This New FBI Unit's Sole Mission Is To Help Spy On Americans' Cell Phone And Internet Usage

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-domestic-spying-technology-2012-5

The FBI has formed a secretive surveillance unit tasked with inventing technologies that will better enable police to eavesdrop on the Internet and wireless communications of American citizens, reports Declan McCullagh of CNET.

The Domestic Communications Assistance Center (DCAC) – staffed with agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – is the FBI's latest response to the "Going Dark" problem brought on by the shift of communication from telephones to the Internet that has made it more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans they suspect of illegal activities.

That's not to say that the government has been unable to spy on Americans: the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts 1.7 billion U.S. electronic communications every day and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently running a massive spying campaign on Occupy Wall Street.

The DCAC, which has already been given $54 million in funding by a Senate committee, will cover everything from "trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations" to "analyzing the gigabytes of data that a wireless provider or social network might turn over" to building "customized surveillance technologies aimed at a specific individual or company," according to CNET.

McCullagh notes that the DCAC and NSA make natural collaborators as the NSA previously hired two Israeli-linked contractors to bug the U.S. telecommunications network and is currently building a $2 billion Utah spy center that will serve as a code-breaking hub for complex encryption system.