Okay I found this piece via Blog on the Run. Basically the author claims that he found a piece of hardware that logs keystrokes on his brand new laptop (there are pictures of the item included in the piece). The hardware is set up so that it can keep a log of his keystrokes in a flash memory chip then send the log file to someone as soon as he connects to the internet, all without his knowledge.
So the guy contacts the police (installing this kind of hardware without the users knowledge is illegal) and they refer him to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS tells him to submit a FOIA request which it then denies, so the guy freaks. He infers that all new computers are being manufactured with the new hardware at the behest of the government, which is definitely a stretch. But who’s to say whether or not something like this is happening?
To be honest, what concerns me more is the amount of snooping the government could do with just some decent software. I mean there’s a reason they call some software "spyware" and if a scumbag spammer in Florida can infiltrate the average internet surfer’s computer so easily imagine what the NSA could do.
Oh my god, I’m becoming a conspiracy theorist!
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Befuddled 
I heard something about this on the radio the other day but I was unable to get the whole story.
Actually feds had this back in the early 90s. It was called Carnivore and eventually became part of the Dragon Suite. There was also D.I.R.T. that was another federal software trojan. I mean trojan because they acted similarly as trojans.
I think this is a hoax. Check out: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000317047049/
Thanks for the tip Jim. As hoaxes go this one’s pretty funny. When you think about it if the government’s going to do something it would be a lot more likely to be a software solution, ala Carnivore (thanks Darkmoon, I’d totally forgotten about that one).