Las Enforcement Takes Stand Against Secure Online Communication

Governments are among the greatest threats to data privacy and information security on the internet.  Law enforcement groups in the United States are now effectively demanding that the privacy and security of all online communications be compromised because there might be criminals using those means of communications.  From the Washington Post:

A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face­book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort.

Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications. 

The thing is, when you have a means of communication that actually is secure, there is no way to wiretap or intercept it, that is the point of a secure means of communication.  The article continues:

There is currently no way to wiretap some of these communications methods easily . . .  the companies argue that they have no means to facilitate the wiretap . . . 

What government agencies want is a backdoor into these secure means of communications.  In other words, they want to compromise the security of all means of communication.  Excerpt:

Susan Landau, a former Sun Microsystems distinguished engineer, has argued that wiring in an intercept capability will increase the likelihood that a company’s servers will be hacked. “What you’ve done is created a way for someone to silently go in and activate a wiretap,” she said. Traditional phone communications were susceptible to illicit surveillance as a result of the 1994 law, she said, but the problem “becomes much worse when you move to an Internet or computer-based network.”

This case is especially interesting because the FBI and other government agencies have no qualms about illegally wiretapping the communications of Americans citizens.  Here, they have legal authority to do so, but they are incapable of doing so because the technology is secure.  What's their solution? To make the technology insecure.