Bruce Schneier: Take Back The Internet!
Security expert Schneier writes in The Guardian that The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract and that engineers built the internet - and now they have to fix it:
Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us.By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.
This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back.
And by we, I mean the engineering community.
Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention.
But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can - and should - do.
One, we should expose. If you do not have a security clearance, and if you have not received a National Security Letter, you are not bound by a federal confidentially requirements or a gag order. If you have been contacted by the NSA to subvert a product or protocol, you need to come forward with your story. Your employer obligations don't cover illegal or unethical activity. If you work with classified data and are truly brave, expose what you know. We need whistleblowers.
We need to know how exactly how the NSA and other agencies are subverting routers, switches, the internet backbone, encryption technologies and cloud systems. I already have five stories from people like you, and I've just started collecting. I want 50. There's safety in numbers, and this form of civil disobedience is the moral thing to do.
Two, we can design. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the internet to prevent this kind of wholesale spying. We need new techniques to prevent communications intermediaries from leaking private information.
I just love how he ends the piece. There are so few people who seem to care about our rights these days:
To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us have helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it.
From the article: The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.
Could we ever?
Patrick at September 6, 2013 3:16 AM
Too late.
"US and UK intelligence have reportedly cracked the encryption codes protecting the emails, banking and medical records of hundreds of millions of people."
This information thoughtfully provided to you by the heroic whistle-blower Snowden.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 6, 2013 6:01 AM
I suppose if the word of coward-Snowden is to be accepted and that he didn't fudge a single point of everything he leaked, then we can accept that it's too late.
Patrick at September 6, 2013 6:27 AM
I know, I know.
I always consider the source when I read something from a bunch of so-called journalists like the BBC.
For instance, if the writer is gay, I know I can safely ignore anything they publish.
You have to keep these things in context, ya know.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 6, 2013 6:58 AM
I wonder if I can borrow Schneier's copy of this "fundamental social contract". I seem to have misplaced mine...
bkmale at September 6, 2013 7:08 AM
Could we ever?
Probably not.
But then it was just rumors, whispers that (for instance) Microsoft had left backdoors in Windows for the three-letter alphabet soups to do snooping with.
Now we know it for a fact that at least some of these companies have complied with such snooping. Whether it was willingly or unwillingly doesn't matter.
So, anything you purchase that you can't load with your own operating system on should be considered suspect. Be that a router, wireless access point, or a cell phone.
But there will always be a point of trust somewhere. I don't have the time or inclination to study every line of code, be it on my cell phone, my computer, or network device looking for backdoors and gotchas. So...choose wisely.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 6, 2013 7:09 AM
Might be fearmongering, might not.
Someone who says patting down passengers is Constitutional and doesn't protest it will probably avoid protesting this, too.
Radwaste at September 6, 2013 7:11 AM
As for "journalists", here's my rule of thumb: the more technical a subject is, the less likely the writer will have even the barest hint of understanding about it.
In fact, for a long while, the tech journalism has consisted of taking press releases, reworking them, and publishing them as news articles.
Real journalism is an awful lot like actual work.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 6, 2013 7:12 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/09/06/bruce_schneier_2.html#comment-3894620">comment from I R A Darth AggieReal journalism is an awful lot like actual work.
It's sometimes hard as fuck when you do it right.
I'm digging into a new subject now and it's absolutely disgusting to see the flaws and distortions in a lot of the work, including that by some of the most prestigious researchers. The media has just lapped up what these researchers have said is the case without looking at the flaws in their studies and in fact, the distorted ways they look at the subject.
Amy Alkon
at September 6, 2013 7:34 AM
Nice thought, but naive of us to accept it. Even if they could reclaim the internet, someone else will just crack the code or another engineer will just sell us out.
Patrick at September 6, 2013 10:51 AM
In the meantime, we have another incentive to not "buy American." You know Microsoft and Google have sold you out. It's possible that somebody else out from under our government's thumb has not. Nice incentives we're creating, one disillusioned citizen at a time.
MarkD at September 6, 2013 11:01 AM
Realistically someone could put forget it codes into any software that powers Google, YouTube, or any of the rest of it.
You do the search -- it's successful but is never registered in the trends.
That would fuck up the system very well.c
Jim P. at September 6, 2013 8:25 PM
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