I’m not a fan of the government spying on everyone’s private Networks. I worry about how it could mess with our privacy and civil liberties. Think about all the personal and business info that’s flying around on private networks. A lot of it is totally harmless and has nothing to do with any bad guys. If the government can see all that traffic, even just to catch threats, they’ve got a powerful tool. They might start using it for other things, like spying on us for political reasons. All it takes is the right administration motivated for the wrong reasons. That could a  chilling effect on free speech. Plus, there’s a chance that the system could be accidentally or intentionally used to target people based on their beliefs or activities. That’s a serious risk. And let’s not forget that this system is not foolproof. Hackers are always finding ways to sneak past it. So, even if the government does manage to keep an eye on everything, it might not be enough to stop bad guys. And the cost of all this spying is huge. It means that we’re diverting resources away from other important cybersecurity measures.

Goldsmith makes a valid point about the potential risks of “bits and strings” causing “enormous harm” and the government’s need to understand what’s happening in the network to protect against this threat. However, I disagree with his analogy to physical security screenings. The scale and nature of network communications are vastly different from physical searches at airports or courthouses. These physical searches are usually targeted at specific locations and individuals entering those locations, often based on a general suspicion related to the context. Like airport security due to the history of terrorism. Applying this analogy to the entire internet, which involves the intimate details of countless individuals’ lives and businesses, is a significant expansion of government surveillance.

Goldsmith argues that such “massive government snooping…can be lawful if proper and credible safeguards are put in place.” I disagree. Safeguards are important, the essay doesn’t provide enough detail or assurance that these safeguards would be good enough to prevent abuse and protect privacy at the scale he envisions. The history of government surveillance programs raises concerns about the difficulty of implementing truly effective and independent oversight.

Any government monitoring should be very specific, subject to strict legal oversight and judicial review, and based on solid evidence of a specific threat, rather than a general search of everyone.

In summary, we all know that cybersecurity is very important, but we also need to think about how a government-led system to stop cyberattacks on private networks would affect our privacy and civil liberties. This type of over site is what is foreshadowed in books like 1984.