No warrants needed to monitor web use

Last week the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the police do not need a warrant to monitor the web pages and email addresses a person contacts:

In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

These kind of rulings can be expected in the current political climate, and even if a warrant were required there is no guarantee that your ISP wouldn't just give the data to the Government. You can, however, take precautions to protect your privacy online. You can use Secure Shell (ssh) to create encrypted tunnels for your mail and web browsing. You can use PGP to encrypt the contents of your email messages (although your contract addresses aren't protected). You can use Onion routing to obscure your actions on the internet.