With more and more of our lives, and daily interactions occurring online, it should come as now surprise that the Director of the FBI is suggesting the following (emphasis added):

FBI director Robert Mueller's testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday gave a tiny glimpse of the future of law enforcement online, and it raised some tough questions about the evolving line between public and private in a networked world.

In a blog post on the hearing, CNet's Declan McCullagh reproduced the most relevant portion of the testimony - an exchange between Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Director Mueller on the subject of the FBI's role in detecting and stopping illegal activity on the Internet. Issa began the discussion with the analogy of an FBI raid on a bookie, where the Bureau obtains a warrant to get proof of illegal activity. He then moved to the subject of online crimes and the ongoing barrage of cyberattacks on civilian, government, and military targets, asking Mueller what types of legal powers he would need to be able to obtain proof of those attacks in order to bring a prosecution.

Mueller responded with the follow revealing nugget.

"I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet."

In other words what he'd like is a permanent wire tap through the major routing points of the internet to sniff whatever information happens to come through.  Basically he's jealous of the current FISA spying capability that the NSA has, and wants the FBI to have the same thing.  They'd like to read your email, review your internet searches, see what books you buy on Amazon, and do it all without asking a judge beforehand.

Of course he throws us a bone by saying we need to "balance privacy rights"... but here's the kicker.  We have something that already does this.  It's called the 4th Amendment!  This is the people's protection for our privacy.  If you'd like get at our data, then you need to get a warrant.  Period.

Now some would argue that this would be inconvenient for the government.  So the hell what.  The 4th Amendment is meant to be inconvenient for the government, because that is what provides the greatest protection to the people.  The government's convenience should never, ever, ever, be used as an excuse to eliminate our rights.

Of course these suggestions not only come from officials in the government, they also come from people who are supposedly trying to help citizens, such as a former Milwaukee Police Captain.  For instance there is the suggestion that came out of a comment thread at BadgerBlogger (which I can only see as being serious), that we need to send the military (or the police using military tactics... i.e. shoot first and ask questions later) into parts of Milwaukee for a Fallujah style sweep of gangs there.  Innocent lives, and rights, be damned apparently.  If you live in the wrong neighborhood, you should welcome tanks and M-16's openly I guess.

And those of us who oppose these attacks on our rights?  We just don't understand the realities.  Silly us.