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Nice op-ed on the security problems with secrecy.
Some information that previously was open no doubt needs to be classified now. Terrorism alters perspectives. But the terrorist threat also has provided cover for bureaucrats who instinctively opt for secrecy and public officials who would prefer to keep the public in the dark to avoid accountability.
Recently I wrote about the government requiring pilots not to fly near nuclear power plants, and then not telling them where those plants are, because of security concerns. Here’s a story about how someone found the exact location of the nuclear power plant in Oyster Creek, N.J., using only publicly available information.
But of course a terrorist would never be able to do that.
Interesting law article:
There are calls from some quarters to restrict the publication of information about security vulnerabilities in an effort to limit the number of people with the knowledge and ability to attack computer systems. Scientists in other fields have considered similar proposals and rejected them, or adopted only narrow, voluntary restrictions. As in other fields of science, there is a real danger that publication restrictions will inhibit the advancement of the state of the art in computer security. Proponents of disclosure restrictions argue that computer security information is different from other scientific research because it is often expressed in the form of functioning software code. Code has a dual nature, as both speech and tool. While researchers readily understand the information expressed in code, code enables many more people to do harm more readily than with the non-functional information typical of most research publications. Yet, there are strong reasons to reject the argument that code is different, and that restrictions are therefore good policy. Code’s functionality may help security as much as it hurts it and the open distribution of functional code has valuable effects for consumers, including the ability to pressure vendors for more secure products and to counteract monopolistic practices.
From Computerworld:
A threat by Sybase Inc. to sue a U.K.-based security research firm if it publicly discloses the details of eight holes it found in Sybase’s database software last year is evoking sharp criticism from some IT managers but sympathetic comments from others.
I can see why Sybase would prefer it if people didn’t know about vulnerabilities in their software—it’s bad for business—but disclosure is the reason companies are fixing them. If researchers are prohibited from publishing, then software developers are free to ignore security problems.
This is a great article on some of the ridiculous effects of government secrecy. (Unfortunately, you have to register to read it.)
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has advised airplane pilots against flying near 100 nuclear power plants around the country or they will be forced down by fighter jets. But pilots say there’s a hitch in the instructions: aviation security officials refuse to disclose the precise location of the plants because they
consider that “SSI”—Sensitive Security Information.“The message is; ‘please don’t fly there, but we can’t tell you where there is,'” says Melissa Rudinger of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a trade group representing 60% of American pilots.
Determined to find a way out of the Catch-22, the pilots’ group sat down with a commercial mapping company, and in a matter of days plotted the exact geographical locations of the plants from data found on the Internet and in libraries. It made the information available to its 400,000 members on its Web site—until officials from the Transportation Security Administration asked them to take the information down. “Their concern was that [terrorists] mining the Internet could use it,” Ms. Rudinger says.
And:
For example, when a top Federal Aviation Administration official testified last year before the 9/11 commission, his remarks were
broadcast live nationally. But when the administration included a transcript in a recent report on threats to commercial airliners, the testimony was heavily edited. “How do you redact something that
is part of the public record?” asked Rep. Carolyn Maloney, (D., N.Y.) at a recent hearing on the problems of government
overclassification. Among the specific words blacked out were the seemingly innocuous phrase: “we are hearing this, this, this, this
and this.”Government officials could not explain why the words were withheld, other than to note that they were designated SSI.
Here’s another example of harmful government secrecy, ostensibly implemented as security against terrorism.
How an adversary might damage a spacecraft more than 100 miles up and moving at five miles per second—eight times faster than a rifle bullet—was not specified.
Good question, though.
But unclassified military or civilian communications satellites could, in theory, be jammed. And an adversary could use the unclassified data to know when a commercial imaging satellite, possibly operating under contract to the Department of Defense, would be flying overhead.
It might even be possible, through the process of elimination, for knowledgeable amateurs to ferret out the orbit of a classified spacecraft by comparing actual observations with the list of known, unclassified satellites.
Clearly I need to write a longer essay on “movie-plot” threats, and the wisdom of spending money and effort defending against them.
In my previous entry, I wrote about the U.S. government’s SSI classification. I meant it as to be an analysis of the procedures of secrecy, not an analysis of secrecy as security.
I’ve previously written about the relationship between secrecy and security. I think secrecy hurts security in all but a few well-defined circumstances.
In recent years, the U.S. government has pulled a veil of secrecy over much of its inner workings, using security against terrorism as an excuse. The Director of the National Security Archive recently gave excellent testimony on the topic. This is worth reading both for this general conclusions and for his specific data.
The lesson of 9/11 is that we are losing protection by too much secrecy. The risk is that by keeping information secret, we make ourselves vulnerable. The risk is that when we keep our vulnerabilities secret, we avoid fixing them. In an open society, it is only by exposure that problems get fixed. In a distributed information networked world, secrecy creates risk—risk of inefficiency, ignorance, inaction, as in 9/11. As the saying goes in the computer security world, when the bug is secret, then only the vendor and the hacker know—and the larger community can neither protect itself nor offer fixes.
