NYT: Techies Now Respect Government
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002 I've been wondering how the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley were looking at the 9/11 tragedy; whether it was giving them any pause about the wired world they've been building and the assumptions they are building it upon. In a recent visit to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, I had a chance to pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 -- from the Internet to powerful encryption software -- can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil. And I found an acknowledgment that all those technologies had been built with a high degree of trust as to how they would be used, and that that trust had been shaken. In its place is a greater appreciation that high-tech companies aren't just threatened by their competitors; but also by some of their users. It was part of Silicon Valley lore that successful innovations would follow a well-trodden path: beginning with early adopters, then early mass-appeal users and finally the mass market. But it's clear now there is also a parallel, criminal path: starting with the early perverters of a new technology up to the really twisted perverters. For instance, the 9/11 hijackers may have communicated globally through steganography software, which lets users e-mail, say, a baby picture that secretly contains a 300-page compressed document or even a voice message. "We have engineered large parts of our system on an assumption of trust that may no longer be accurate," said a Stanford law professor, Joseph A. Grundfest. "Trust is hard-wired into everything from computers to the Internet to building codes. What kind of building codes you need depends on what kind of risks you thought were out there. The odds of someone flying a passenger jet into a tall building were zero before. They're not anymore. The whole objective of the terrorists is to reduce our trust in all the normal instruments and technologies we use in daily life. You wake up in the morning and trust that you can get to work across the Brooklyn Bridge -- don't. This is particularly dangerous because societies which have a low degree of trust are backward societies." Silicon Valley staunchly opposed the Clipper Chip, which would have given the government a back-door key to all U.S. encrypted data. Now some wonder whether they shouldn't have opposed it. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, said, "Culturally, the Valley was already maturing before 9/11, but since then it's definitely developed a deeper respect for leaders and government institutions." -----
On Sun, 26 May 2002, John Young wrote:
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002 [...] Silicon Valley staunchly opposed the Clipper Chip, which would have given the government a back-door key to all U.S. encrypted data. Now some wonder whether they shouldn't have opposed it. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, said, "Culturally, the Valley was already maturing before 9/11, but since then it's definitely developed a deeper respect for leaders and government institutions."
Great propaganda! Nice to know the press still has the will to force words into all our mouths. What a bunch of losers. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
On Sunday, May 26, 2002, at 10:07 AM, John Young wrote:
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002 ....
pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 -- from the Internet to powerful encryption software -- can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil.
Well, "duh." As an analyst of high tech, Friedman is a pretty good analyst of the Arab-Israeli conflict. His conclusions about the views of Silicon Valley are facile and simplistic. For example, in another place: "The question `How can this technology be used against me?' is now a real R-and-D issue for companies, where in the past it wasn't really even being asked," said Jim Hornthal, a former vice chairman of Travelocity.com. "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta."" No, the reason companies deployed crypto was not because they feared Microsoft would read their mail, but because they feared hackers, terrorists, thieves would read their mail. As for worrying about terrorism, many corporate headquarters have anti-truckbomb measures in place. In front of the Noyce Building in Santa Clara, Intel's high-rise headquarters building, there are extensive barriers and other measures to prevent a truck bomb from being driven into the main lobby and detonated. These have been there for most of the past decade; security was not an afterthought resulting from 9/11.
And I found an acknowledgment that all those technologies had been built with a high degree of trust as to how they would be used, and that that trust had been shaken. In its place is a greater appreciation that high-tech companies aren't just threatened by their competitors; but also by some of their users.
Double duh. Incredible that Friedman was this naive.
It was part of Silicon Valley lore that successful innovations would follow a well-trodden path: beginning with early adopters, then early mass-appeal users and finally the mass market. But it's clear now there is also a parallel, criminal path: starting with the early perverters of a new technology up to the really twisted perverters.
"The street will always find uses for technology" has been the motto for a generation. Has Friedman not noticed online porn, cellphones used by gangbangers, and so on? Porn is what made the VCR a success.
For instance, the 9/11 hijackers may have communicated globally through steganography software, which lets users e-mail, say, a baby picture that secretly contains a 300-page compressed document or even a voice message.
