Wired author, Thomas Greene, has written a very interesting article on the ISS World Conference. He managed to sneak in as press is not permitted. This conference is geared around the surveillance industry.
These devices are a bonanza for the communications hardware industry, vouchsafed by the U.S. Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act of 1994, or CALEA, which mandates that all new telephone company gear must be wiretap-friendly, or “CALEA compliant,” according to the popular euphemism. This has led to a seller’s market with equipment makers pushing their dual-use kits with exceptional confidence. The sales pitch has evolved beyond the traditional points of reliability, scalability, total cost of ownership and ease of deployment to exploit the hard-sell undercurrents of mass-scale commerce that’s mandated by law and funded by taxpayers who are powerless to review the deals and evaluate their various costs and benefits to society.
An interested read. Another except,
“It’s a valid question,” I insisted. “This is powerful stuff. In the wrong hands, it could ruin political opponents; it could make the state’s power impossible to challenge. The state would know basically everything. People would be getting rounded up for thought crimes.”
“You’re not listening,” he said. “The NSA is using this stuff. The DEA, the Secret Service, the CIA. Are you kidding me? They don’t answer to you. They do whatever the hell they want with it. Are you really that naïve? Now leave these guys alone; they make a product, that’s all. It’s nothing to them what happens afterward. You really need to educate yourself.”
[tags]NSA, CALEA, ISS World Conference, Wiretap, packet interception, U.S. military[/tags]