For decades, the U.S. government has had systems in place for dealing with military secrets. Information is classified as either Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, or one of many “compartments” of information above Top Secret. Procedures for dealing with classified information were rigid: classified topics could not be discussed on unencrypted phone lines, classified information could not be processed on insecure computers, classified documents had to be stored in locked safes, and so on. The procedures were extreme because the assumed adversary was highly motivated, well-funded, and technically adept: the Soviet Union.
You might argue with the government’s decision to classify this and not that, or the length of time information remained classified, but if you assume the information needed to remain secret, than the procedures made sense.
In 1993, the U.S. government created a new classification of information—Sensitive Security Information—that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The information under this category, as defined by a D.C. court, was limited to information related to the safety of air passengers. This was greatly expanded in 2002, when Congress deleted two words, “air” and “passengers,” and changed “safety” to “security.” Currently, there’s a lot of information covered under this umbrella.
The rules for SSI information are much more relaxed than the rules for traditional classified information. Before someone can have access to classified information, he must get a government clearance. Before someone can have access to SSI, he simply must sign an NDA. If someone discloses classified information, he faces criminal penalties. If someone discloses SSI, he faces civil penalties.
SSI can be sent unencrypted in e-mail; a simple password-protected file is enough. A person can take SSI home with him, read it on an airplane, and talk about it in public places. People entrusted with SSI information shouldn’t disclose it to those unauthorized to know it, but it’s really up to the individual to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s really more like confidential corporate information than government military secrets.
The U.S. government really had no choice but to establish this classification level, given the kind of information they needed to work with. for example, the terrorist “watch” list is SSI. If the list falls into the wrong hands, it would be bad for national security. But think about the number of people who need access to the list. Every airline needs a copy, so they can determine if any of their passengers are on the list. That’s not just domestic airlines, but foreign airlines as well—including foreign airlines that may not agree with American foreign policy. Police departments, both within this country and abroad, need access to the list. My guess is that more than 10,000 people have access to this list, and there’s no possible way to give all them a security clearance. Either the U.S. government relaxes the rules about who can have access to the list, or the list doesn’t get used in the way the government wants.
On the other hand, the threat is completely different. Military classification levels and procedures were developed during the Cold War, and reflected the Soviet threat. The terrorist adversary is much more diffuse, much less well-funded, much less technologically advanced. SSI rules really make more sense in dealing with this kind of adversary than the military rules.
I’m impressed with the U.S. government SSI rules. You can always argue about whether a particular piece of information needs to be kept secret, and how classifications like SSI can be used to conduct government in secret. But if you take secrecy as an assumption, SSI defines a reasonable set of secrecy rules against a new threat.
Background on SSI
TSA’s regulation on the protection of SSI
Controversies surrounding SSI
My essay explaining why secrecy is often bad for security
I am participating in a working group to help evaluate the effectiveness and privacy implications of the TSA’s Secure Flight program. We’ve had one meeting so far, and it looks like it will be an interesting exercise.
For those who have not been following along, Secure Flight is the follow-on to CAPPS-I. (CAPPS stands for Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening.) CAPPS-I has been in place since 1997, and is a simple system to match airplane passengers to a terrorist watch list. A follow-on system, CAPPS-II, was proposed last year. That complicated system would have given every traveler a risk score based on information in government and commercial databases. There was a huge public outcry over the invasiveness of the system, and it was cancelled over the summer. Secure Flight is the new follow-on system to CAPPS-I.
Many of us believe that Secure Flight is just CAPPS-II with a new name. I hope to learn whether or not that is true.
I hope to learn a lot of things about Secure Flight and airline passenger profiling in general, but I probably won’t be able to write about it. In order to be a member of this working group, I was required to apply for a U.S. government SECRET security clearance and sign an NDA, promising that I would not disclose something called “Sensitive Security Information.”
SSI is one of three new categories of secret information, all of I think have no reason to exist. There is already a classification scheme—CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, TOP SECRET, etc.—and information should either fit into that scheme or be public. A new scheme is just confusing. The NDA we were supposed to sign was very general, and included such provisions as allowing the government to conduct warrantless searches of our residences. (Two federal unions have threatened to sue the government over several provisions in that NDA, which applies to many DHS employees. And just recently, the DHS backed down.)
After push-back by myself and several others, we were given a much less onerous NDA to sign.
I am not happy about the secrecy surrounding the working group. NDAs and classified briefings raise serious ethical issues for government oversight committees. My suspicion is that I will be wowed with secret, unverifiable assertions that I will either have to accept or (more likely) question, but not be able to discuss with others. In general, secret deliberations favor the interests of those who impose the rules. They really run against the spirit of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
Moreover, I’m not sure why this working group is not in violation of FACA. FACA is a 1972 law intended to govern how the Executive branch uses groups of advisors outside the federal government. Among other rules, it requires that advisory committees announce their meetings, hold them in public, and take minutes that are available to the public. The DHS was given a specific exemption from FACA when it was established: the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to exempt any advisory committee from FACA; the only requirement is that the Secretary publish notice of the committee in the Federal Register. I looked, and have not seen any such announcement.
