Big Brother is watching Skype now?

[Susan]

Here's link to Washington Post article about this ...

Skype makes chats and user data available to police

Better watch what you say, and what you're wearing, if you're chatting on Skype.

[Dana King]

It's safe to say you have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" anywhere.

[Susan]

True. Are there surveillance cameras on streets where you live?

I don't use Skype myself, but I know people in Europe who do.

[Dana King]

I live in a smallish town halfway between Washington and Baltimore . No surveillance cameras in Laurel (other than for red light enforcement), but there's no question you can be followed throughout Washington from a central location.

I used Skype when my daughter spent several weeks in France late this spring. I can't say i thought about it, but there's no question anything we said could have been intercepted. I would be surprised to learn nothing we said had been intercepted or eavesdropped upon in some manner.

[Benjamin Sobieck]

What's really scary is this is the overt stuff. The real security is the kind you never know about.

[John McFetridge]

With the kind if research we all do, I keep waiting to hear about a crime writer investigated or something like that. More and more my worry is starting to be not that everyone is watched but that the watchers really aren't very good. Or maybe they're just overworked and understaffed. Maybe it's just too overwhelming a job to watch everybody, and you know, so many of us are so boring.... ;)

[Jack Getze]

Since I am not a terrorist, a criminal, a pedophile, or a political activist, I have no problem being watched or listened to. Go right ahead Big Brother. Catch the bad guys!

And since I spent the last two years Googling and otherwise researching how to attack and blow up Hoover Dam, I don't think writers have much to worry about either.

JMHO.

[I. J. Parker]

I can testifty to Jack's research.  :)

[Jon Loomis]

I think it's a safe bet that everything we do online is monitored in one way or another.  I've done some research into things like arson, truck bombs, etc., that may have landed me on a list or two.  And can I just say how much I love Jack's list?  It's funny, but it's also terrifyingly, exactly right--we really do live in a world now in which political activists are considered by government to be the rough equivalent of terrorists and pedophiles. 

[Susan]

Yeah, they say the rule of thumb is: don't write anything in an email that you wouldn't write on a postcard. Pretty much leaves out torrid terms of endearment, huh?