Comforting thought.

There's some facts that seem to be conveniently ignored in order to try justify unlawful and illegal interception.

This eavesdropping on terrorists was performed after a court in Germany granted the equivalent of a search warrant. In Germany, the courts will only allow limited eavesdropping and both parties of the conversation must be identified as suspects with evidence presented to the court. There is also usually a limit on the time period for the lawful interception warrant.

Just as your home is your private property, any police entry requires a search warrant issued by a court...after the judge examines evidence of suspected criminal activity.

Since your communications (phone, letter or email) is your privacy, any government intrusions should also require an eavesdropping warrant issued by a court...only after examining evidence of suspected criminal activity.

It is most likely that a German court accepted as evidence of suspected terrorist activity, the fact that these individuals "had actually obtained explosive liquids, hydrogen peroxide, which they could condense, or try to condense to an explosive".

Unlawful Involvement of Telecoms Has Impact On People

A recent TV program on PBS Frontline talks about wiretapping capability. Spying on the Home Front touches a great deal of issues and tries to achieve a balance by allowing all those involved a chance to voice their perspective. AT&T's involvement shows that telecoms networks are in a position to be convenient tools for unlawful interception of communications, which can be indexed and stored for periods beyond their utility of preventing terrorism.

Even though the PBS program talks about events and issues in the US, it is quite reasonable to expect similar scenarios in many different countries around the world. Of course, some governments may be working with less than USD 60 billion budget. Compare the ability of the average person with a low budget laptop to search and obtain a lot of information for free from Amazon.com, BBC News, CNN, ESPN, Expedia, Flickr, Google, IMDB, LinkedIn, Lonely Planet, MarketWatch, Priceline, Reuters, Technorati, Weather Channel, Wikipedia, Yahoo...and you get a glimpse. If you are willing to spend some money online, you can obtain even more details from various high quality information aggregators and industry specific analysts.

While many people may trust their government, one particular viewer of the PBS program commented online, "Here's an easy scenario of abuse...I decided to run for Congress and someone who is a fan of the incumbent happens to work in the NSA/FBI/etc. They scan all of this massive data collected for years and can correlate my travel, shopping and hotel activities. This data indicates a pattern that I might have had an affair 5 years ago. They leak this information to my opponent's campaign and they hire a private investigator to confirm and dig up this information. A week later, this information is leaked to a news paper, journalist, tabloid etc."

Dick Cheney was certainly not amused when the press and politicians had a field day about his daughter being openly lesbian.

Now, not everyone has aspirations for political office. But there's a fundamental need for privacy in order to protect each person's family relationships and business interests.

There are also dangers of inaccurate information being held for too long. In the UK, a little girl made a remark "My dad bonked me last night." A lady at the cafeteria overheard this and reported it to the school authorities, which sparked an investigation into the father being a sex offender. They later confirmed that the girl was talking about her father tapping her playfully on the head with an inflatable hammer. Five years later the father discovered he was being refused work because he was still classed as a suspected paedophile.

BTW, you can also watch the full PBS program online