Do governments/ law enforcement authorities monitor all internet activity?

[jheel]

Not that I plan to do something illegal, just curious if it is possible, with millions of people online, for law enforcement authorities to monitor all the traffic. It would require tremendous processing power to do this, right? And most people aren't criminals, what about their online-privacy?

[Stu147]

It's best to consider that you have NO internet privacy and operate on that basis. Anything you do online can be monitored and often is. Anything that you get away with is because someone isn't looking in your direction at that particular time or because they just don't deem it significant enough to pursue. However, one day that may change, so anything you do online is at your own risk. You leave a trail all over the internet wherever you go, and that history remains should someone want to profile you at a later date.

[ahsoasho2u2]

There is no privacy online as all is opened like facebook, twitter etc..
Best example today is this Cam Newton allegations, all are alleging without any facts produced that this was actually done.

[q S]

Monitor ALL internet activity? No it would be impossible.

Monitor SOME internet activity? Yes, but so does your internet service provider and facebook, ebay etc. If they detect illegal activity don't be surprised if they notify the authorities.

[john Tailor]

Privacy - what you do in your own home is up to you etc. what a load of rubbish, there's snoops and snitches everywhere prob. the only place you're safe from that is to move to alaska or something, even then there's satelites that can detect your every move, no joke. Unless, I suppose you live in Iraq or somewhere where law-enforcement is hindered by war / civil unrest etc.Or you could live in an underground bunker - but even then signs would give away your posistion sooner or later and you would be regarded with suspicion (ie. if he/she got nothing to hide why they in a bunker?). So, with regards to the internet I can quite safely state that these days, everything you do say type or express in any kind of way is monitored regularly by some very powerful automated software and hardware, this is an open secret and quite openly acknowledged in some places in UK, USA, China, Russia, anywhere where computers are used for banking / communications / military etc. There are ways to use the net in an "underground bunker" mentality kind of way but I would not advise it because you would then be in the same book as cyber-criminals, hackers, child-liking groomers, sickos, people who do off key wrong stuff. So net monitoring is actually a good thing! However, if you do want to encrypt everything you do on the net, remember that people will wonder why, and that nothing is ever entirely secure... think about it, your communications could easily be intercepted at source or destination, it is a matter of learning Linux with a downloadable CD hacking programs library to trace other people's (they think is private) internet traffic, if it's that easy that I could do it then how much more easy is it for a government with proper brainy professors etc. supercomputers to know everything that goes on? besides, my philosophy is that if you got nothing to hide then why bother with encrypting / hiding anything at all? Things like credit card info, private financial stuff, personal secrets or whatever let me just say, banks can and do use this stuff to screw people every day without batting an eyelid, also google is in the middle of a massive privacy case as well. Also Windows, I'm certain, has stuff which modifies the system registry at the source so even a hard-reformatted harddrive will give up details of net activity etc (hidden code in the software that's why government likes Bill Gates). University Computer Science deparments won't admit it but most of their research (paid for by governments) is involving tracing and decrypting network traffic and forensically matching it to a time / place / person. No joke. Big Brother is watching!