How many years have we known about this _possibility_? I wrote about it online in 1990, Kevin Kelly quoted me at length about it in 1992 for some articles and for his eventual book, "Out of Control," and Romana Machado released "Stego" in 1993. As to the actual _use_ by 9/11 hijackers, there is no evidence whatsoever that anything this sophisticated was necessary or was used.
"We have engineered large parts of our system on an assumption of trust that may no longer be accurate," said a Stanford law professor, Joseph A. Grundfest. "Trust is hard-wired into everything from computers to the Internet to building codes. What kind of building codes you need depends on what kind of risks you thought were out there. The odds of someone flying a passenger jet into a tall building were zero before. They're not anymore. "
We have been writing about "soft targets" for a long time. Schelling points for attacks. And the scenario of crashing a loaded jetliner into a building was of course not unforeseen. Tom Clancy described a very detailed scenario for just such an act in his _1994_ (there's that seminal year again) novel "Debt of Honor." A Google search will turn up many discussions of this over the years. Here's my own description of the Sato Solution from a post made to this very list in 1997: ---begin quote--- " To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net * Subject: Re: Tim May's offensive racism (was: about RC4) * From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> * Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 10:52:32 -0700 * In-Reply-To: <199711141755.SAA20812@basement.replay.com> * Sender: owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM .... lines of: "I fully expect to wake up some morning and hear that some terrorist nuke has destroyed Washington, D.C. I can't say I'll be crying." Big deal. Nothing Tom Clancy hasn't talked about in his novels. (And recall Clancy's delicious description of a Japanese 747 loaded with jet fuel being crashed into the main hall of Congress during a joint session, with the President and cabinet in attendance. It was clear that Clancy was vicarious relishing this vermin removal effort. ---end quote--- So, Clancy had this scenario worked out. Ramsy Yousif, one of the WTC bombers, was implicated in a plot in the mid-90s to hijack half a dozen jetliners and crash them simultaneously into Schelling point/high psychological value targets, including the Eiffel Tower, CIA headquarters, etc. Does this mean I, for example, "knew" the WTC attack in 2001 would happen? Of course not. Did I expect such an attack, in broad outlines, would happen? Of course. It's the history of warfare. Burning down a city, lobbing dead animals over fortified walls, dynamiting bridges, putting an entire city to the sword, firebombing civilian cities...it's the nature of war. We knew it. Friedman should get up to speed. Maybe I'll forward him my _1988_ "Cryptoanarchist Manifesto." Then maybe he'll see that the "techies" (at least he didn't call us "nerds") have known what was coming, and looked forward to it!, for many years.
Silicon Valley staunchly opposed the Clipper Chip, which would have given the government a back-door key to all U.S. encrypted data. Now some wonder whether they shouldn't have opposed it. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, said, "Culturally, the Valley was already maturing before 9/11, but since then it's definitely developed a deeper respect for leaders and government institutions."
Guys like Friedman represent the New Enemy. --Tim May "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." --John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General
Officials, and journalists, accustomed to handling civil unrest through police means, have to stretch to get their hands on national security threats, in particular what to do with military capabilities which are scaled for much greater threats than the police can handle. The military doesn't like civil affairs where a distinction has to be made between innocents and opponents, where a battle has to be fought while civil affairs continue. It blows whole areas away, hardly affected by collateral damage laments. Some military commentators have reported that th 9/11 losses are barely significant in military terms, but are a big hit for police-scale mentality, and even bigger for political mindsets which fear loss of face more than all else. Terrorism thrives by remaining less than a military-scale threat but is becoming more than police, and police-minded officials and journalists like Friedman can handle can handle. A nuke on DC or NYC could lead all of them to grow up, a favorite theme of the Times these days about Silicon Valley. The Times some months ago, by way of Jeffifer Lee, reported on the fervor with with which high-tech firms are racing to capitalize on the requirements for homeland security and the rise in military actions, redefining product lines, digging out civilian ideas for re-uniforming in national security dress. Perhaps that is what Friedman is doing, scaling up the picayune Palestinian dust-up to a global affair, as he has tried futilely to do for years but failing due to the required emphasis on its Jewish attribute for the New York City readership yet paying the price of indifference elsewhere. Friedman regularly these days predicts a series of suicide bombings in New York City, and as a sidebar elsewhere in the US. That police scale he is good at, but the military scale of widespread carnage appears beyond his comprehension -- in the spirit of the once-isolated and comfortably insulated USA. The problem with dismissing the drumbeat of terrorist alarms is that the guardians could well let a few attacks happen to show the citizenry the neeed to show respect for government. This is not to suggest that 9/11 was such an attention-getting operation but it certainly has fulfilled the dreams of those who warned about it and are now reaping its benefits -- gov, mil, com and edu.
