In an attempt to head off another of those political flamewars that seem to inevitably follow stories like this one, I would like to point out the following.

To those (you know who you are) who will be tempted to raise the hue and cry that this is just another example of the evil Bush Administration's desire and intent to strip away all vestiges of privacy and increase government surveillance of our lives, please note: the DOJ and FBI have had a policy of seeking legal access to interception of internet communications ever since Al Gore invented the internet.

Please note the second paragraph of the CNN article "the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law . . ."  In 1994, of course, not only was Bill Clinton the in the White House, but the Democrats were in the majority in both Senate and the House of Representatives.

Also, take a look at the link below for a discussion of the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act, proposed by the administration in September of . . . wait for it . . . 1999.

No doubt I will be labeled one of the "pseudo right wing nuts on this board" by another poster a few threads down. So be it, though I am not. But it is important to remember that the efforts of the federal government to enhance its ability to eavesdrop on any and all communications which it deems necessary did NOT begin in January, 2001.

Re:oh dear...oh dear oh dear.....

I agree Michelle. Big-Brother is using technology to get around the bill of rights more and more. GPS records on your car to see where you have been. Internet "taps" to see what you're doing.
Not Good! Not good at all.

The genie is out of the bottle, and people can already defend themselves from passive snooping RIGHT NOW (whether by the government, organized crime, jealous spouses, curious peepers who work at your ISP, etc).  The only catch is that they have to care enough about it, to do it.  Look into PGP or GnuPG.

It's unlikely the NSA has cracked RSA or ElGamal.  But even if they have, the crack could never be widely deployed to local LEOs (or probably even the FBI) where it could be used against most citizens, without the word getting out.  And they're not going to do that, because billions of dollars of e-commerce would be destabilized.

Now, if you're actually a criminal, then they're going to get a warrant (hopefully and break and enter your house to install keyloggers or cameras or something, to intercept secrets while they're plaintext.  But that's ok, because that takes some real conviction and investment and risk on their part.  And believe it or not, this is still America.  For all the goofiness of the war of drugs and the new PATRIOT act powers, it's not like we're talking about STASI or the KGB, who were willing to betray their people at the drop of the hat.

But We The People need to take that first step.  Start getting familiar with crypto software, so that if somebody (maybe the government, maybe someone else) does intercept your packets, they'll just get noise.

Oh yeah, and eventually someone like Microsoft is going to come along and try to trick you into using some proprietary tech that probably has a back door.  Just Say No.  The OpenPGP standard that is used by PGP and GnuPG, has been proven by a decade and a half of use and immeasurable peer review.

You'll find me to be among the more conservative members here, but this scares the shit out of me, as does the PATRIOT Act.

Next step: "Congressional Committee on Terrorism and for the Protection of the American Way of Life."

Followed shortly thereafter by black lists.

Anybody remember the miniseries, "Amerika"?

Yoda