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I think there's plenty of abuse and they should be improved - but I don't think its crazy that in time there would be a system where, with a warrant, investigators could wiretap someone's online activities - provided they had reasonable suspicion that they were conducting their illegal business over the certain sites or one internet connection. I know this might sound like cleaning the noose we're about to hang someone with, but there are legitimate law enforcement needs, I often think the collective energy from the EFF and others would be better spent not on opposing anything like this, but on advocating and lobbying for strict judicial review and process.

For example if we suspected someone was using Craigslist and other internet tools like Skype, to organize and coordinate a human trafficking ring, I would want them to be able to collect evidence akin to a wiretap to investiate the extent of the organization and bring prosecutions.

That after-all is the main thing, if the representatives of the people in terms of law enforcement/districts attorneys/federal have a reasonable suspicion that you're committing a crime, we should be allowed to investigate - and for you to challenge any evidence gained in a court. Previous abuses of power are of course troubling, the NSA phone tapping and others comes immediately to mind, which is why I believe energy is best spent on ensuring proper checks and balances and the rule of law - it requires constant work to ensure we have adequate protections for citizens and an adequate ability to prosecute suspected offenders.

Just a final point - I want to stress that I do believe the government has and will continue to overstep its bounds with regard to law enforcement, this has been true for time immemorial, and citizens will continue to fight back and push for legal reforms - but simply throwing our hands up and ignoring real, legitimate law enforcement needs seems silly too. Especially when agencies like mine can right now hijack individual sessions of you on our website and watch everything you do.

It's ridiculous to design a system for the purpose of spying on its users, with users being aware of that. The only people that will be discussing illegal activities using that medium then will be those so oblivious and dense that they likely would have been caught any number of other ways without the eavesdropping.

Savvy criminals will migrate to darknets and other methods of communication that are more robust against eavesdropping.

Personally i think authorities should just give up on the idea of eavesdropping. With proper encryption modern communications can perhaps be intercepted, but never deciphered.

Honeypotting seem like a much better strategy for catching internet criminals. Why would you ever shut down a child porn site or copyright infringement hub when you can instead take over and catch gather loads of evidence for prosecution?

A fine point to be sure, but again we already can see everything a user does on most websites - and most people don't even know about it.

Even with that knowledge though wiretapping still leads people to being caught. http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/04/anthony-dinunzio-bro... So it's obviously still quite effective - and even with encryption they'll still devote man hours to trying to figure out ways around it.

You are imagining sophisticated criminals from movies. Yes, genuinely sophisticated criminal rings with ample resources do exist, but they are in the tiny minority. I think you would be amazed at how low-tech, careless, and quite frankly, stupid most criminals are. This is the common denominator they are aiming at, as it offers the broadest and most dense prosecution yield.

> you would be amazed at how low-tech, careless, and quite frankly, stupid most criminals are

Then I'm sure there are other ways of catching them that don't threaten our privacy and freedom.

For example if we suspected someone was using Craigslist and other internet tools like Skype, to organize and coordinate a human trafficking ring, I would want them to be able to collect evidence akin to a wiretap to investiate the extent of the organization and bring prosecutions.

They already have that ability through physical surveillance. accessing fully public data, and subpoenas.

That after-all is the main thing, if the representatives of the people in terms of law enforcement/districts attorneys/federal have a reasonable suspicion that you're committing a crime, we should be allowed to investigate - and for you to challenge any evidence gained in a court. Previous abuses of power are of course troubling, the NSA phone tapping and others comes immediately to mind, which is why I believe energy is best spent on ensuring proper checks and balances and the rule of law - it requires constant work to ensure we have adequate protections for citizens and an adequate ability to prosecute suspected offenders.

I suspect that many arguing against these powers in their entirety have lost all faith in checks, balances, and the rule of law, thanks to numerous prior abuses (using the PATRIOT Act against non-terrorists, NSA warantless wiretapping, etc.). The government is far too interwoven at this point, and the important issues too far from the public consciousness, for an organization like the EFF to make any meaningful difference in checks and balances. As such, the safest route is to oppose easily abused powers in their entirety.

