Fox News reported on a story about Congress's plans to pass a bill granting the Justice Department to shut down websites that are deemed to be dedicated to counterfeit material.
The bill would grant broad powers to a handful of people in the federal government to completely shut down a website, that is legal under current laws. The original bill went as far as to create and publish a blacklist of websites.
This article goes along with the Justice Department, who wants to be able to "wiretap" the internet. (NYT article), want to make sure that encrypted messages, like Blackberry messaging, instant messaging services, social media sites, and even Skype will be able to allow law enforcement to "listen" in on conversations.
These articles demonstrate a growing concern the US Government has about illegal activities taking place off the phone lines and on the Internet. The importance of such articles is that privacy is a quickly fading thing of the past. If the government is granted the ability to listen in on IM's, emails and facebook messaging, it could be the largest invasion of privacy since the Patriot Act. Luckily though, the backdoors that would be required to allow such snooping are not in place and would require a restructuring of the internet to be there.
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