Because of the NDA and the failure to follow FACA, I will not be able to fully exercise my First Amendment rights. That means that the government can stop me from saying things that may be important for the public to know. For example, if I learn that the old CAPPS program failed to identify actual terrorists, or that a lot of people who were not terrorists were wrongfully pulled off planes and the government has tried to keep this quiet—I’m just making these up—I can’t tell you. The government could prosecute me under the NDA because they might claim these facts are SSI and the public would never know this information, because there would be no open meeting obligations as there are for FACA committees.
In other words, the secrecy of this committee could have a real impact on the public understanding of whether or not air passenger screening really works.
In any case, I hope I can help make Secure Flight an effective security tool. I hope I can help minimize the privacy invasions on the program if it continues, and help kill it if it is ineffective. I’m not optimistic, but I’m hopeful.
I’m not hopeful that you will ever learn the results of this working group. We’re preparing our report for the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and I very much doubt that they will release the report to the public.
Original NDA
Story about unions objecting to the NDA
And a recent development that may or may not affect this group
Last week, I stayed at the St. Regis hotel in Washington, DC. It was my first visit, and the management gave me a questionnaire, asking me things like my birthday, my spouse’s name and birthday, my anniversary, and my favorite fruits, drinks, and sweets. The purpose was clear; the hotel wanted to be able to offer me a more personalized service the next time I visited. And it was a purpose I agreed with; I wanted more personalized service. But I was very uneasy about filling out the form.
It wasn’t that the information was particularly private. I make no secret of my birthday, or anniversary, or food preferences. Much of that information is even floating around the Web somewhere. Secrecy wasn’t the issue.
The issue was control. In the United States, information about a person is owned by the person who collects it, not by the person it is about. There are specific exceptions in the law, but they’re few and far between. There are no broad data protection laws, as you find in the European Union. There are no Privacy Commissioners, as you find in Canada. Privacy law in the United States is largely about secrecy: if the information is not secret, there’s little you can do to control its dissemination.
As a result, enormous databases exist that are filled with personal information. These databases are owned by marketing firms, credit bureaus, and the government. Amazon knows what books we buy. Our supermarket knows what foods we eat. Credit card companies know quite a lot about our purchasing habits. Credit bureaus know about our financial history, and what they don’t know is contained in bank records. Health insurance records contain details about our health and well-being. Government records contain our Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, mother’s maiden names, and a host of other things. Many driver’s license records contain digital pictures.
All of this data is being combined, indexed, and correlated. And it’s being used for all sorts of things. Targeted marketing campaigns are just the tip of the iceberg. This information is used by potential employers to judge our suitability as employees, by potential landlords to determine our suitability as renters, and by the government to determine our likelihood of being a terrorist.
Some stores are beginning to use our data to determine whether we are desirable customers or not. If customers take advantage of too many discount offers or make too many returns, they may be profiled as “bad” customers and be treated differently from the “good” customers.
And with alarming frequency, our data is being abused by identity thieves. The businesses that gather our data don’t care much about keeping it secure. So identity theft is a problem where those who suffer from it—the individuals—are not in a position to improve security, and those who are in a position to improve security don’t suffer from the problem.
The issue here is not about secrecy, it’s about control. The issue is that both government and commercial organizations are building “digital dossiers” about us, and that these dossiers are being used to judge and categorize us through some secret process.
A new book by George Washington University Law Professor Daniel Solove examines the problem of the growing accumulation of personal information in enormous databases. The book is called The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age, and it is a fascinating read.
Solove’s book explores this problem from a legal perspective, explaining what the problem is, how current U.S. law fails to deal with it, and what we should do to protect privacy today. It’s an unusually perceptive discussion of one of the most
vexing problems of the digital age—our loss of control over our personal information. It’s a fascinating journey into the almost surreal ways personal information is hoarded, used, and abused in the digital age.
Solove argues that our common conceptualization of the privacy problem as Big Brother—some faceless organization knowing our most intimate secrets—is only one facet of the issue. A better metaphor can be found in Franz Kafka’s The Trial. In the book, a vast faceless bureaucracy constructs a huge dossier about a person, who can’t find out what information exists about him in the dossier, why the information has been gathered, or what it will be used for. Privacy is not about intimate secrets; it’s about who has control of the millions of pieces of personal data that we leave like droppings as we go through our daily life. And until the U.S. legal system recognizes this fact, Americans will continue to live in an world where they have little control over their digital person.
In the end, I didn’t complete the questionnaire from the St. Regis Hotel. While I was fine with the St. Regis in Washington, DC, having that information to make my subsequent stays a little more personal, and was probably fine with that information being shared among other St. Regis hotels, I wasn’t comfortable with the St. Regis doing whatever they wanted with that information. I wasn’t comfortable with them selling the information to a marketing database. I wasn’t comfortable with anyone being able to buy that information. I wasn’t comfortable with that information ending up in a database of my habits, my preferences, my proclivities. It wasn’t the primary use of that information that bothered me, it was the secondary uses.
Solove has done much more thinking about this issue than I have. His book provides a clear account of the social problems involving information privacy, and haunting predictions of current U.S. legal policies. Even more importantly, the legal solutions he provides are compelling and worth serious consideration. I recommend his book highly.
The book’s website
Order the book on Amazon
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.