The U.S. Government is Reading Your E-mail
Recently, an AT&T employee decided to come forward to report this information. Mark Klein worked for AT&T for 22 years as a technician. He states that AT&T handles tens of millions of e-mails per day for AT&T and other Internet service providers as well. They have an entire room dedicated to spying on the public. He also stated similar spying rooms were in San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle. Mark Klein actually gathered proof with detailed documents and photos. PBS aired a program on this subject on there "Now" program. Transcripts
What does the United States government have to say about this? According to the Stored Communications Act they have the right to read your e-mail without a search warrant. These include e-mails on Internet service providers such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. The United States government most likely understands they are in a gray area. They tried to use monitored e-mail in a criminal trial against Steve Warshak of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals. The judge ruled that the e-mail evidence was unconstitutional. It is a victory for those who believe in the 4th Amendment. According to the 4th Amendment, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." source Sounds good. But for now, I would be careful not to send private information by e-mail.
Is this all new, some kind of post-9/11 thing? Not really. The United States government has been using Carnivore to monitor our e-mails even before 9/11. Carnivore is an electronic surveillance used to remotely monitor our e-mail. There have been complaints by the public about the use of Carnivore. The FBI has responded by saying it is now using a new system called DCS1000. Yet the software is the same and they are monitoring the same amount of e-mails. According to inside sources they just re-named it because DCS1000 sounds less intimidating than Carnivore.
Published by Rebecca Said
Rebecca Said enjoys writing about a wide variety of subjects. Strong interests include animal welfare, dogs and cats, internet marketing and politics. View profile
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4 Comments
Post a CommentThey aren't so much reading your emails as "scanning" them. I don't prefer that option any more than that, but if you use gmail you let them do the same thing except they can't then read ones that are "suspicious". But for practical purposes, they are so far behind on reading the ones they have flagged none of us will ever have to worry!
Wow. This sounds like something from the movie, "Enemy of the State". I guess nothing is a secret or really private anymore. Thanks for sharing.
Do you know what kinds of activities or keywords they look for? Is it all for threats to "national security?" Or does it cover a wider gamut of illegal activities?
The best way to defeat their spy software is to mispell the keywords they are looking for like eggsplosive deaveyeses, you-rainium or Newkular.