The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the National Security Agency is working in concert with telephone and internet companies to collect electronic data from American citizens without a warrant. While recent Congressional debates have focused on telecom immunity related to FISA, the black-budget actions of the NSA have received far less attention. Information collected by the secretive organization includes internet browser history and search queries, email date and time stamps, subject lines as well as sender and recipient identities. Quoting from the article:

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns.

Typically the information within the emails is not examined, but according to Susan Landau, an electronic privacy advocate and author, “‘Transactional information is remarkably revelatory.’” When the government is aware of the websites you visit and emails you send and who you are speaking to on the phone they are able to paint a remarkably accurate profile, Landau said.

While NSA officials maintain that their data gathering “only [involves] foreign threats,” the scope of the spy agency’s data mining gives privacy advocates pause. Current and former intelligence officials state: “the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of [an American] city.”

Do these actions violate the Fourth Amendment which guarantees protection against unreasonable search by the government? Currently case law is unclear as to what, if any, expectations of privacy exist online. The Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr, says social networking inherently erodes people’s right to online privacy.

Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, [Kerr] said, their identity shouldn’t need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their “essential privacy,” or “what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs,” should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

ReputationDefender feels that placing personal information online in no way constitutes a forfeiture of one’s Fourth Amendment rights and remains committed to protecting online privacy.

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