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Security Threat In the New Wiretapping Law
The NSA wants automatic surveillance capabilities in telephone switches. But once such capabilities are built in, others could use them to intercept communications. Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments of other nations. "Such threats are not theoretical: In April 2004, phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused."
The article does not once mention CALEA, a law dating back to 1994 that mandates that phone companies provide a means for tapping your phone which is integrated into the switch and cannot be detected by the party being tapped. Also full records of the call must be maintained.
Is this an Internet-level CALEA-like law at the TCP/IP switch? Or is this something different (TFA talks about fiber vs over-the-air communication.. huh?)
I have heard this argument before and am surprised its gone so long with no one debunking it. First of all no one I know has dropped the "privacy" side of this argument, the security risk is simply in addition to the privacy reasons. You also need to consider that the people who are making the decision have already proven on more than one occasion that they are indifferent to privacy implications of legislation like this. If we can convince them to preserve some facet of our ever dwindling privacy out of fear of some script kiddy stealing a few hundred thousand from their trust fund its still a win. No commanding general would ever forfeit a battle because the only reason he was winning was a supply line interruption, he would move on to the next battle proud of his victory.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
From a logical point of view, it's more reasonable to support child predators whan total surveillance. The former only threatens a part of society, the latter the whole.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Its always been about controlling the masses, sure they want you to think about all the wiretapping going on, but even in a perfect world, to have wiretaps on everybody 24/7 ...after a week, you would break the datawarehouse piggy bank. What this does, is dissuade any would be terrorist from getting any ideas going into fruition, and leaves the really bad ones in that category. By controlling the masses by fear (yet again amercia) we avoid the masses from sheeping too many bad ideas. Any idea which is different then the governments is a bad idea.
Now that the REAL terrorists are still needing to communicate and have heard this, they will implement even more cryptic ways of communicating. Which will in turn keep the big monster wheel going... making our good guys figure out new ways to counter that etc...
We are heading a dark road into even darker territory, soon our children may have to take polygraphs everywhere they go.....