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On Friday, October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into a new anti-terrorism law that, among other things, gives law enforcement agencies a broader use of eavesdropping capabilities. The terrorist acts of war against the United States helped enable this bill to be passed into law. A very important part of this law, and one of the reasons why it passed so easily, is the term limit of this law. It is written that after 4 years, the law will expire. This was a condition for members of Congress that don�t want to upset the balance of our legal system. It should be noted that the law does extend to all areas of privacy, including searches and seizures, and phone taps to name a few. The main method that law enforcement will use for eavesdropping on internet communication will be the FBI�s Carnivore System. Here is the Official Site for the FBI's Carnivore Diagnostic Tool. Carnivore has been the subject of many privacy controversies. Basically Carnivore is the name given to the FBI�s sophisticated software and hardware that is able to monitor every single e-mail transmission over the web, singling out any keywords and phrases that they wish. In light of the findings of recent investigations of the September 11th terrorist attacks, it has been discovered that many of these terrorists communicated plans over the internet to the other members. It has also been discovered that most of the communication was sent unsecure over the internet. At the present time, Americans have voiced that they are willing to give up some of their privacies if it will help thwart any future terrorists acts. In a very recent survey, 68% say they agree with law enforcement agencies monitoring chat rooms and other Internet activities. In addition, 54% also agree to law enforcement agencies intercepting and eavesdropping on cell phone and e-mail transmissions. (BusinessWeek Online) A point to be noted here is that these privacy concessions were for government law enforcement agencies. Nowhere did the polled questions reflect the ease of privacy concerns of that of E-commerce sites.
