Justice Department Seeks Right to Bug PCs

How personal is your personal computer? Lots of Internet users choose to encrypt the information stored on their computers. It's a natural defensive response to the Internet, where private information is a valuable commodity - most Web browsers do it routinely when processing retail transactions, for example. But if a new proposal by the Justice Department passes, the government will have the power to secretly break into homes and disable security software on private computers, allowing them to search and monitor those computers at will.

The proposed law is called -- a little paradoxically -- the Cyberspace Electronic Security Act, and it promises to be the next battleground for the opposing forces of personal privacy and national security. Here's how it would work: investigators would obtain a search warrant from a judge; the warrant would then be "sealed," meaning that the person whose premises were being searched wouldn't know about it. Investigators could then secretly enter that person's home or workplace and do whatever it took to circumvent the security on the computers there, including swiping passwords and installing software that would disable encryption. If they did their jobs well, no one would know they'd even been there. MORE >>