Data is increasingly flowing around the United States












Interception of foreign Internet communications is shifting Canadian and European traffic away from the United States. Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States is monitored by American intelligence agencies.
Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S. There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches. A climate of deteriorating respect for privacy and data protection has been created by US security measures to fight terrorism. This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in which traffic between two US-owned sites will flow through other nations.
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China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network. The Japanese “are on a rampage to build out across India and China. They won’t have to route through the U.S.”

“Whether it’s a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand,” said Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is Google’s Internet evangelist and who, with Robert Kahn, devised the original Internet routing protocols in the early 1970s. “Suppose the Internet was entirely confined to the U.S., which it once was? That wasn’t helpful.”here here

The legal siege against the Bush administration’s counterterrorism programs goes far beyond the C.I.A., including lawsuits brought on behalf of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and more than 40 challenges in court to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.

SWIFT Orwellian example of government overreaching
Two American banking customers have sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Legal and financial analysts had expected that the suit would have been thrown out because American banking privacy laws are considered much laxer than those in much of Europe.

But the chief judge in Federal District Court in Chicago,[Northern District] James F. Holderman, ruled in June that he would allow the suit to proceed, partly on grounds of claims of a Fourth Amendment violation and his finding that Swift’s arguments on that point were “unpersuasive.” here

Attorney General resigns
The departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could unlock the Bush administration's legal closet, bringing new details tumbling into the open about issues including the treatment of terrorism suspects, warrantless surveillance of Americans, and the administration's definition of official secrets.

here

TIDE
President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send everything they collect to TIDE.
Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States.
The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. here