[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] White House to Propose System for Wide Monitoring of Internet

Adam Williams advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Sun, 22 Dec 2002 00:02:20 -0500 (EST)


>>>The subject line is the title of the article at:
>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/technology/20MONI.html
>>It will succeed - in making lots of beaurocrats, wall steeters, IT companies
>>and consultants quite wealthy.
>I have my doubts. IMO the folks at 1600 Pennsy are going to get visited by 
>the boys from Ft. Meade. They're going to givethe Texans a talkin' to..
>a DC talkin' to. These lectures feature words like "intractable", and 
>"minimal probability", and let's not forget "constitutionally questionable".
>PPerhaps the Bushites would feel OK about riding roughshod over one of those 
>conditions, but rarely all three.

They (the Executive branch) pulled off Carnivore,  I don't particularly 
see the difference here, except it scale.  But the technical details of 
how it would work and what it would monitor were thin, to say the least.

>>Beyond that.... it's call "encryption" people.  Capture my data streams, go
>>ahead, and have fun doing it.
>Oh, they'll outlaw this, if they're serious about persuing any policy that
>purports to "police" the net in the US. I think of encryption policy as a
>kind of canary...when it falls over we'll know the jongoists and the 
>simple-answer people have made a succesful grab for the policy controls.

This is the one I doubt they could pull off.  The corporations would be 
very unhappy.

>>"We don't have anybody that is able to look at the entire picture,"
>They're only starting to learn about this. Let us hop they learn weel
>before they atart making policy.
>>a) It is one MIGHTY BIG picture.
>Rhus will come the lecture, as above, when the guys out at Meade come downtown
>and heave Dubya's boys into the 1990's, this is going to be one of the very
>first points they malke.

Thus, we must spend MIGHTY BIG dollars....

>>b) It isn't a "picture", it is a high-action IMAX movie.  The "picture"
>>   changed while I was typing this sentance.  Good luck.
>True enough, but as such, not a bariier. Lots of things are very dynamic
>and can be secured. I take a dim view of anyone trying to do this from the
>top down, and it's not really going to stop the folks they want to stop from 
>doing what they want to do.

I assume that most people want to operate secure services at their network 
edges, and that wiit time this problem will in large part heal itself from 
the bottom up.  A national exchange for free SSL certificates would be a 
big step forward, to promote encrypted DNS trafffic.  And encouraging top 
level domains to promote the use of SRV for service location would make 
both a more secure and easier to use (quasi-transparent) network.