'Full-Pipe' FBI Internet Monitoring Questionably Legal

CNet is running a piece looking at what they refer to as a 'questionably legal' internet surveillance technique being employed by the FBI. In situations where isolating a specific IP address for a suspect is not possible, the FBI has taken to 'full-pipe' surveillance: all activity for a bank of IPs is recorded, and then data mining is used to attempt to isolate their target. The questionable legality of this situation results from a requirement that, under federal law, the FBI is required to use 'minimization'. The article describes it this way: "Federal law says that agents must 'minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception' and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations." Full-pipe surveillance would seem to abandon that principle in favor of getting to the target faster.

Re:How long till they want to regulate wireless

[Cheesey]

Indeed. It seems to me now that shutting down all insecured wireless is an essentially impossible task. It's so widespread. Most people don't know that they should even consider securing their access points, let alone how to actually do it. Even if there was a major campaign to get everyone to close up their access point, many people would assume that it didn't apply to them, or they'd do it badly (e.g. with WEP), or they would turn it off after having trouble using it themselves.

So if anyone ever wants to use the Internet anonymously, they can. This is not a bad thing. But it does make the FBI's actions pointless: any intelligent terrorist, pedophile or liberal is going to use an unsecured access point to evade detection. Or a service like TOR, which is specifically designed to allow you to avoid your oppressive government, whether it be Chinese or American.

Re:Someone help me understand

[MentlFlos]

For example: let's say that the FBI has a hostname, but no IP. The hostname will often have the region or township name in it. If the FBI provides that to the ISP, the ISP will be able to say "That area uses these IP blocks." and then the FBI would have to monitor ALL those blocks to try and separate the suspect's individual IP from all the other innocent people's IPs.

...or they can just use nslookup

Re:Fair enough -- as long as they follow the rules

[pilgrim23]

This reminds me of the new product I was thinking of releasing into the Washington DC market:
Bill of Rights Toilet Paper with all 10 printed on each sheet. I bet I would....clean up ;)

Mistake...

[commisaro]

Shouldn't that be full-tube?