Wiretapping focus shifts to email, as firms move data overseas

[CGowen]

Microsoft, Google don't deny participation in NSA program

Little-noticed comments by a senior Justice Department official suggest Congress' fight over renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surround interception of email and Internet data.

At a Monday breakfast sponsored by the American Bar Association, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein remarked that the fight over the eavesdropping bill actually centers on US interception of email.

"In response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States," the Washington Post reported Tuesday. "The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States."

Unlike phone calls, email messages are generally stored before being transmitted to the sender. Most messages are stored on an email provider's servers before they are accessed by the recipient

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"Microsoft has announced plans for a data center in Siberia, AT&T has built two in Shanghai, and Dublin has attracted Google and Microsoft," Harper's notes.

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http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Wiretapping_focus_shifts_to_email_0307.html

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. Great. . . My e-mails saved all over the globe for people to peer over for "terrorist-like" comments

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A knock on my door by brown-shirts -

Only a click away.

I feel safer now