This is a government that can't monitor all Internet traffic.

[Orsino]

http://www.eff.org/files/subpoena.pdf

Though the EFF is right to sound the alarm about privacy issues in connection with government attempts to monitor traffic, their own news stories show how much the government relies on ISPs and web site owners for logged information. I am firmly of the opinion that, given sufficient advance notice, government agents could monitor specific traffic nearly anywhere they want (beyond the peering points where they already attach). They're not backing up the Internet every hour, though, and can't go back in archives to see who visited every site.

[Taverner]

1. A little background please?

[Orsino]

3. .

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/effs-secret-files-anatomy-bogus-subpoena

In a report released today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston tells the story of a bogus federal subpoena issued to independent news site Indymedia.us, and how the site fought back with EFF’s help. Declan McCullagh at CBSNews.com also has the story.

The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission....

[arcadian]

2. It's the fallacy that "observation" = security.

You can see this with CCTV cameras. For ever CCTV you see on the street, there has to be a physical human looking at a monitor 24/7 for that camera. Impossible.