U.S. communications – gateway for hackers

Although the change made last week with Congress caving may seem reasonable, it may cause huge long-term security risks for the United States. Since last week National Security Agency (NSA) will not need a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to wiretap if one party is believed to be outside the U.S.

Until the last week NSA used satellites and antennas to pick up conversations of foreigners talking to other foreigners, which used to come through the air. The problem here is fiber optics.  

Although modern communications use fiber, which is safer than land-based switches, NSA wants to access the land-based ones. Be careful what you wish for…

Local and global communications often go through the United States and the government still can get access to much of the information it seeks. According to insidebayarea.com, wiretapping within the United States has required a FISA search warrant, and the NSA apparently found using FISA too time-consuming, even though emergency access was permitted as long as a warrant was applied for and granted within 72 hours of surveillance.

Constitutionally protected are mostly communications between U.S. persons talking to U.S. persons. However, they are potentially invasive as well as foreigners talking to foreigners. Although avoiding warrants for these cases may seem simple, Americans’ civil liberties may actually be harmed.

NSA will have to build massive automatic surveillance capabilities into telephone switches, in order to avoid wiretapping every communication. That’s were things get tricky. At the very moment infrastructure is set up, others will be able to intercept those communications.   

It’s only a matter of time after the infrastructure is in the place when the United States will be vulnerable to attacks of hackers from all over the world. There already are some examples of such mistake in other countries including China and Russia.

Greek government has experienced this non-theoretical problem a few years ago. Who placed the software and who did the listening remain unknown, but the fact is that they used the software that should be used only with legal permission. Moreover, the spying attack was made on such high priorities as the prime minister and ministers of defense, foreign affairs, justice and public order.  

It’s not a secret that United States itself has been attacked. According to insidebayarea.com, one year ago, remote attackers entered computers at the Army Information Systems Engineering Command, Defense Information Systems Agency, the Naval Ocean Systems Center and the Army Space and Strategic Defense Command. The hackers when transported more than 10 terabytes to China, through such countries as South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although each intrusion was only 10 to 30 minutes, such sensitive information as Army helicopter mission-planning-systems specifications and flight-planning software used by the Army and Air Force, were included.
  
These two examples are warnings that entities other than NSA could exploit vulnerabilities of U.S. communications networks. U.S. security and privacy could be easily and severely compromised with the suggested wiretapping technology penetrated by foreign intelligence services.

Intercepting capabilities that are likely to be managed remotely and vulnerabilities will most probably be not only local but global as well. Providing a target for foreign intelligence agencies and possibly rogue hackers would construct a network were breaking into one service would get an access to all U.S. communications. 

NSA here forgot the critical information security aspect of its mission: protecting U.S. communications against foreign interception. However, NSA are not the only ones, so did Congress. Insidebayarea.com says that lawmakers granted the warrantless wiretapping only for six months – and they need to look carefully before it endangers U.S. national security for the long term.  

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