Skip to Content

Government Surveillance

NPR: As Homeland Security Steps Up Cybercrime Fight, Tech Industry Wary

CDT Director of Security & Surveillance Greg Nojeim was recently interviewed by NPR’s Aarti Shahani regarding the role DHS can play to stop cybercrime and why they may be a better fit for this work than the NSA.

“The alternative to having DHS do the cybersecurity work is that a lot of user data is going to end up in the hands of a military intelligence agency,” says Greg Nojeim, a privacy advocate with the Center for Democracy and Technology.

While the National Security Agency is more competent, Nojeim says, it’s also got a conflict of interest. When its teams discover holes in software, they don’t always tell the software maker. Nojeim says they leave customers at risk of a criminal hacker, just so they can stockpile those holes and exploit them for espionage.

“DHS doesn’t have that internal conflict of interest,” he says.

Read full article here.