Surveillance Can't Make Us Secure | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary

Surveillance Can't Make Us Secure | Julian Sanchez | Cato Institute: Commentary: "a portal set up to help the American government catch criminals may have proved just as handy at helping the Chinese government find dissidents.

In a way, the hackers' strategy makes perfect sense. Communications networks are generally designed to restrict outside access to their users' private information. But the goal of government surveillance is to create a breach-by-design, a deliberate backdoor into otherwise carefully secured systems."

"In the summer of 2004, unknown intruders managed to activate wiretapping software embedded in the systems of Greece's largest cellular carrier. For ten months, the hackers eavesdropped on the cellphone calls of more than 100 prominent citizens — including the prime minister, opposition members of parliament, and high cabinet officials."

"DCSNet is designed to allow authorized law enforcement agents to initiate a wiretap or gather information with point-and-click simplicity. Yet a 2003 internal audit, released several years later under a freedom-of-information request, found a slew of problems in the system's setup that appalled security experts."

"surrendering privacy does not automatically make us more secure — that systems of surveillance can themselves be a major source of insecurity."