Network Security
Susan Landau, a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, lays it out in a Washington Post op-ed: A Gateway for Hackers.
You have to weaken the security of the system to allow it to be tapped. The systems and the people designing them are concentrating on making them secure. One of the reason for using fiber optics is that unlike copper, you can’t listen in without breaking the connection. You can put an inductive sensor on a copper cable and capture the contents with no indication that you have done it.
Given the general incompetence with all things computer related, if the government is given access to “secure networks” they will allow them to be accessed by foreign governments and hackers. They have no credibility when it comes to security. They don’t protect their hardware, they don’t protect their own systems, they don’t protect their passwords, so giving them a backdoor is a recipe for disaster.
The government has outsourced so many things that they no longer have the people with the skills and clearances to conduct these surveillances in a safe and secure manner, and they don’t verify the backgrounds or credentials of their contractors.
In a rush to enable the government to conduct wiretaps, we may be giving our adversaries the keys to our secrets.
2 comments
IMHO this is just more proof that it was never about security in the first place.
The gaping holes in the Federal networks are obscene, and there are people in NSA who could seal them if they were allowed. They used civilian contractors to conduct security audits. It’s absurd.
It’s about power, not security.