The Security Mentor

In case you missed it, ATT let the National Security Agency read all of the network traffic flowing over ATT's Internet hardware, which is most if not all of the Internet.

First of all this is not good national security. Spying on millions of people who aren't dangerous wastes time and manpower. Even the few thousand illegal phone taps that just came to light, which supposedly were targeted, had the FBI complaining about having to investigate thousands of dead ends.

Then, there's a lof of confidential information going over the Internet. Business negotations and trade secrets are just the start -- a few years ago, the American Bar Association told its members that email was secure enough to use for discussing cases with clients. Oops.

Assuming the NSA is noble, trustworthy, and will resist all orders to abuse its powers, what happens if they hire a crook? In all their history, for all their precautions, they haven't been able to keep outright traitors out of their organization. What happens when an NSA employee with access to all Internet traffic is a stalker?

Finally, not that anyone cares about such things any more, the whole program is thoroughly, inarguably, flatly illegal.