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Could New FBI Rules on Online Surveillance Lead to More Cyberattacks?

1,307 views · Published 10 May 2013 · 1:57 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: Democracy Now! · 2013 · News & Politics

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Watch the full discussion with Ben Wizner on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/kU8U0. Reports have emerged that the Obama administration is considering approving an overhaul of government surveillance of the Internet. The New York Times reported the new rules would make it easier to wiretap users of web services such as instant messaging, text messages and emails.

BEN WIZNER: The FBI wants to be able to intercept every kind of possible communication. Now, if they get a warrant from a judge to listen to phone calls, they can go to a phone company and a switch can be flipped and they can listen to those phone calls. But there are lots of ways that we communicate online right now through emails, through chats, through text messages, through peer-to-peer encrypted communication. where the technology doesn't exist for the FBI to get that information in real time. ...  the FBI basically wants to require all of these companies to rewrite their code in order to enable more government surveillance.

This new proposal adds a new level of danger because it would require these companies to break encryption ... And in order to accomplish that, they would make the whole internet less secure. In order to build in this surveillance backdoor, you are essentially opening up all these online platforms to cyberattack from criminals, hackers, foreign governments. ... we can't trust our civil liberties to for-profit entities."

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