The BBC has the story. Zimbabwe sees it the other way around, of course:

Zimbabwe’s MPs have passed a law to allow the government to monitor e-mails, telephone calls, the internet and postal communications.

Opposition MP David Coltart called it a “fascist piece of legislation” aimed at cracking down on political dissent.

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe defended it, saying it was similar to anti-terror laws elsewhere such as in the UK, US and South Africa.

“These are countries which are regarded as the beacons of democracy,” he said.

Perhaps he meant “were regarded”? Wait, forget the US, who says South Africa and the UK are beacons of democracy?

The bill obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to install equipment, at their own expense, which will allow a monitoring service to intercept e-mails.

Since it is at their own expense, I wonder how the quality of the monitoring will be enforced. What if the system is unable to keep up with the throughput, for example, and starts dropping traffic?

The FBI has announced they are taking down (zombie) names and numbers in order to clean up the American cyberspace:

Today the Department of Justice and FBI announced the results of an ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt and dismantle “botherders� and elevate the public’s cyber security awareness of botnets. OPERATION BOT ROAST is a national initiative and ongoing investigations have identified over 1 million victim computer IP addresses.

Here’s a bit of irony, perhaps intentional.

The FBI also wants to thank our industry partners, such as the Microsoft Corporation and the Botnet Task Force, in referring criminal botnet activity to law enforcement.

Does someone at the FBI have a sense of humor?

Hot off the press:

…after negotiations with AT&T, EFF has filed newly unredacted documents describing a secret, secure room in AT&T’s facilities that gave the National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to customers’ emails and other Internet communications

Secret, secure room makes me think of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, or maybe Alice’s Wonderland.

The timing might be coincidence a subpoena vote is about to be set for the US government’s wiretap records, according to the NYT:

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote Thursday on whether to authorize subpoenas to gain access to Justice Department documents related to the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program, including a series of secret legal opinions.

The vote comes a week after Democratic leaders on a House Judiciary subcommittee threatened to issue subpoenas for the same documents.

I wonder who Bush would be in Wonderland.