U.S. and proxies
Quoting Bruce Schneier on Security
Proxies are a natural outgrowth of society, an inevitable byproduct of specialization. But our proxies are not us and they have different motivations — they simply won’t make the same security decisions as we would. Whether a king is hiring mercenaries, an organization is hiring a network security company or a person is asking some guy to watch his bags while he gets a drink of water, successful security proxies are based on trust. And when it comes to government, trust comes through transparency and openness.
A very good point. I don’t normally comment here on political things because it’s easy to get wrapped up in emotions. The point I want to remind us of is that our government was founded from the beginning on principles of being open and honest. The very fact that we have three branches of government, each which balances out the others is important to remember regardless of what the discussion is. Everything should be open to the public, and even if it isn’t should be subject to review by another branch of government which has a different perspective (and accountability to the people).
I’m weary of hearing the catch all “National Security Threat” phrase tossed around as a reason. Just lay out the facts and let it either be obvious that there is a threat or obvious that your just scarred silly. Security by obscurity in any means, be it disallowing photography or trying to hide maps or hiring foreigners, might give you a warm and fuzzy but In the end it only makes matters worse and wastes tax payer money at the expense of civil liberties.
Believing that people are not capable of making intelligent decisions based on objective facts will only lead to people not being able to make those very decisions. Next thing you know the year will be 1984…. again.
4 years, 5 months ago
It is always easy to say that all government should be open, but there is information that could endanger lives. Should this be open? Should information that gives clues about activities that could allow enemies of this country ascertain compelling targets to kill citizens be made available? It is a tough tradeoff between information openness and risk.
There are always gray areas that need to be dealt with, especially when you are talking about human lives.
4 years, 5 months ago
@Peter: I agree that some information is sensitive; But that doesn’t justify hiding the process by which it is obtained, limiting judicial review of the process, or limiting judicial approval of the specific application of said process to gather information.
Also, in the example you gave, I believe information about where we are vulnerable and where terrorist plan to attack SHOULD be made public so that we as a country can also help resolve that.[1] It should not be assumed that the government is the only entity which is able to offer protection.
Since our government is based on the principle of being BY the people and FOR the people, transparency is a must.
[1] Yes i know; there are exceptions for everything.
4 years, 5 months ago
America has NSA and CIA. Our enemies have CNN. I sure hope NSA and CIA know many things CNN does not…but sadly I doubt it.
Maybe we will discover at some point in the future, that America really does have a covert abilty…that our countries REAL spy agency was the dept. of agriculture.
4 years, 5 months ago
ha, thats funny. I would have never thought of the dept of agriculture as a spy orginization; but that would make it a perfect candidate eh?
4 years, 5 months ago
Very often the way information is obtained is a solid clue about who gave the information. I think the problem that the government has is where to draw the line, but that is what laws like FOIA and other legislation is supposed to address.
This gets into the whole full disclosure debate between security people.
The original post was about trust and proxy, and it is crucial question. If you can’t trust your elected government, and can’t trust the media that helps police the elected government, then you are in real trouble.