The FBI is collecting information on Net users and then loading it into a searchable database, says CNET News.

"Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials," says the story. "That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords."

The revelation came from two US Justice Department Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section personalities: trial lawyer Paul Ohm, now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief. They were speaking at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University's law school last week.

"In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents' default method for Internet surveillance," says CNET, which has him stating:

"You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment. If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don't throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact. You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you're trying to monitor."

Federal law says agents must "minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception" and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening, says CNET, going on, "Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations."

And Ohm, "the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment," said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording, says the story, quoting him as saying:

"The question that's interesting, although I don't know whether it's so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it's constitutional," he said.

"Is Congress even aware they're doing this?"

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Also See:
CNET News - FBI turns to broad new wiretap method, January 30, 2007