Say goodbye to privacy by Claudia Sonea

According to Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, Americans have to change their definition on privacy and also say goodbye to it. He thinks that the government and special businesses should take care of the people's private communications and financial information, all this in the context of Congress debating new rules for government eavesdropping and reanalyzing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. There was in 1978 a law that prohibited any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil without court permission in order to protect people's privacy. The White House is against it and arguments her position with the fact that the amount of foreign communications that passes through U.S.-based channels is growing. Therefore, last summer they changed it and now the government can eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation is outside the US. Due to the new changes something must be done for the telecommunication companies to be protected against civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007. However, things are still on the list of debate, some lawmakers and even members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are not so open to the idea of immunity because it is necessary to see how far the government broke people's intimacy without court permission. A decision is expected to be taken this week and there are 40 wiretapping suits pending. The bill would replace the FISA update enacted in August that privacy groups and civil libertarians say gives access to the government to read Americans' e-mails and listen to their phone calls without court permission. Kerr said that the ones handling the eavesdropping will get up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines if convicted of misusing private information. He added that it is not so outrageous for the government to be allowed to oversight people personal data due to the fact that they already surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. On the other side, Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, argues against Kerr and says that he doesn't make distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service. Is there no more limit to the government's power? How can they vouch for any of their employees and the safety of people's personal names? Don't go away, this is promising!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071111/ap_on_go_ot/terrorist_surveillance;_ylt=AsfDfRPEEoUPr.RdqJGVH1Ks0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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