Most times I am rather dismissive of the latest technology conspiracy theories.

I’m somehow not convinced that microwave signals are being used to turn inner-city kids into mindless zombies.

Nor was I convinced that the breakdown in submarine cables that led to problems with internet access in the Middle East earlier this year were down to some strange covert underwater sabotage activity.

But for once, the FBI and the US government are doing themselves no favours and providing public domain material to fuel those who are convinced their every electronic move is being watched from afar.

In a House of Representatives judiciary committee hearing last week, FBI director Robert Mueller told California congressman Darrell Issa that, among other things, he sees the need for the FBI to have on the internet “some omnibus search capability utilising filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to pre-empt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the internet.”

In other words, monitoring all web traffic as it enters the US (and bear in mind that most international connections route through the US at some point) to prevent the cyber attackers getting inside in the first place. It’s almost an electronic version of having to remove your shoes at the airport before being allowed to enter the country.

Issa also suggested to Mueller that there be a “Cyber Initiative” whereby “ISPs that hypothetically got consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices” – effectively a permanent search warrant issued through every ISP giving permission to the FBI to look at anything we do on the internet.

And to be honest, if I had read that on a conspiracy theory web site, I’d have scoffed.

Putting aside the obvious legal, moral, ethical and technical obstacles to such a move, the FBI must be pretty confident in its ability to play into paranoid US government fears to get backing for exploring such an idea.

Of course they would like to do it – and probably already do to some degree. Anyone remember Carnivore, the proposed FBI internet monitoring device that would, in theory, act as a physical firewall between the US and the rest of the world, enabling US authorities to literally disconnect the country from the internet and vice versa – the electronic equivalent of grounding all the planes after 9/11.

Carnivore was meant to have been scrapped, but it would surprise nobody if it still existed in some form.
So who is the biggest danger to civil liberty – the cyber terrorist or the paranoid administrator? Discuss...