So FBI just took that ruling – that the First Amendment prevented them for accessing that information – and went around the court with NSLs to get the information anyway.

Most importantly, the IG also found that the FBI had used NSLs to circumvent the FISA Court’s refusal to authorize surveillance on First Amendment grounds.

So what I was trying to say in response to your point about often FBI might use unrestricted access to NSLs with no oversight and no boudnaries – because it is just easier than sitting down and trying to figure out how to do it right, was that yes, that may be the case but in some cases the use of NSLs was specifically to defy a FISC court order that FBI was not entitled to collect the information they wanted.

I do understand the point, too, about people who have applications turned down having career issues, but I think that was probably much more true years ago than it is today. For that matter, the Townsend tie to the huge FISC investigation into untruthful FBI affidavits and what has been alleged to be her key role didn’t seem to hurt her much. Show one lawyer in particular who has been punished in any way whatsoever for any of the many lies to the courts and the people during the Bush administration.

Falsified translations, destruction of evidence, wrongful invocations of privilege to cover up criminal activity, wrongful solicitation of and participation in criminal activity, etc. – as long as you own a pair of Bush underoos, you walk bc the Bush DOJ won’t prosecute their own.

Another thing to consider is Tor from our GOOD friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It too is often relatively slow but traffic is encrypted from your computer to the 3rd computer in the string of anonymizers from which the packets then are decrypted and sent along their way to the destination. Reply packets are then encrypted backwards to you. The end site cannot determine where you actually are and your ISP cannot determine what sites your are surfing.

need to give it a try later.

Charter Will Monitor Customers’ Web Surfing to Target Ads

Some of the reader comments are also edifying.

tw3k – i’ve still got my speakeasy account, i’ll just go back to that at least for now – i only signed up with charter this year because there was a fantastic deal that included basic tv (local and c-span1&2) for $5.99/mo. speakeasy is pretty expensive though… not really sure what the best option is.

bilbo – good for markey. i think it helps that this charter “test” is in MA, as is he – he’s bound to hear for pissed off local folks. in fact, now that i think about it, i should call my congress critter’s office too to complain about charter.