My friend and info-perceptive wiseman Peter Swire, who helped to formulate the post-Snowden NSA reforms issued by the Obama Administration, has a series of articles and white papers of interest to anyone who is serious about the core topic of our era. First, he writes in Slate on The Golden Age of Surveillance:
“In recent months, law enforcement, led by FBI Director James Comey, has waged war against the “going dark” problem — criminals using secure communications technologies, particularly encryption, to evade justice. Its solution to this problem is to encourage or require technology companies to build in back doors to allow the government to circumvent, say, encryption on your iPhone. But in reality, we are currently in a golden age of surveillance. The “going dark” argument should not be used as a reason to support back doors or other special access by law enforcement to encrypted communications.”
I agree … only not in the way that he means. Swire is speaking of legal and above-board means by which law enforcement agencies and other members of our Professional Protector Caste (PPC) can seek information they need, to do their jobs. Making back door access to encryption keys unnecessary.
I would add that I never deemed it likely the government needs backdoors in order to see. Or rather, I would take odds that they already exist. The real purpose of such lavish public jeremiads by Comey and others -- demanding physical back doors and crypto keys that they'll never, realistically, be given -- may be to make others think there is a “going dark problem.”
An unusual theory? Oh but I'm skeptical for good reason, having seen it all before – ever since the whole potemkin struggle over “clipper” in the early 1990s. It is blatantly plausible (and not sci fi) that there's more smoke than fire to this show.
== Back to the Swire Papers ==
I would add that I never deemed it likely the government needs backdoors in order to see. Or rather, I would take odds that they already exist. The real purpose of such lavish public jeremiads by Comey and others -- demanding physical back doors and crypto keys that they'll never, realistically, be given -- may be to make others think there is a “going dark problem.”
An unusual theory? Oh but I'm skeptical for good reason, having seen it all before – ever since the whole potemkin struggle over “clipper” in the early 1990s. It is blatantly plausible (and not sci fi) that there's more smoke than fire to this show.
== Back to the Swire Papers ==
Peter dials in even closer when he writes about “the declining half lives of secrets.” Swire maintains that this time metric “is declining sharply for many intelligence activities as secrets that in the past may have been kept successfully for 25 years or more, are now exposed well before.”
Cogently, he argues: “(that) means that “the front-page” test will become far more important to decision-makers. Even if a secret operation is initially successful, the expected costs of disclosure become higher as the average time to disclosure decreases.”
Cogently, he argues: “(that) means that “the front-page” test will become far more important to decision-makers. Even if a secret operation is initially successful, the expected costs of disclosure become higher as the average time to disclosure decreases.”
This is a matter that I illustrated long ago, in my 1989 novel EARTH, wherein secrecy caching was seen rightly as a temporary and tactical measure, seldom useful beyond the couple of years that efficient law professionals would need, for legitimate investigations. Peter lays out the argument that intelligence officers and other PPC members need to adapt to this new era, when rapidity of information sharing and appraisal can be much more important than the convenience of locking secrets in boxes. I agree. (Though I have always made allowances for short term Tactical Secrecy.)
He goes on to cite the decline in lifelong (loyal) employment in the Intelligence Community, which has in turn led to what I call the Henchman/T-cell Effect, in which contractors like Edward Snowden are drawn to violating secrecy strictures less by ideology or money or blackmail or any of the old lures, and more for reasons of either idealism or ego. (Generally some mix of the two.) While most members of the IC-PPC express rage at Edward Snowden, for example, 90%+ of Silicon Valley workers deem him to be a heroic whistle blower.
“The gap between zero and over 90 percent is a sociological chasm,” says Swire. A chasm that the PPC ignores at great peril.
He goes on to cite the decline in lifelong (loyal) employment in the Intelligence Community, which has in turn led to what I call the Henchman/T-cell Effect, in which contractors like Edward Snowden are drawn to violating secrecy strictures less by ideology or money or blackmail or any of the old lures, and more for reasons of either idealism or ego. (Generally some mix of the two.) While most members of the IC-PPC express rage at Edward Snowden, for example, 90%+ of Silicon Valley workers deem him to be a heroic whistle blower.
“The gap between zero and over 90 percent is a sociological chasm,” says Swire. A chasm that the PPC ignores at great peril.
== The grinding process of reform ==
Peter’s third article may seem a bit self-serving, in which he calls passage of the USA FREEDOM Act, ending bulk collection, the biggest pro-privacy change to U.S. intelligence law since the original enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978.
To be clear, he was one of five members of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, who essentially wrote major aspects of the new reform law. And while I do deem its work to have been an improvement – for example making the FISA Court less of a star chamber farce by including adversarial processes, at last -- it truly was only the beginning of needed reforms.
(Noting, of course, that even these partial measures would never have been proposed by a Republican president.)
To be clear, he was one of five members of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, who essentially wrote major aspects of the new reform law. And while I do deem its work to have been an improvement – for example making the FISA Court less of a star chamber farce by including adversarial processes, at last -- it truly was only the beginning of needed reforms.
(Noting, of course, that even these partial measures would never have been proposed by a Republican president.)
Methods like IGUS -- the Inspector General of the United States -- would offer us the win-win, allowing our professional protectors to do their jobs while ensuring they are never without independent eyes, scrutinizing their overall behavior. Supervision-sousveillance has a chance of staunching any drift, preventing PPC watchdogs transforming into wolves.
In contrast, “reforms” that try to forbid our public servants from looking are doomed, over the long run, to be futile, or much, much worse.
This too is an important read. Peter Swire is one of those special examples of a fairly common phenomenon – men and women who actually think and know a lot about the public policy issues that they ponder deeply. I hope he will be a cabinet deputy-secretary soon. And continue to be one of those who listens.
== Transparency Miscellany ==
Another revered friend, Vint Cerf, writes about his latest worry: that a Digital Dark Age might descend for an entirely different reason! Because many of our important records will be inaccessible in the future, because we will no longer have the ability to access the digital media on which it is saved. And then there’s this: Vint Cerf Wants Your Help Re-Imagining the Internet.
And... You probably lived under a rock if you haven’t heard that a team of hackers recently released the stolen database of people registered with AshleyMadison.com, the adultery matchup site. The email database alone contains 36 million records. Among those records are 15,019 accounts using either a .mil or .gov email address, listed online... This is going to be interesting!
Call it an IQ sieve for public servants and other "adults." Those who actually imagined that their participation in such a site would remain secret are probably not up to standards of basic intelligence we need especially in civil or military personnel. On the other hand… apparently AshleyMadison.com did no verification on the signup page. For example, I would imagine (and hope!) that some of those 44 whitehouse.gov accounts were phony. Phony acounts also seem like a good way to get people you don't like into trouble, if you suspect the list will become public at some point.
And... Keep on eye on this: Increased privatization of border security, with a massive surveillance web consisting of balloons and drones, cameras, motion sensors, biometrics and face recognition systems.
Setting an example for innovative, 21st Century technique, investigative journalist Bryan Christy embedded fake elephant tusks with specially designed tracking devices. "China is the biggest consumer of illegal ivory.” Surprise surprise. Some of you will recall a special, heroic scene about this, in EARTH.
