True I shot from the hip, he does address the concerns later. I'm used
to implementing technologies to solve security problems. It's just damn
frustrating to have your hands tied in such a way that you can not and
that's the position that I see myself and most other network ops in.
Our customers decided at the ballot box that they didn't want
protection and it was acceptable to entrust their privacy to the system.
They seem to forget that decision when they ask if they are vulnerable
to this type of intercept and what they can do about it. The answer is
not much because I will not and can not break the law, it's unethical
and wrong. I will encourage people to seek to change the laws to
encourage true end to end security but the odds of that happening are
near 0.
Sam
On 2013-09-06 06:47, John S. Quarterman wrote:
On 2013-09-06 05:57, Roland Dobbins wrote:
> There are no purely technical solutions to social ills. Schneier
of
> all people should know this.
Schneier does know this, and explicitly said this.
-jsq
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying
Three, we can influence governance. I have resisted saying this up to
now,
and I am saddened to say it, but the US has proved to be an unethical
steward of the internet. The UK is no better. The NSA's actions are
legitimizing the internet abuses by China, Russia, Iran and others.
We
need to figure out new means of internet governance, ones that makes
it
harder for powerful tech countries to monitor everything. For
example,
we need to demand transparency, oversight, and accountability from
our
governments and corporations.
Unfortunately, this is going play directly into the hands of
totalitarian
governments that want to control their country's internet for even
more
extreme forms of surveillance. We need to figure out how to prevent
that,
too. We need to avoid the mistakes of the International
Telecommunications
Union, which has become a forum to legitimize bad government
behavior,
and create truly international governance that can't be dominated or
abused by any one country.
Generations from now, when people look back on these early decades of
the internet, I hope they will not be disappointed in us. We can
ensure
that they don't only if each of us makes this a priority, and engages
in
the debate. We have a moral duty to do this, and we have no time to
lose.
Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. Has any country
that
engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up
that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming
totalitarian? Whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new
ground.
Again, the politics of this is a bigger task than the engineering,
but
the engineering is critical. We need to demand that real
technologists
be involved in any key government decision making on these issues.
We've
had enough of lawyers and politicians not fully understanding
technology;
we need technologists at the table when we build tech policy.
To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us
have
helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix
it.