Surveillance Catalog: Government Uses New Monitoring Techniques

By Dennis Kuba
November 23, 2011

Take a look at the toolkit for governments to legally monitor what people are doing on the Web. It’s an impressive catalog that includes hacking, intercept, data analysis, Web scraping and anonymity products. It makes one aware that nothing is safe from surveillance.
Hacking tools use techniques commonly used in malware.
Intercept tools can filter all traffic from the Internet backbone and determine which to forward to law enforcement.
Data analysis sorts, stores and analyzes information from a variety of sources including wired and wireless networks, surveillance, domestic and foreign agencies, tactical operations, etc. to build a complete profile of suspects or identify patterns across data sets.
Web scraping gathers and analyzes data from publicly available sources.
Anonymity hides the identity of investigators.
If governments are already using these tools, how long will it be before anyone can obtain them? WIll this imperil the confidence people have online?

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