US Spychief's Plan To Monitor Internet Raises Major Privacy Issues

Spychief Mike McConnell is drafting a plan to protect America's cyberspace that will raise privacy issues and make the current debate over surveillance law look like "a walk in the park," McConnell tells The New Yorker in the issue set to hit newsstands Monday. "This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens."

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse. Congressional aides tell The Journal that they, too, are also anticipating a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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