Just a final point - I want to stress that I do believe the government has and will continue to overstep its bounds with regard to law enforcement, this has been true for time immemorial, and citizens will continue to fight back and push for legal reforms - but simply throwing our hands up and ignoring real, legitimate law enforcement needs seems silly too. Especially when agencies like mine can right now hijack individual sessions of you on our website and watch everything you do.

What you call "legitimate law enforcement needs" I call overstepping the bounds of their moral authority for the sake of saving manpower. Are these agencies hijacking sessions on the agency web site, or here on Hacker News? If it's the former, most web frameworks probably have such debugging abilities built in, and as such is nothing impressive. If the latter, it sounds like the agency is running a beefier Wireshark on the whole Internet, which is (or ought to be) illegal.

You can't have systems that are secure except when you don't want them to be. They are either secure and require factoring huge numbers (or other hard problems) break, or they are easily broken fr everybody.

Compound that with a country that is more interested in prosecution and confinement than justice, and you have a very bad mix.

The very existence of National Security Letters makes me fear this kind of power.

More of these activities should be treated as problems instead of crimes. The concept of "crime" conflates problems with a prescribed solution (incarceration) so it becomes impossible to separate the two and be able look upon the problem with fresh eyes and perceive novel solutions.

Indeed. That comes from the same FBI who said a couple of months ago that having to get warrants makes their job harder.

Indeed. Having to respect any civil rights protections (the need for a warrant, habeas corpus, the right to silence, the right to avoid self-incrimination, the ban on torture, etc) makes life more difficulty for the authorities. But history shows that those societies that have no civil rights protections are not happy or prosperous over the long term, and a government that rids itself of all checks and balances is a government that must necessarily be authoritarian and unaccountable.

I've advocated in other threads here for the need of more widespread, mass market, anonymous communications tools. This is not just an anonymity issue, but a critical tool for any company wanting to claw market share away from Facebook, Google, or whoever is their dominant competitor.

E-mail, chat, and voice communications between two people should universally utilize end to end encryption. Service providers should have no knowledge of the contents of that communication, nor the ability to reveal the contents. Using private communication in order to serve advertisements to individuals is dubious.

Small companies can not afford a data breaches. Building spying tools in to your service for any group or nation -- be it the US or China -- compromises the trust users have in you in addition to facilitating espionage, warrantless data theft, and other illegal activity.

These spying services are more than welcome to access this data at the point it is received through the use of lawful means. Giving them on demand, effortless access to anything they please spawns a lazy, corrupt, and paranoid society for all involved.

Your point about "widespread" and "mass market" is important.

People can't cope with encrypted email. There are very many broken implementations, and even with the good crypto people install it wrong or use it wrong.

Something that's idiot proof is important.

But then, "they'll" just pass a law requiring people to hand over the keys, or go to jail for X years. (Which could happen now under contempt of court laws, but would be easier under UK style RIPA law. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents) (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/counter-terrorism/regulation-in...) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Pow...) )

This is exactly what I don't understand every time they try to pass a law like this, it's always "It's getting harder for us to catch criminals doing X," where X changes depending how hard they think they have to force it.

My response is always, NOBODY said law enforcement SHOULD BE EASY, deal with it.

You have to give them some credit though because its a clever scheme.

The "fight crime" argument is always valid since crime always exists. Its the same with "fight terrorism" since terrorism always exists.

So if you use those arguments, in combination with a war that has no end (you cant win against a "ism"), you dont even have to talk to the public anymore and justify anything. Its very convenient and saves time.

Note the sarcasm. :)

You're right and this is true about everything the government does. There will always be health problems. There will always be "poor" people. There will always be drugs, or pornography or rude children or whatever excuse is currently convenient to pass laws to give government more power.