Cyber Warfare Too Hard to Handle

Well if this isn't the height of hypocrisy. Our government is spending 40 billion dollars of your tax money annually on the War on Some Drugs and the DEA says the internet is making drug dealers too difficult to catch.

Messages in Internet chat rooms, where drug smugglers in Latin America can arrange cocaine deliveries in London or Berlin, are almost impossible to intercept and cellular phone text messages cannot be tracked by authorities, Mark Malcolm, intelligence analyst at the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, told an international drug conference in Lima.

"We are at a great disadvantage because we cannot intercept text messages or instant messaging. The only real possibility is by using undercover officers, who put their lives at risk," Malcolm told delegates.

Isn't that their ridiculous job or is it just that the undercover agents prefer the safer targets like bong makers and medical marijuana patients? God knows they are unlikely to shoot back when wrongfully arrested.

And here's a dangerous sentiment. Is it me, or does this look like the build up to further unconstitutional surveillance and requests for more funding?

Cocaine smuggling to Europe is on the rise as cartels find new ways to evade authorities, shipping drugs via Africa, according to European anti-drug officials. Latin American authorities also concede they are no closer to beating the drug trade because of a lack of resources and intelligence.

"As wireless technology develops there are now a multitude of avenues to surf the Internet anonymously and our attempts at surveillance are tenuous at best," he said.

Many Latin American cartels use free electronic mail services to communicate with drug ring members around the world and hook up illegally to wireless Internet routers in cities to avoid being tracked to a land-based server, Malcolm said.

And this chilling remark sounds like a veiled threat to me.

Malcolm said the DEA needed governments around the world to work more closely to track and intercept traffickers, because the U.S. drug agency "cannot do the job alone."

It's absurd to suggest these can't be tracked. I read in the last few months about a man who was caught hijacking wireless service while driving around in his car, in order that he could download kiddy porn. In light of the DEA routinely setting up field offices in foreign countries, the recent interrogation of Haitian refugee Oriel Jean in the absence of his attorney, and their meddling in Ghana just to name a few instances, their protestations sound rather disingenuous to me.