We Don’t Like You!

FBI against Private Sector ?

Federal agents are currently frustrated because a number of private companies keep getting in their way when the FBI is snooping – and are noticed to be holding back introduction of more sweeping surveillance of the Internet.

According to media reports, the FBI is seeking Homeland Security’s help to discover cases which they claim were “negatively impacted” by private sector. Some of the private companies are said to delay investigations inadvertently or fail to immediately bend over to surveillance requests by the Feds. For instance, Cricket Communications has irritated federal authorities because the company allegedly hindered an investigation due to technical problems on its network. They got in the way of a wiretap and location tracking.

In response, Cricket claimed that if requested disclosure was lawfully permitted, it would hand over data to the police, but otherwise it denies the request. In the meantime, the anxiety of the police about the efficiency of its information collection refers to its wider plan to appeal for major Internet companies to set back doors solely for the government surveillance.

As for the Homeland Security, they acknowledged that other private companies had also caused some problems for information gathering. The list of the mentioned companies includes T-Mobile, Comcast and MetroPCS. For instance, in Honolulu, Homeland Security complained that there are delays of up to 4 months from Cricket and T-mobile. The only company the Feds aren’t worrying about is Microsoft. The latter has been getting on the FBI’s good side by going as far as to finance “fusion centres”, i.e. hubs for the US surveillance.