The tug-of-war between security and privacy

In his speech last Friday outlining a new national cybersecurity policy, President Obama took note of the fact that the "very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy."

That quote from the President's address underscores the perpetual tug of war between those who want more security and those who want more privacy.

That's one of the topics being discussed this week at the 19th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference now underway at George Washington University.

Stewart Baker is a former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, and former General Counsel with the National Security Agency. To underscore his argument that the privacy community often loses sight of the bigger picture when it comes to cybersecurity, he recounted a fairly recent, and serious, cyberattack by those outside the U.S.

He says a Canadian group recently issued a report on an attack staged by those believed to be connected with the Chinese Government. A group of hackers tricked an employee in the Dali Lama's offices to open an attachment in an e-mail message. The attachment carried a piece of malware that allowed the hackers to take control of the computer and the office computer network.

On the other hand, cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier argues that some things that are done in the name of security often do little to further the cause and are capable of trampling on people's privacy.

In recent years, the Bush Administration, FBI and Justice Department came under fire for the use of National Security Letters as the legal basis for a number of security and cybersecurity investigations. And, refuting Schnier's questioning about things done in the name of security, Valerie Caproni, General Counsel with the FBI, made the case for the value of those classified NSLs.

The letters, she said, allowed for capturing information on when a phone call took place, at what time, and the location of the call. Contrary to popular opinion, she says, the FBI was not interested in the actual content of the message, but only data pertinent to an investigation.

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