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Washington DC (Islam Online) - With the phenomenon of Big Brotherism growing to the extent of producing "reality" television programs, we now face the dilemma of having our e-mail monitored by the FBI.
News of the FBI's plans to monitor people's e-mail broke a few weeks ago, with the initial objection to the idea coming from an attorney representing an Internet service provider that the FBI wanted to use to monitor the messages being sent by a suspected criminal.
The program, formally known as Carnivore, is designed to monitor the messages sent by people that the FBI suspects of being involved in some sort of illegal activity. The device used by the FBI has the capabilities to monitor large quantities of e-mail messages at the same time, giving the law enforcement agencies exactly what it needs to combat people involved in shady activities.
"The criminal world is taking advantage of today's sophisticated technology to commit tomorrow's crimes, so it is important that law enforcement also use technology, to prevent tomorrow's crimes," Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman Paul Bresson said.
Kevin DiGregory, deputy associate attorney general, believes that implementing this service is a necessity. He told lawmakers, "Many of the crimes that we confront everyday in the physical world are beginning to appear in the online world. Crimes like threats, extortion, fraud, identity theft and child pornography are migrating to the Internet."
There are others who are not so optimistic about Carnivore. For example, Representative Melvin Watt said, "I suppose I would be less than honest if I didn't say that I have had for quite a while a generalized concern about the government's ability to invade the privacy of its citizens."
That same sentiment is being echoed across the United States from local news broadcasts to National Press Radio (NPR). People are very concerned that law enforcement agencies will abuse this service, having open access to people's privacy regardless of whether their behavior is criminal or not.
Already known to exist in the workplace settings of businesses, surveillance technology is used to monitor a person's every move from their telephone conversations to their Internet activity. For some reason, Americans have become increasingly curious about activities such as Carnivore, so much so that the leading network television programs during the workweek are two "reality" shows called Survivor and Big Brother.
Survivor is a show that pits the lives of a dozen or so individuals on a deserted island with probably twice as many cameras, giving the audience the opportunity to see their every waking moment. In the more obvious Big Brother program, several individuals become housemates and have their every move projected into homes across America.
The FBI's Carnivore program is still under quite a bit of scrutiny. In coming weeks, we will see whether or not it passes through legislation. Who knows, maybe the FBI has already been monitoring our e-mail activities? Regardless, people should be given at least a little personal space from the privacy Carnivore
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