FOR the police and security services, the telephone is a godsend. An itemised
phone bill will tell them at a glance who a person is talking to. Check those
people’s bills and an entire network of contacts emerges. Then, if the
investigators want to listen to what’s being said, the phone system is eminently
tappable.
Governments would love to monitor Internet activity with the same ease. But
they still don’t seem to have grasped that the Net is like nothing they’ve dealt
with before. As a result, their efforts to tap cyberspace so far have led to
disaster.
First up,…
