Right now we're in a period in history where a slightly scary thing is happening. The government is spending a whole lot of money on increasing its capabilities to monitor communications on the Internet. This likely has very little to do with assuring our safety. It's also important to note that it's probably not part of some grand conspiracy theory or anything. What is most likely happening here is a combination of a Senator's cousin getting rich retailing computer components and various government agencies scrambling to appear relevant in order to maintain their budgets. As with all government programs, we can pretty well guess it's going to be an utterly ineffective quagmire of equal parts waste and fraud…

It's already a waste from the get-go, really. Those people interested in spectacular acts of terrorism generally don't communicate with the Internet anyway. If they do and they’re pros, they’d likely communicate using something as simple as code words to avoid detection. Osama Bin Laden was notorious for not using so much as a mobile phone because he knew damn well we were capable of listening. So in the end, all this is going to do is flag jerks typing nonsense like “anthrax nuclear burst cyber security” into a wiki about a defunct web site…

So ultimately, in the end, terrorists are going to perform yet another attack which will prove all of their effort wasted. We need only look at 9/11 to see the wonders of misallocated intelligence resources. To that end, I propose speeding up the failure. If even a small percentage of the population undertakes efforts to create noise (as a cell phone bomb detonated in Pakistan would), the system will need to be increased in scope. The more money wasted on this system and the more devastating the attack it did not catch, the more foolish it will seem in the forthcoming Congressional investigation. Basically, the only way to keep the government from reading your e-mail in the end is for everyone to make sure it costs them as much as possible to read your e-mail. In the end, everything boils down to a budget. If they continually overrun their budget, they’re out of business.

Oh hey, how much do you make per year and how long did it take you read this?

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