NSA good guys

[dan at geer.org]

 > Looks like Dan Geer wants to divert attention from the 'legal' masters 
 > of corporatism to the corporatists themselves....

It depends on whether you believe that a promise of procedurally
satisfactory data handling can be relied upon.  Quoting (as I'm on
the record) from "Tradeoffs in Cyber Security," given last October
at the Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte.

http://geer.tinho.net/geer.uncc.9x13.txt

<snippet>

Today I observe a couple fornicating on a roof top in circumstances
where I can never know who the couple are.  Do they have privacy?
The answer is "no" if your definition of privacy is the absence of
observability.  The answer is "yes" if your definition of privacy
is the absence of identifiability.

Technical progress in image acquisition guarantees observability
pretty much everywhere now.  Standoff biometrics are delivering
multi-factor identifiability at ever greater distances.  We will
soon live in a society where identity is not an assertion like "My
name is Dan," but rather an observable like "Sensors confirm that
is Dan."  With enough sensors, concentration camps don't need to
tatoo their inmates.  How many sensors are we installing in normal
life?

If routine data acquisition kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe
and privacy as impossible-to-identify, then what might be an
alternative?  If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your
answer will tend toward rules of procedure administered by a
government you trust or control.  If you are a pessimist or a
hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational,
and your definition of a state of privacy will be mine: the effective
capacity to misrepresent yourself.

</snippet>


--dan
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