[Infowarrior] - US intel official: Say goodbye to privacy

[Richard Forno]

Intel official: Say goodbye to privacy
By Associated Press
Sunday, November 11, 2007 - Added 43m ago

http://tinyurl.com/36xb8t

WASHINGTON - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the
United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy
director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government
and businesses properly safeguards people¹s private communications and
financial information.

Kerr¹s comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign
Surveillance Intelligence Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government
to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as
one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside
the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on
U.S. soil, to protect Americans¹ privacy. The White House argued that the
law was obstructing intelligence gathering.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield
telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the
government access to people¹s private e-mails and phone calls without a
court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear
reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how
far the government has burrowed into people¹s privacy without court
permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the
bill will protect telecommunications companies.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government
is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an
AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that
he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call,
e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.
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