KEY POINTS:
I'm in Maryland on the way to Washington DC, via the manicured lawns and hallowed halls of Annapolis, where the US naval academy is based.
I felt a bit guilty watching the uniformed naval recruits line up in the cold. They live pretty disciplined lives as
they complete four years of pretty intensive education.
It costs the US Government US$300,000 to educate each one of them and if a recruit drops out early they have to pay a chunk of that money back.
They'd performed their daily drill and had lunch in the mess hall in the time it took me to read the front page of the Washington Post's business section, which today is dominated by a story that will send a chill up the spine of anyone concerned about their online privacy.
It outlines claims by former AT&T worker Mark Klein that his old employer allowed the National Security Agency to tap into its data centre in San Francisco and access massive amounts of email and internet search records.
Klein is in Washington D.C. this week to tell his story. He tells of a secret room at the AT&T facility visited by the NSA which had a direct link to major data pipes carrying the traffic of numerous internet providers.
"This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style. The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T's customers buy everybody's," he said.
What Klein is suggesting is warrantless surveillance of Americans, something that's illegal and unconstitutional. Why would the NSA want to tap into a massive pile of random internet traffic? Maybe to try and identify trends or traffic types that may indicate terrorists communicating with each other. In other words reasons in the national interest. But how far can the Government go in the national interest?
The Bush administration's domestic surveillance programme would clearly seem to have overstepped the mark if Klein's allegations hold up. So far, the White House has weathered the criticism leveled at it when it comes to its security agencies wire-tapping techniques. This case seems a little more substantial and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
The same issue of the Post carries news of another serious abuse of power, one that has led Microsoft to fire its chief information officer, Stuart Scott.
Then there's the page 2 lead about Yahoo's reprehensible behaviour in its Chinese operation.
Yahoo founder Jerry Yang was yesterday roasted at a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where lawmakers claim Yahoo executives gave false testimony last year about Yahoo's involvement in a 2004 investigation by the Chinese Government into reporter Shi Tao.
Tao was jailed for ten years after Yahoo allegedly handed over internet records to the Chinese Government outlining Tao's Yahoo account activity.
"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," Committee Chairman Tom Lantos told Yang and Yahoo general counsel Michael J. Callahan, who gave the testimony last year and claimed not to have known details of China's demands for Tao's internet records.
Effectively, Yahoo's compliance with the wishes of Chinese officials put Shi Tao in jail.
Now legislators want to introduce the Global Online Freedom Act which would forbid US internet providers from giving out information about their users to foreign governments - without justice department permission.
All of these stories - one day of news reports, go to show that the more we live our lives online, under the watchful eyes of those with access to the networks we communicate with, the greater the need for checks and measures to ensure the incredible access to information they have, is not improperly used.
