Surveillance or Security?
A few weeks ago, Susan Landau of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and author of the book Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies, attended a congressional hearing on law enforcement’s increasing surveillance powers… ironically held just after Congress voted to extend the unconstitutional surveillance programs of the Patriot Act without any attempt at reform. That timing shows how easily the U.S. Congress disregards Fourth Amendment promises of protection from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
Landau’s basic message to Congress was this: Be careful about expanding government surveillance powers, because doing so often creates more security problems than it solves. Landau pointed out that plans to force all telecommunications providers to provide standardized electronic trap doors through which government spies can conduct easy surveillance - a new Homeland Security regime the FBI is lobbying for under the code name Going Dark - can actually create an easy way for enemies of the United States to break into our nation’s communications systems and conduct massive spying against us. She warned,
“Building wiretapping into communications infrastructure creates serious risk that the communications system will be subverted either by trusted insiders or skilled outsiders, including foreign governments, hackers, identity thieves and perpetrators of economic espionage. This risk is not theoretical. For a period of ten months in 2004-2005, over one hundred senior officials of the Greek government, including the prime minister and the heads of the ministries of interior, justice, national defense, were eavesdropped upon as a result of a breach in wiretapping capability built into a switch.”
If this kind of vulnerability can be triggered through a simple adjustment of communications technologies, what could happen if the U.S. government established a massive surveillance dragnet in which practically all communications by Americans was made available? Imagine what an enemy mole could do with that kind of access.
That’s just the kind of massive surveillance system that’s been set up by the federal government, under a synergy of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. These laws, it seems, may actually be making America less secure, rather than more secure.
This Saturday, March 12, there will be a protest against the Patriot Act, held at noon on the National Mall just outside the U.S. capitol Building. Those Americans who care about security, as well as those Americans concerned about the integrity of their constitutional rights, should be there.
