Eavesdropping Laws's Spying Outposts Would Create Security Risk, Cryptographer Says

Susan Landau, a cryptographer for Sun Microsystems and the co-author of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, argues in the Washington Post today that the spying outposts made possible by the so-called Protect America Act actually create holes that can be used by hackers to attack critical infrastructure.

To avoid wiretapping every communication, NSA will need to build massive automatic surveillance capabilities into telephone switches. Here things get tricky: Once such infrastructure is in place, others could use it to intercept communications.

Grant the NSA what it wants, and within 10 years the United States will be vulnerable to attacks from hackers across the globe, as well as the militaries of China, Russia and other nations.

Such threats are not theoretical. For almost a year beginning in April 2004, more than 100 phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister and ministers of defense, foreign affairs, justice and public order, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused. Exactly who placed the software and who did the listening remain unknown. But they were able to use software that was supposed to be used only with legal permission.

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