Where are the checks-n-balances?

Been mulling over the CNet article from July 7th on how the FBI plans a new Net tapping push. On the one hand, it’d be pretty damn tough to be in law enforcement in an age of virtually uncrackable cryptography available to anyone and an internet communications infrastructure that relays stuff in an instant.

At the same time it’s even tougher to be a dissenter, an opposing viewpoint holder, or a curious seeker when your internet tracks are all over the place. Every site you visit, search you make, VoIP call you engage in and communication you make is
susceptible to tracking.

Then you have the sheninigans at the National Security Agency coupled with the Bush Administration petitioning the court to disallow cases in open court in the interest of national security. Isn’t everything in the interest of national security? Or germane to the war on terror?

I’m finding it’s growing increasingly difficult to know what is and is not secure. What to advise clients to do that ensure their communications are not susceptible to eavesdropping for industrial espionage purposes (more are clamping down on IM, insecure versions of VoIP, off-site project management hosted applications, etc.).

Where are the checks-n-balances? There are so many things happening on so many fronts (just look at this cases page at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to illustrate my point) that it’s extremely difficult to stay on top of all the battles…let alone think about what appropriate policy and laws should be if I were a lawmaker. I suspect, though, that that is the point and the strategy of our present Administration: introduce so many things on so many fronts all at once that no one could keep up and activists can’t rally to any singular cause fast enough to make a difference.