Seriously, the wheels of progress are coming to a grinding halt when simply having friends or family outside the US makes you a target for wiretapping. The bill for FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was approved for expansion Wednesday by the Senate, and signed into law Thursday.
Within hours the ACLU had filed a lawsuit protesting the bill, and demanding its revocation, claiming it increases the governments power to an unreasonable degree when it comes to ‘warrantless’ operations.
Now, you may think that you would never be a victim of wiretapping – think again. The new legislation gives federal authorities power to force Google, AT&T and Yahoo to forward to the government all e-mails, phone calls and text messages where one party to the conversation is thought to be overseas.
So if I am corresponding with a client in Britain about an optimization, I could be tapped? Wait, if I am corresponding with anyone, and they THINK I am corresponding with someone overseas, they can tap me.
Yeah, my clients are gonna love that. Not because they have anything to hide (I mean, seriously, my client in Britain? – sells tooth products!) but because it is a gross violation of privacy.
Way to go, let’s just shut down international trade, why don’t we! I can see the news breaking down, the trade and service industry breaking down… all because we have decided anyone from another sandbox is suspect.
Can we grow up, already? Are we as a nation so paralyzed by fear that we will accept anything if we are told it is to ‘keep us safe’?
What does this mean to SEO? Do we need to watch our keywords as well? I would hate to see a SWAT team storming my office when I say the recent movie blockbuster was a bomb at the box office.
Or what if I use fertilizer and fuse in the same sentence? Especially if I am dealing with a client with an Arabic last name? Do I need to invent a sanitizing filter for my g-mail to ensure I only use ‘safe’ words? And what constitutes the criteria by which they determine if I am corresponding with someone overseas? Every time I log onto a site with .uk in the end do I get flagged just in case I decide to use the ‘Contact us’ button?
Oh, and I meant to ask, is Canada considered ‘overseas’? Paranoia, anyone?
Tags: FISA, privacy, wiretapping