Are You Being Spied Upon?
Mar 10th 2007CarlPolitical & Privacy & USA
The problem with giving more powers to law enforcement to monitor people is that these powers are often abused. That’s why I’m not surprised that the FBI has been repeatedly abusing the law to get phone records and customer records (sources: Los Angeles Times, ACLU).
According to a published report, the FBI has sent letters requesting companies to give it personal information such as phone and email records and education information in cases it is not allowed to do so. The Patriotic Act passed after 9/11 gave the FBI more powers, powers that the FBI has been abusing.
Spying and illegally obtaining phone and other records is nothing new for law-enforcement authorities in different countries. Unfortunately often when they are given wider rights to monitor people, they abuse these rights. We should be very careful about what rights are given to the police and the intelligence agencies and there should be a much stronger control of these agencies.
Many countries have some kind of spying programs (on domestic or foreign citizens). The United States is also participating with some other English-speaking countries in the Echelon program which is listening to phone calls worldwide (probably by picking automatically the phone calls to be listened to based on keyword of the conversation). We may well wonder: are you too being spied upon?
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