Safeguards should apply to Internet surveillance.(Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services)

The following editorial appeared in the Wichita Eagle on Tuesday, 7-25:

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On the Internet, potential consumers are subject to the kind of covert scrutiny normally reserved for nuclear scientists. Advertisers amass files on our reading habits; Web designers hide trackers behind tiny invisible pictures.

And if surfers didn't have enough cause for paranoia, now they've got the FBI to worry about.

For more than a year, the FBI has been using a program called Carnivore to get at suspects' e-mail. Housed in a black box hooked up to the suspect's Internet service provider, the unfortunately-named software doesn't tap the suspect's individual …