Tim wrote:
On Sunday, May 26, 2002, at 10:07 AM, John Young wrote:
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002 ....
pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 -- from the Internet to powerful encryption software -- can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil.
Well, "duh." As an analyst of high tech, Friedman is a pretty good analyst of the Arab-Israeli conflict. His conclusions about the views of Silicon Valley are facile and simplistic.
I didn't really interpret Friedman's article to indicate that he himself has so much come to see technology in a different light following 9/11, but rather that he noticed that many in the Valley have begun to see technology in a different light, being now more receptive and susceptible to governmental suggestions to consider including the Big Brother Inside. In as far as Friedman's post is reporting on a change in the mindset of the technology providers, his article might be represent more of a statement of fact than an opinion. Just a thought, --Lucky
Tim May wrote:
On Sunday, May 26, 2002, at 10:07 AM, John Young wrote:
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today:
For example, in another place:
"The question `How can this technology be used against me?' is now a real R-and-D issue for companies, where in the past it wasn't really even being asked," said Jim Hornthal, a former vice chairman of Travelocity.com. "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta.""
No, the reason companies deployed crypto was not because they feared Microsoft would read their mail, but because they feared hackers, terrorists, thieves would read their mail.
As for worrying about terrorism, many corporate headquarters have anti-truckbomb measures in place. In front of the Noyce Building in Santa Clara, Intel's high-rise headquarters building, there are extensive barriers and other measures to prevent a truck bomb from being driven into the main lobby and detonated. These have been there for most of the past decade; security was not an afterthought resulting from 9/11.
Exactly I can't imagine that any large US company that operated abroad - which is effectively all of big ones - didn't think about the same sort of thing. My ex-employers did business in a number of African and middle-eastern countries, some of them in a state of civil war, and had planned responses to kidnapping or murder of employees or their families, and to armed attack on company buildings, so physical security had always been on the agenda. If any of them were complacent about security in the USA itself, they would surely have been shaken out of it in the 1960s if not before. (Hey, didn't you guys use to have bank robbers? And what about the days when payrolls really were rolls of paper money?). Anyway, after abortion clinic bombings in the 1990s, and the Atlanta Olympic & Oklahoma bombings and Seattle protests surely no corporation the USA could have been naive enough to think that they were immune to politcal violence? The US company I used to work for in London had it's buildings within the blast radius of IRA bombs in 1983 and 1991 (and nearby in 1982 and 1995). The main thing that worried them in London was being occupied by demonstrators against the company's policies in other countries, or by "anti-Globalisation" protestors. We had discussions with police and others about corporate response to attacks or demonstrations. I participated in them at one point to discuss IT security. It was that sort of discussion that persuaded people to pay for firewalls and proxy servers. I don't think the idea that whole areas of the net woudl be wiped out by stupid Microsoft word macros occured to many of the non-IT managers, but they certainly didn't want to be hacked by Greens, who some of them had an exaggerated fear of. One of the reasons I knew it was time to leave was when I found myself talking to men in suits about defending ourselves against demonstrations that friends of mine might have been taking part in.
Sounds like more of the same kinds of words inserted into Phil Zimmermann mouth by Ariana Cha to me. Hmmm, smells like bullshit, looks like bullshit, there's a bull looking a bit relieved a few feet away, I wonder what it could be? ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Sun, 26 May 2002, John Young wrote:
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002
<SNIP>
Silicon Valley staunchly opposed the Clipper Chip, which would have given the government a back-door key to all U.S. encrypted data. Now some wonder whether they shouldn't have opposed it. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, said, "Culturally, the Valley was already maturing before 9/11, but since then it's definitely developed a deeper respect for leaders and government institutions."
participants (6)
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John Young -
Ken Brown -
Lucky Green -
Mike Rosing -
Sunder -
Tim May