Internet Pirates Vs. Big Brother

This article concerns me quite a bit. As an avid user of the Internet I always worry about my personal data being leaked or taken from me by an outside source. As much as I try to keep my data safe on my computer the fact is someone will always be ahead of the game knowing all the tricks of the trade to get past any attempt I put forth to protect myself.

We all know that online piracy has recently caused a bit stir in the last few years with people file sharing music, movies and programs. These people know they are copyrighted and must cope with the fact that they are subject to legal action. But despite all that when it comes right down to actually catching these individuals how does a company accomplish this? This ties into my article and video I found on the G4 network website. I will post the link first so that anyone interested may see the video.

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/
682282/The_Loop_The_New_Web_Police.html#readmore

This article mainly deals with companies such as AT&T who are attempting to step up as internet police and discover who are the subscribers in their networks that are using the
as a way to pirate movies, music, etc. Many things come to mind when I think of an ISP trying to become internet police when it comes to illegal file sharing. For instance, how do they intend to accomplish this? Being an I.T. major focusing on networks one would have to think that one of the few ways to be able to do this is to actually spy into peoples computers and look around on their hard drives for the evidence. But does this actually infringe on our rights? I would say yes because what of those people that store sensitive information such as personal data, social's, credit cards or online banking? How can an ISP such as AT&T justify paying an individual who is basically classified as a hacker to enter your computer without permission and "look around for illegal file sharing." What if this "hacker" is a crook who uses his job to steal peoples identities or takes the time since hes already in your computer to read personal mail etc. I would think this can infringe on our rights 100% and can compromise our financial and personal data.

This concerns me because as someone who uses the Internet to make online purchases and uses email quite often I would not be comfortable knowing that my ISP (which is not AT&T- thank goodness) may enlist the aid of their networks admins. and possibly outsources hackers to infiltrate my network to attempt and discover is I file share or not (which I don't). How they plan to justify this action without fearing on lawsuits is beyond me. We can only sit and watch as these developments progress and hope that our online rights won't be denied when push comes to shove.