Doing HTTPS everywhere in the .gov space

[Parker Moore]

Interesting conjectures! But... What do they have to do with https everywhere that Eric mentioned? They're very general thoughts. And even if we only have 5 years, why not enforce https on .gov sites until then? Seems like a win to me, no matter how long government survives.

Parker

> Am 14.11.2014 um 09:06 schrieb Georgi Guninski <guninski at guninski.com>:
> 
> Didn't know .gov dudes _openly_ post here.
> 
> For a discussion, let me make some conjectures about *us.gov.
> 
> Conjecture 1. USA is a pyramid, AKA Ponzi scheme
> Conjecture 2. USA will die in its present form in at most 5
> years (possibly causing troubles to other nations too).
> Conjecture 3. USA will be bought by the People's Republic 
> of China (PRC) in at most 5 years (possibly with other
> investors). [This already happened to some USA corporations].
> 
> Best of luck,
> -- 
> gg
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 11:13:41AM -0500, Eric Mill wrote:
>> Hey,
>> 
>> I wrote a piece today for my organization, 18F, about our HTTPS-everywhere
>> policy for the .gov websites we build inside the US government:
>> 
>> https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/11/13/why-we-use-https-in-every-gov-website-we-make/
>> 
>> I wanted to give this list some extra context, since I understand the US
>> government is a big, complicated, freighted topic. Below is my *personal*
>> attempt to describe my workplace and is not anything close to an official
>> description or the voice of the government.
>> 
>> 18F[1] is a team of ~70 people working as full time employees inside the US
>> federal government. (The name comes from the street intersection -- 18th St
>> & F St -- that its HQ is at in DC.) 18F as a unit was created around a year
>> ago to be a competent, top class in-house technology team for the US
>> federal government.
>> 
>> A driving idea here is that the government shouldn't need to outsource its
>> *entire* technical brain to contractors, and that government services can
>> be simple and even beautiful. If you've noticed what's happened over the
>> last few years in the UK at https://www.gov.uk by the Government Digital
>> Service[2], 18F takes a lot of inspiration from them.
>> 
>> 18F is housed inside the General Services Administration, an independent
>> federal agency[3] that does as many different things as its name implies,
>> from running all the buildings to housing the nation's data catalog at
>> Data.gov. It's an "independent" federal agency in that it's not subject to
>> the same level of direct executive and White House control that cabinet
>> agencies are. It's the same kind of "independent" that lets the FCC
>> potentially disagree with the President on net neutrality, for example.
>> 
>> The team has people all over the country (it has a big SF office, for
>> example), many of which have either never been in government before, or who
>> came in after doing the Presidential Innovation Fellows[4] program.
>> 
>> I joined 18F after working for 5 years on open data apps, infrastructure,
>> and policy at the Sunlight Foundation[5], a non-profit in DC that pushes
>> for open government. I had also done a fair amount of work around privacy,
>> HTTPS, and ongoing judicial activity around surveillance. I get to continue
>> doing all of that work in my personal capacity.
>> 
>> I say this just to try to communicate that the 18F team has some very
>> sincere people trying to make the US government work better for people all
>> over the world, and to do right by technology in the process. We have
>> substantial support and autonomy to make that happen.
>> 
>> When it comes to HTTPS, the .gov surface area is absolutely enormous, and
>> moving it helps move the whole Internet forward. Bringing the government in
>> line with the rest of the web/security community (and being loud about it)
>> is one of my big priorities at 18F, and so I wanted to share this here with
>> you all.
>> 
>> -- Eric
>> 
>> [1] https://18f.gsa.gov/
>> [2] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/
>> [3]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_United_States_government
>> [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Innovation_Fellows
>> [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/
>> 
>> -- 
>> konklone.com | @konklone <https://twitter.com/konklone>