On Thu, Apr 3, 2014, at 09:25 PM, Dan Geer wrote: >you can take my word, if you like
No offense meant to you personally Dan, because I don't know you, but- I don't trust the word of anyone from In-Q-Tel in matters such as these. -Shelley > Responding to various, > > Google up Geoff Stone; he's a Constitutional lawyer, clerked for > Brennan, was Dean of the Law School and then Provost of U Chicago. > His relationship with President Obama may well result in Obama's > Presidential Library coming to U Chicago. Maybe that is comforting. > Maybe that feeds your conclusions about how broad The Conspiracy is. > > All of which is irrelevant except that you can take my word, if you > like, that he is neither a pushover nor a hired hand. The same, > of course, can be said for all the members of Obama's special > commission. In my view, the question on the table is means and > ends. I observe an American public that is trending toward ever > more risk aversion. If my observation is correct, then you know > well that it will concentrate power because risk aversion begets a > demand for absolute safety requires absolute power and absolute > power corrupts absolutely. > > If I may quote another man I hold in personal regard, Joel Brenner's > (Google him, too) insight is this: > > During the Cold War, our enemies were few and we knew who they > were. The technologies used by Soviet military and intelligence > agencies were invented by those agencies. Today, our adversaries > are less awesomely powerful than the Soviet Union, but they are > many and often hidden. That means we must find them before we > can listen to them. Equally important, virtually every government > on Earth, including our own, has abandoned the practice of relying > on government-developed technologies. Instead they rely on > commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, technologies. They do it > because no government can compete with the head-spinning advances > emerging from the private sector, and no government can afford > to try. When NSA wanted to collect intelligence on the Soviet > government and military, the agency had to steal or break the > encryption used by them and nobody else. The migration to COTS > changed that. If NSA now wants to collect against a foreign > general's or terorist's communications, it must break the same > encryption you and I use on our own devices... That's why NSA > would want to break the encryption used on every one of those > media. If it couldn't, any terrorist in Chicago, Kabul, or > Cologne would simply use a Blackberry or send messages on Yahoo! > But therein lies a policy dilemma, because NSA could decrypt > almost any private conversation. The distinction between > capabilities and actual practices is more critical than ever... > Like it or not, the dilemma can be resolved only through oversight > mechanisms that are publicly understood and trusted -- but are > not themselves ... transparent. > > I fear we are on the edge of a rat-hole here. I forwarded Geoff's > remarks as they are relevant, timely, and speak to the absence of > simplistic nostrums in such matters, both because of the rising > popular / political demand for comfort-and-safety and because the > technologies that those charged with delivering comfort and safety > use are COTS technologies. And dual use. Personally, I think of > surveillance as just another tax, which you may safely assume is > said through clenched libertarian cum Tea Party teeth. > > --dan >
