For two years now, the FBI has been talking about how new Internet communications technologies are stopping them from getting the bad guys. In 2011, the FBI's top lawyer called it the "going dark" problem. Last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller related similar concerns to Congress, stating it needs "wiretapping backdoors" into popular websites, or it would have to shut down more investigations. The FBI's position was reportedly that installing such "backdoors" should be mandatory, not optional.

Now it looks like those proposals are back, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper cites unnamed administration officials saying that Facebook and Google are specifically being pressured to allow for electronic communications to be intercepted "as they occur"—a kind of digital-age wiretap that could read, for instance, Facebook messages or Gchats.

In the new proposal, which is still in draft form, not only would installing backdoors be mandatory, there would be fines for companies that didn't comply. The exact amount isn't clear, but it would consist of "a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars." It gets worse: "After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily."

Law enforcement's ability to wiretap was already extended to Internet technologies like VoIP with the 1994 CALEA law. But that law is written to apply to Internet service providers, not giant web companies like Google and Facebook—hence the FBI's desire for expansion.

The FBI declined to comment on the piece, but the Post quotes the FBI's top lawyer complaining publicly that the agency doesn't have access to techniques that are available to law enforcement in other nations.

“The importance to us is pretty clear,” said FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann, speaking at an American Bar Association conference in March. “We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, ‘We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’ Other countries have that. Most people assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to a court.”

Tech companies will probably react coolly to this proposals, as they did to proposed CALEA expansions last year. "It’s important to also understand that law enforcement today has access to a vast wealth of information about suspects that their predecessors merely a decade ago could only have dreamed of," said Computer and Communications Industry Association president Ed Black. "The claims of ‘going dark’ must be evaluated in this context: massive amounts of information are stored online and shared with law enforcement—when they have gone through the proper process."