perfidy

Bruce Schneier is a very well-respect cryptographer and writer on security policy in general. He's got a short essay here on security trade-offs which is well worth reading. I've read his book on the subject as well.

The point is, we can give new powers to our federal agencies with ease...but what are we really getting in return? We need to look very closely at freedoms that are lost, and at the potential for abuse that we introduce into the system.

For each of these powers, we need to look at the checks and balances. If someone goes "bad", what kind of abuse can this new power generate? If history teaches us anything, it's that the answer cannot be that we simply must trust those in positions of authority. The whole structure of government in this country is designed to eliminate single points of failure.