involuntary sharing

Ah, the silent listener at the feast:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was approved by Congress earlier this month to help the National Security Agency in the fight against terrorism. But it has now emerged that the bill gives the security services powers to intercept all telephone calls, internet traffic and emails made by British citizens across US-based networks.

…As much of the world's telecoms networks and internet infrastructure runs through the US, the new act will give the security services huge scope for monitoring and intercepting Britons' private communications, as well as those of other foreign citizens. The new act has led to fears it will see a huge increase in the number of British citizens being extradited to the US.

Congress, I should add, has a Democratic majority, so this is America calling and not taking no for an answer. I mentioned before somewhere that a cause cum consequence of US decline will see people routing around it in various ways. Here’s an obvious case in point. How easy or hard is it to build an America free network?

Another thing about closing societies: they extend their reach as they shrink their appeal.

EVERY foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Giuliani is hoping to cement his status as the Republican favourite by promising to enforce immigration and border controls, drawing on expertise in combating crime from his time as mayor of New York. He announced last week that all foreigners, including holiday-makers, would be obliged to carry a “tamper-proof” biometric card, which could be issued at ports of entry.

“If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of the country,” Giuliani said. He intends to call it a Safe card (for secure authorised foreign entry).

via. And you have a nice day too, Rudy. Tourism’s hardly vital to the US economy, but it is a fairly significant input. So aside from the potential for full spectrum power abuse here, we have the sight of a country promising to eat its own muscle in order to look strong.

Comments

[Alex]

Invest in Europe-Asia cables today!

TransCom/Rostelecom in Russia; FLAG Telecom (division of Reliance Industries in India), owns the FLAG round-the-world link; whoever (France Telecom and C&W, among others) owns the WASC-SAW3-SAFE system..

It's come to something when I'd rather my packets went via Russia.

[jamie]

Yeah, that is a problem isn't it? Still, mad Vlad and the boys don't have the power to legally whisk anyone off to Lefortovo...

[ejh]

I hope the Russian postal service has improved. The last Soviet correspondence chess championships took seven years to complete: the Soviet Union ceased to exist long before they did.

[Laban]

Visitors already have fingerprints/photo taken on entry and on exit, so what's the big additional deal ?

My only concern is that they might pass the information straight to OUR government. Now that is scary.