A senior Bush administration official said Monday night that the House compromise proposal was encouraging because it demonstrated bipartisan support for many of the proposals on the White House s wish list. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said some of the elements were troubling, especially the sunset feature that would force the expiration of the expanded wiretap powers in two years unless explicitly renewed by Congress. The events of September 11th underscored the need for America to redesign our public infrastructures for security. Ignoring this need would be an additional tragedy. The Sept. 11 tragedy will accelerate a profound trend already well under way from centralized technologies to distributed ones and from the real world to the virtual world.
Centralized technologies are subject to disruption and disaster.