Schneier on Security

Miguel Sanchez • October 16, 2015 10:51 AM

On the post:
About time they shut their claps. This came on the heels of the Snowden disclosures, and could not have been more poorly timed. They have kept it up all the while the Snowden disclosures were at their peak media loudness. Now, it is quieted some.

Conspiracy theories aside, they had a strong need to proclaim this message, implicit, inherent, in what they have been saying here: “We need total information awareness level surveillance to keep America secure”. ie, more data, equals more secure regardless of where that data comes from, such as from domestic, friendly civilians, or foreign, friendly civilians. They want it all.

Why? Because they have nothing.

This beats the science fiction drum that more data equals better data. This is simply not true. It says “Snowden was wrong, we are in a challenging, ‘ticking clock’ action movie where if we do not get all the data from the whole world, bombs will explode and Americans will die”. It is nonsense.

What else could they say? Snowden is right? Fire the heads of US Intel? They are idiots? That these far reaching plans and instrumentations have done zero – zip – nada – to fight against terrorism… or anything else?

@Bob S.:

The Meat Eater’s Guide to the Information Apocalypse. 🙂 I think that is the chief concern people have, but who, ultimately, cares so much about the little guys? I see this approach as backfiring. I think it is the ones who really don’t want their secrets spilled that are in most danger to this. But, it is most like a ‘birds eat free for all’, that is king and queen and commoner alike, their naked secrets strewn out under the desert’s hot sun. Up for the grabbing by all. To be tossed and rended in jaws.

More data gathered up, more backdoors kept in code (at the least unintentional vulnerabilities not report, at most intentional vulnerabilities injected into code)… more

@Steve, ‘Encryption Only Effective Against External Threats’, et al, basically ‘they have backdoored everything effectively by one means or another already’

They very well may have. Android, iOS, major Linux Vendors, numerous major other OS vendors, Windows, Apple OS, all here, in the US.

The US intel and law enforcement has a choke point here and can exploit that by every means at their disposal. They did not turn shame faced at the Snowden disclosures. Instead, they ran directly at the cameras and said, “Yeah? So what? In fact, listen up world, we want more data, now.”

@Steve, ianf:

“suspects that the NSA continues to snarf data beyond the point where it’s useful.” … & … Suspect no more. The more—if never mined—data is collected, the bigger the value of the mine (store).

This is really what I see as the gist of the matter. The very reason why their entire domestic surveillance operation delivered nothing. (Discounting anything they wanted to keep secret on, let’s get real, if they had a lot, they would have had a bone to throw and they had no bone after years of running these operations.)

Yes, technically “more data” means “more value”. Theoretically. We have all surely seen this in the movies and tv.

There is, then, a lot of data for them to get. That is, they have a reason we can not deny for them to want to get as much as possible. That is what they do. They won’t stop.

The governments, though, really, are just a small angle of the problem. The larger problem is the corporations and us, the consumers. We are, of course, trading somewhat our privacy for free services. That is the modern relationship of the private with the public.

But the government angle is scary here, because — 21st Century, anyone? 1984. Communism. Nazism. Hoover. Fascism, authoritarianism, under left and right guises alike. If they can, they will.

Still, the problem is overwhelming. Technically, they can not sort through all of that data. They are creating more haystacks. It is like when a blind person is healed after being blind since grade school: their eyes do not work. Information overload. Their brains were wired in a different way and it takes a really long time to learn to process all that new visual input.

This literally blinds them when they need to see.

Meanwhile, they vastly overestimate the time required to actually parse all that data. But, they are starting, that they have to do. They have to have systems that can really understand ‘in between the lines’ talk, the complexities of human psychology — and people do not even understand their own selves. Otherwise? Nobody would have any problems, which is far from the truth.

So, their trying to keep the doors fully open is both premature, vastly so; but, also required because such systems they will eventually want to have decades on down the line, to beat rival nations.

Put more succinctly: the nation that can best parse the most data, wins.

That is Intelligence, ladies and gentlemen.

Miguel Sanchez • October 18, 2015 3:04 PM

@Skeptical

‘Al Qaeda in the 90s’

I brought up this topic, it was incidental. The point was simply that there is such a thing as distraction and focus in security. Real simple.

Also, specifically, the time line was the late 90s, not the early 90s, when the US government was obviously extremely pre-occupied still with the Cold War. Furthermore, this is not about casting blame, or getting into little emotional political details which unreasonable people favor.

If you want, you and ianf can argue amongst your selves, if you are not the same person, which I think you are.

Otherwise, I will have my say, as my viewpoint is entirely alien from yours. And from anyone else’s on this forum.

Let’s also remember that this was a time of sharp budget cuts for military forces, a time when CIA was forbidden from recruiting “dirty assets”, a time when a proposal to use CIA to kill any individual was considered unusual and controversial, when the line between domestic and foreign surveillance was viewed as absolute, etc.

The CIA, by definition has to use “dirty assets” to do what they do. They never went and killed off all productive “assets” (agents) because of domestic politics.

Agent model of spying actually can be traced back to the informant model of law enforcement. It is effectively, regardless of your capacity at such tracking back, the very same thing. So, any informant is going to be “dirty”, just as any “agent” is going to be “dirty”. “Dirty” is moral relativism which outsiders, prissies, hypocrites like to bander about so they can feel like they are “good” people, and separate from all the “bad” people “out there”.

There is no room for such childish moral relativism in true intelligence.

On the books, assassinations were rare. Off the books is where assassinations happen.

Everyone has some clue of this.

But hey – being surprised isn’t exactly a new feature of military attacks.

The point is not blame, which is worthless. The point is simply that not having focused on Al Qaeda and focusing on everything else would have been a very bad idea. By any measure or any set of circumstances.

The topic was not Al Qaeda. The topic was simply pointing out that widespread surveillance is detrimental to surgical surveillance. The two directions are diametrically opposed to each other.

In fact, that is literal. To focus away, and to focus in every other direction away… is the very definition of the term ‘diametrically opposed’!

It is absurd.

But, leave it to man to be bereft of reasoning faculties…

And, in fairness to the US, after 9/11 – leaving aside the controversies about highly coercive interrogation techniques used on a small number of detainees, and the stretching of domestic electronic surveillance authorities – reforms were aimed precisely at the causal factors that led to the non-detection of the 9/11 plot. Information was better integrated; imaginative scenarios received greater consideration; sharper assessments were made of what we really knew, and what we didn’t know; etc.

Some minor changes were made which are arguably good. Many massive changes were made which are arguably bad. Much argument without much knowledge garners nothing.