Schneier on Security

Nick P • June 6, 2014 8:00 PM

@ David C

All your statements presume classified information should be put before every other interest and be treated with total immunity to press. The first problem is there’s never been any grounds for this. The second is it’s nearly impossible to expose wrongdoing in a believable way without using actual source material. Without docs, govt claims hearsay, speculation, exaggeration, etc. (Like they did pre-Snowden.)

The first point is important though. The Bill of Rights comes first over any Executive Order in legal power. The EO’s got solidified into law by Congress later on. Yet, even then, there were requirements on what could be classified, what justifies its release, and how long before auto-declassofication. The biggest requirement is classification must never be used to cover up illegal activity.

So, we have all kinds of politicians using fear and lies from 9/11 onward. These included obfuscated evidence to start wars costing tens of thousands of lives, claims that no intentional collection was done on Americans, claims NSA submissions to crypto standards were strengthening our protections, and promises that there were plenty of safeguards for these programs. The actual data about all this was classified. Over time, data was leaked showing every above claim was deception leading to damage to American citizens.

You claim classified information shouldnt ever be released by media. The laws governing classified information say criminal activity must not be classified. Other laws say executive branch should never lie to Congress. Yet others say the chain of evidence in trials should be preserved for evaluation by defense. Another Amendment or two talk about unreasonable searches and due process. All in all, the NSA activities seem to violate plenty of laws and constitutional principles. Yet, Congress won’t touch them abd court cases routinely throw out evidence thats “classified.” (Even though crimes can’t be classified legally…)

So what’s a democracy left to do to get a handle on such a situation? The public, Congress, and the courts were all lied to. The only thing left is our press protection partly designed to expose government corruption. And insiders whose conscience wont tolerate it. So, the leaking began. Previous leaks were testimony rather than documents, much like you prefer, yet didnt inform or accomplish almost anything. Govt dismissed claims. So, next ones were just a big document dump.

Now, for first time, they’re admitted they lied about things, they do target Americans, and were caught red handed weakening all US goods they were supposed to protect. Absent a leak of “classified” material we couldn’t prove it. They’d just call accusers conspiracy theorists while harrassing them at airports and gaving FBI kick their doors in.

Nick P • June 8, 2014 10:56 PM

@ DB

That’s a lot of idealism. Reality is that there are no “rights:” there’s protections people negotiate with individual governments. They might be local, national, etc. The protections vary by area, majority/minority group, etc. The governments also often try to get more for themselves. Governments similarly negotiate the goals of their people and use their power to accomplish that. International “rights” agreements are often lip service because there’s no international government: there’s individual governments that decide what they’re going to do, treaty or not. Makes me wonder why people cite such things here so much.

So, let’s look at the United States. A long while back the government decided to be an empire. There were a number of empires. They all used a combination of persuasion, shady negotiations, and military force to acquire territories. Some of these they controlled directly, some they got extra benefits from. The U.S. for one reason or another became quite a vast empire of influence and control. American people supported (or didn’t prevent) most of the military actions we’ve done in dozens of countries to promote this agenda. Now, we have trillions of capital invested in countries everywhere that we have to protect. We also have hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars worth of military-intelligence-industrial complex to do exactly that.

You’re “non-human” is almost correct albeit too emotionally charged. It’s more like stockbrokers, private security firms and others looking after a rich fat cat’s investments. The U.S. is the fat cat. To maintain it’s empire, it needs intel and influence all over the world. There’s at least two other countries aiming for similar levels of influence and success via intelligence work. Our vast SIGINT capabilities are supposed to be a competitive edge against them and a first mover advantage in the world in general. And don’t let terms like “ally” or “neutral” fool you: almost all of them are our competition in some way that can cause a capitalist empire problems if left unchecked. Keeping an eye on everything, esp the dozens of countries doing the same, is exactly what you’d expect a $20+ trillion military/industrial/I.P. empire to do.

Now, there is a solution. Americans just have to be willing to totally focus inward by ending all foreign spying: putting their currency’s future value in hands of opponents, letting their trillions of dollars worth of assets operate blind against enemies using their agencies, and taking on extra risk in areas such as WMD’s. Americans would also have to disavow all forms of covert influence on foreign countries and withdraw all military units (parts of our empire) from them as well. As America is so foreign-dependent, I’d imagine our new-found sense of fairness would result in the competition giving us the largest butt-kicking in our history. It would be called the Second Great Depression.

Just my guess. Maybe you’re right, though, in that Americans shouldn’t spy on other countries and maybe they’ll all just start being extra-virtuous toward us. Maybe… Not…

Nick P • June 9, 2014 10:52 AM

@ DB

“This means, in other words: “Humans are all naturally just slaves to their governments. ”

You’re reading words into my statement. I said people are people and there’s no inherent rights/expectations of anything. Human nature leads to problems with people that necessitate forming governments to ensure protections or the group’s goals being met. Those governments are made of people too, leading to similar issues. Any laws are one group pushing something on the other. Sometimes that involves a compromise benefiting both parties, but more often it’s government leveraging its power.

So, there’s no inherent slavery, no inherent rights, no inherent anything. There’s just people making deals and compromises with each other. Rules, rights, agendas and so on. They vary from country to country. The U.S. agenda, whether I like it or not, is one of forcing trade on the globe to enrich capitalists located in U.S. and certain partner countries. So, these countries’ spies monitor countries the wealthy do business in to maximize their ROI. Other countries have different agendas, such as getting our commercial or military I.P. Or trying to destroy us (more rarely).

I agree that how the U.S. is behaving will lead to a collapse. That’s more for economic reasons than the spying [which most are doing]. I just think people miss the spying is for very practical reasons. Did you see the number of countries on the many slides spying with us? It’s not a U.S. thing: it’s an international thing. We’re just better equipped at the SIGINT part. That doesn’t count those spying against us. The number gets larger. Leading by example wouldn’t change anything except that countries spying on us for contract and I.P. advantages would have upper hand. They’d know our companies were operating blind and theirs were informed. Most of those deals Benni mentioned that we won would’ve gone a different direction. We’d have the “moral high ground,” whatever that is, while they’d have the money and influence.

I’m just failing to see how such a situation is a good thing. The world would have to change a lot before I’d think we should stop spying on the competition. However, I’m 100% with you on shifting massive resources from offense to real defense. I think U.S. can still do its empire thing, it’s corrupt defense industry thing, and the other problems that aren’t going away while still defending its people & I.P. Of course, that it’s consistently allowed and voted in shows where the real problem in this “republic” is: The [Sleeping] People.

Nick P • June 9, 2014 6:49 PM

@ moo

(Being brief b/c Im on mobile)

I’m saying that’s how they justify it. It works under the doctrine that each country will do whatever they can get away with.

Re large net

The specific collection to intel ratio is irrelevant. In intelligence work, most information is background noise spooks aren’t interested in. The extra info they collect merely represents opportunity. They increase collection to increase opportunities for intel. They also increase analysis and filtering tech to reduce noise. Far as ethics and cost, theyve apparently decided it was worth it along with key Congressmen funding them.

Far as world’s acceptance, that’s another thing entirely. I recall one discussion like this involved France accusing us of spying on their companies during negotiations. In response, a leak occurred of an internal catalog from French intelligence of I.P. they stole from us and were selling. Most countries that control the most assets do similar things far as spying. So, if anything, they’ll use this as leverage against us while continuing to spy right back.

There is no moral high ground for most successful western countries. They all collect foreign intelligence on allies far as anyone can tell. Hard for me to see US govt as especially evil just because they’re better at it. And this is all despite my preference that everyone werent spying on each other.