Fraud Fighters Collide
with Privacy Issues


The Government took up issues that raise 
privacy concerns last week. The automation of 
the monitoring of Internet chat rooms and 
message boards has been proposed as an 
efficient way of finding fraudulent financial 
deals that are being offered and may bilk the 
public.  However, some critics, and companies 
asked by the Government to participate, say 
that surveillance in this manner could be 
unconstitutional.

The reasoning behind the automation is that
manual surveillance is already ongoing, and 
the increased speed of discovery would allow
Federal regulators to spend more time on the
actual investigations.