Now that Glenn Greenwald has launched First Look and Ed Snowden is….live online, I have some advice for the two men who desperately want to make sure U.S. government digital surveillance doesn’t slip from the headlines. Let’s get right to the point. Please search that treasure trove of documents you have and look for any signs that the NSA, CIA or even the White House has been hacked and lost consumers’ credit card numbers. Americans care a heck of lot more about stolen account data than government surveillance.
I’ve thought this for some time, but finally there is data backing me up. In an (admittedly limited) survey by Tripwire.com at the big the security conference in San Francisco last week, 56 percent of those surveyed said the Target leak had more impact on security awareness than the NSA leaks, while another 27 percent said there was no impact at all. In other words, executives were twice as worried about credit card hackers than government hackers.
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That’s just CEOs who are trying to figure out how to spend money. But you get the idea. I can tell from the web traffic I get and the number of media appearances I’ve had that Target and other leaky retailers is a much bigger story to the American public than government surveillance. Funny, that. As we’ve detailed before, consumers face no liability from credit card hacking. And while vast millions of accounts have been threatened, there’s debate about how many consumers have actually been hit by fraud. Yes, it’s a hassle to transfer automatic payments. But the real-life consequences of Target, etc., are fairly minimal. Do people believe the consequences of NSA surveillance are even less significant?
So, how about Glenn and Ed: Any credit card account numbers in those files of yours?
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