Tool To Allow ISPs To Scan Every File You Transmit

Slashdot posts a story about a tool developed by Brilliant Digital Entertainment, an Australian software company, that can scan every file that passes between an ISP and its customers. The new monitoring technology appearing simultaneously with changes in U.S. law are adding pressure to turn Internet service providers into cops examining all Internet traffic for child pornography.

Privacy advocates are objecting to such tools and say that monitoring all traffic would be an unconstitutional invasion.However, such monitoring just became easier with a law approved unanimously by Congress and signed on Monday by President Bush.

A PowerPoint slide show from Brilliant Digital Entertainment describing the technology was passed on to AOL last month by two powerful forces in the fight against child porn, the office of New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and Ernest E. Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"This would be plainly illegal in the United States, whether or not a governmental official imposed this on an ISP or the ISP did this voluntarily," John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology said after viewing Brilliant Digital's slide show. "If I were the general counsel of an ISP, I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole."

For more information, see MSNBC.