Could the situation in Britain happen here? Start with the observation that any big organization has bad apples. We don't know if the Greek case, in which one hundred senior members of the government were wiretapped by parties unknown, had its start with an insider, but it is a fair assumption that the ten-year illegal wiretapping of Italian judges, politicians, celebrities and sport figures used phone company insiders to enable the taps. The Stuxnet worm was spread through an infected USB stick, meaning an insider, perhaps unwittingly, enabling the worm's spread through an Iranian nuclear facility. Rogue insiders happen. In recent decades the CIA had Aldrich Ames and the FBI had Robert Hanssen. Britain had Kim Philby. And let us not forget Whitey Bulger, the recently arrested crime boss who has been charged in connection with nineteen murders. Lawmen protected Bulger for decades -- he was an FBI informant -- even while he was committing violent crimes.
So it is quite ironic that the same week the news about the News of the World hacking was finally breaking, Congress held a hearing on data retention, the proposal that Internet service providers be required to retain customer network address, dates and time of access, etc, for eighteen months. This proposed law would require the service providers to keep this data for everyone -- not just the people that law enforcement has reason to believe have committed a crime.
Requiring such data retention boggles the mind. Storing eighteen months of such data on each and every American creates huge risk. There are risks of data breaches, of rogue reporters and police gone bad exploiting and accessing the data, of trusted insiders selling it for the right price. As both the police and News International reporters know, communications transactional information is remarkably revelatory. It tells you who is seeing whom when, who's important, how information is transmitted, who is in the know, who matters in an organization; if the data retained are ISP addresses, you learn who is looking at what on the Internet. In many ways, such information is much more valuable than the contents of the communication.
The FBI has been seeking data retention laws since 2006. For various reasons, including costs and threats to privacy, these law-enforcement efforts have not resulted in a law. Nor should there be one. This is not a dispute about privacy versus security, or about cost versus catching criminals. This conflict is about surveillance or security, and the issue is squarely about universal data collection and storage. Yes, there are cases when data retention would be valuable. But universal data retention raises serious security risks. The best way to secure data is not to collect it in the first place. Just ask John Yates, Gordon Taylor, Max Clifford, Tess Jowell -- and any of the hundreds whose cell phone messages were hacked. And toss out proposals on mandatory data retention.
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