U.S. Government;S Proposed Cyber Security Policy Would Police All Internet Activ

COMMENTARY:
Appearing only in the print version of the New Yorker magazine on January 13 is Lawrence Wright’s six-months-in-the-making, 15,000-word article profiling Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. Featured prominently in the article and catching the eye of several journalists is a description of McConnell’s development of a so-called cyber security policy. Basically, McConnell wants to funnel everything that happens online through the NSA, eviscerating online privacy and the Fourth Amendment in the process.

McConnell said that privacy will have to take a back seat in the name of security. He insists that he simply must have the ability to read all information crisscrossing the United States on the Internet in order to "protect" the United States from "abuse."

To justify this unlimited, unrestrained, and extrajudicial invasive prying, with accompanying disregard for "probable cause" and "warrants" as required by the Constitution, he claims that in the past six years U.S. intelligence agencies have stopped "many, many" terrorist attacks. Proof of this claim is woefully lacking and, in any case, McConnell is not averse to exaggeration. As further justification for his snooping scheme, Wired points out that McConnell "regurgitates the hoary myth that computer crime costs America $100 billion a year." In September 2007, Kevin Poulsen, writing at Wired’s "Threat Level" blog did great work pointing out that that number was based on little more than unfounded rumor.

Source: http://www.jbs.org/node/6860