Blogger Party

Your first sentence about the administration's "domestic" spying program is (at this time) false and sets the tone for the rest of your post. Unless you are making phone calls to your terrorist buddies in Pakistan, you are at no more risk for getting spied upon than you were in the Clinton and Carter administrations.

Now, about Skype. Skype is a peer-to-peer style protocol with some wrinkles. First, the wrinkle: Every Skype call first relies upon a connection to the Skype Mother Ship in the Netherlands, where various things about you are recorded. Then, your phone packets are bounced around the world in peer-to-peer fashion; your conversation may at any instant be routed through Romania, Korea, Taiwan, etc. Further, you agree to provide bandwidth to other Skype users/calls as needed by the network (this is in the EULA, I think). Skype is also tricky about violating local network policy, worming its way through firewalls and even working through natted routers. It behaves as does malware.

These, and other, reasons are why many companies and government agencies ban Skype usage. Use at your own risk. Skype can expose your computer and network to various security-related risks. So use it because it makes economic sense, but don't recommend its usage on security/privacy grounds.

Regards,
Wolfgang

Well, if my first line sets the stage for the rest of my post, then your headline raises questions in regards to your ability to type/spell.

Anyway, while your information regarding Skype acting as malware may be worth looking into (which would most likely be a security issue if you are running it on a security-lax windoze box, which is not the personal case), this line "Unless you are making phone calls to your terrorist buddies in Pakistan, you are at no more risk for getting spied upon than you were in the Clinton and Carter administrations" is complete bull. FYI, there was a specific reason why the FISA court was set up in wake of the Watergate / Operation SHAMROCK scandal, and it was clearly to curb the whole violation of 4th Amendment rights that were inherent in Operation SHAMROCK. Schneier talk about the finer details here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/the_security_th_1.html

But leaving aside these issues for one moment, can you name or list a single incident where this domestic spying has resulted in a single "terrorist" arrest? How about a single "terrorist" act stopped before it happend? Can you even tell us, gentle blogger, what the specific legal definition of "terrorism" is? (Hint: Check out section 802 of the Patriot Act: It labels "terrorism" as anything that might potentially violate a law or cause life to be lost, which is inexplicably broad for any reasonable application of the law.)

9/11 wasn't stopped by all kinds of surveilence that was in place after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing brought about anti-terror legislation, and there seems to be little reason to believe that the next terror attack will be thwarted in the future. I could also point out the fact that 95% of all Patriot Act investigations have had precisely zero to do with national security, but that would be superflueous, wouldn't it?
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Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe

It's great. 95% of all Patriot Act investigations have had precisely zero to do with national security, huh? Brilliant! Just BRILLIANT!