The Computer Geek: Don Tubbs
Deftly maneuvering his hand across the mouse pad, Don Tubbs scans a random Web site. The bright pixels of the computer terminal reflect in his glasses. His is a world of wires, modems and IP addresses. Between his job as a computer systems technician in the University of Alaska Fairbanks's journalism department and his free time, Tubbs spends at least four hours a day on the Information Superhighway.
For all intents and purposes, Don Tubbs is a computer geek. But whether an Internet user is a techno-geek or computer illiterate altogether, there are critical issues playing out in the United States regarding Web privacy.
Tubbs is wary of how the Patriot Act and draft legislation like the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, or Patriot II, will affect Internet users nationwide.
At this point, the legislation may not affect Tubbs' responsibilities at work, but he has kept close track of its history and its implications for the future. "Although as a civil libertarian," he says, "I'm uneasy that the government has such unfettered access to people's personal records now."
Just look at Section 123 of Patriot II. This portion of the document would expand the FBI's powers of investigation even further than the initial Patriot Act. Thirty-day investigation periods used to electronically monitor suspected terrorists would be extended to 90 days.
And while previous law mandated that agents submit investigation progress reports to federal judges at certain intervals, the act notes that such progress reports be limited to one every 30 days, as they may hinder the investigative process. And finally, the section relieves investigators from having to notify computer owners of searches on their hard drives. Such action would spur "adverse results" in an investigation, according to a 33-page analysis of the document, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit group dedicated to public-service journalism.
Patriot II also expands the forms of electronic communication that can be monitored by the federal government. If passed, the act will permit law enforcement agents to access an individual's cell phone and Palm Pilot, among other devices.
Tubbs points out that government counterterrorism efforts started long before 9/11, and concerns about Internet privacy have been around ever since the technology appeared. In the late 1990s the Federal Bureau of Investigation experimented with a project called Carnivore, which, in coalition with the Canadian, Australian and British governments, created a vast network to sort through all English-language communication, including e-mail and other messaging systems.
"(They) were doing keyword searches in order to peg potential terrorists," says Tubbs.
According to Tubbs,Web surfers breathed a sigh of relief when a federal court stopped further development of the Carnivore project. But that ruling was overturned in 2000, and the FBI re-initiated the program.
"So for all we know," Tubbs says, "basically anything you send anywhere on the Internet could be filtered, tracked by the government."
But isn't an e-mail at least protected by your computer?
"E-mail is not in the least private," says Tubbs. "As somebody once said: 'Don't put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't shout across a crowded room.'"
For example, if an Alaskan sends an e-mail to a New Zealander, the message gets bounced off several different servers before landing in someone's electronic inbox. And between Alaska and New Zealand, anyone could intercept that file and determine both the origin and the destination.
"It's not a direct line like a phone call," Tubbs explains. "It's more like handing a note across a room and it gets passed from hand to hand to hand."
As far as the use of one's e-mail content in court, Tubbs brings up the 1999 Microsoft antitrust trial, in which the software giant was accused of monopolizing Web browsers on its Windows programming.
"Microsoft was confronted with a number of things that employees had sent on internal and external e-mail that were very damning to the company," he says. "And it's becoming more and more common practice in lawsuits now to subpoena along with paper records, copies of computer hard drives and server logs that track all of this communication. People think it's private, but it's not."
If the federal government is trolling for alarming statements or keywords in electronic messaging, Tubbs says, there isn't much people can do to protect their e-mail from scrutiny. While software like Pretty Good Protection offers e-mail encryption, the government could still be one click ahead.
"The government, of course, has all the best code-breaking tools," says Tubbs. "So presumably if they allow that to be sold commercially, they probably know already that they can break it."
The FBI is calling for permission to monitor "voice-over Internet protocol," a type of Internet phone call. With VoIP, as it is called, voice patterns are compressed into data and reassembled at the other end of the Internet connection.
Considerably cheaper than a long-distance call, VoIP is becoming increasingly popular on the Web. This fact likely makes investigators nervous, as there is no currently no way to track the data sent in the protocol.
"It's sort of like somebody writing a letter on the back of a puzzle and sending it through the mail," Tubbs says. "If you don't get all the pieces, you can't read the message."
FBI officials are concerned that VoIP potentially provides a haven for terrorist communication on the Web.
"So now the FBI wants to be given the keys in advance by the software companies so that they can still listen to those calls," says Tubbs.
Neither Patriot nor Patriot II addresses concerns like VoIP specifically, but Tubbs thinks they were not cited for a reason.
"A lot of this is stuff that the FBI is lobbying for specifically to be outside of these omnibus acts so that they can sneak it in under the public radar," he says. "It's like a kind of fractal design where it kind of swirls out in infinite little variations. You've got the Patriot Act and then you've got these other little things that are going on around it."
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