The FBI Needs Hackers, Not Backdoors | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

Just imagine if all the applications and services you saw or heard about at CES last week had to be designed to be “wiretap ready” before they could be offered on the market. Before regular people like you or me could use them.

Yet that’s a real possibility. For the last few years, the FBI’s been warning that its surveillance capabilities are “going dark,” because internet communications technologies — including devices that connect to the internet — are getting too difficult to intercept with current law enforcement tools. So the FBI wants a more wiretap-friendly internet, and legislation to mandate it will likely be proposed this year.

But a better way to protect privacy and security on the internet may be for the FBI to get better at breaking into computers.

Whoa, what? Let us explain.

via wired.com