Fwd: Call for input to President's Commission on Enhancing Cybersecurity - bridging the trust gap between the IT community and the US government

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 10:22:40PM -0000, Joy wrote:
> - - - Begin forwarded message - - -
> 
> Date: July 15, 2016 at 3:21:32 PM EDT
> From: Herb Lin <herblin at stanford.edu>
> To: "'David Farber (dave at farber.net)'" <dave at farber.net>, ip <ip at listbox.com>
> Subject: Call for input to President's Commission on Enhancing
>    Cybersecurity - bridging the trust gap between the IT community
>    and the US government
> 
> Dear IPers -

Making your intentions easier to read would be a start. Makes them
easier to respond to:

> You may know that President Obama has established a commission to
> consider how to

> - strengthen cybersecurity in both
>   - the public and
>   - private sectors

> - while protecting privacy,

> - ensuring public safety and

> - ensuring economic and national security,

> - fostering discovery and development
>   of new technical solutions,

Your terms of reference are fundamentally in conflict.

This causes people to contribute in the hope that you will personally
balance possible outcomes in favour of the people (or principles which
we would identify as just and righteous), and in the US government this
"balance" or "favouring of righteousness" is almost never achieved.

The stated intentions, these foundations or 'terms of reference' of your
"study" are conflicting.

No foundation principles have been provided by you.

No undertakings have been provided by you in respect of how any
contributions to your study will be used.

We who contribute, are expected to have faith that you, representative
of "the government" will somehow do the right thing, act in our
interest.

How are we to have faith that you would in fact act in our interest?

You have presented no foundation of intention, let alone undertaking,
such as any of the following:
 - fundamental human rights (right to travel, communicate privately etc)
 - the ultimate sovereignty of we the people
 - true democracy (political anarchy or direct democracy for example)
 - nor any other principle worth supporting or standing for,

You are employed by the US government.

The US government drones people to death, every day, all around the
world, based on meta data that it collects globally to the greatest
extent possible.

These daily killings by the US, done via the IT infrastructure centred at
Ramstein Air Base in Germany, established by the "IP"ers "technology"
and "security" "professionals" of America, these killings are all
extra-judicial, outside any court case, outside anything resembling
democracy or the rule of law!


HOW CAN WE TRUST YOU?


WHY SHOULD WE CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR STUDY?


You want feedback and assistance, but rather than any of:
 - principles
 - foundations
 - truth
 - true democracy
 - absolute sovereignty of the people,
you merely provide a list of conflicting "considerations" and "possible
intentions", which cannot possibly be resolved in your foundation terms.


The US North American regime has year after year, since World War 2,
deceived the people, bombed other people, unilaterally acted in war, and
generally been highly despotic in its actions.


How can this possibly be brought to a stop?


Can your study help to stop the North American regime?


How will the results of your study help to stop the daily extra-judicial
killing by the US government by drone, all around the world?



How can the results of your study bring any credibility whatsoever, to
the actions of the US government and military industrial banking
complex?


North America has sold and bombed away every shred of honor, decency and
democracy that it ever had.

Therefore the US government has no credibility.

The US government is not a legitimate government.

The US government is not accountable where it matters - in respect of
killing people in other sovereign nations.

The US government does not respect the rule of law.

The US government is not a democracy.


There are SO many problems with the US government, that any attempt to
help it, is only going to help kill more people, daily, around the
world, outside of any acceptable process, by the US military.


This all has to stop.


Is there any hope, that contributing to your study, will help stop the
killing?



In the eyes of those who seek righteousness and goodness in the world,
can you provide any reason for hope?


The North American government has no high moral ground; no moral ground
at all;
it violates what the common man would consider ethical or moral at every
turn, since World War 2 and indeed before!


What's in it for us?

Why should we help you?

What's in it for our human brothers and sisters in Iraq, Syria, France,
North America, Latin America, China, Russia and everywhere else in the
world?



> - and bolstering partnerships between
>   Federal, State, and local government and the private sector in the
>   - development,
>   - promotion,
>   - and use of
>      - cybersecurity technologies,
>      - policies,
>      - and best practices.

The "government" (you personally in this instance) will usually
come unstuck, and the terms of reference/ stated intentions of your
study prove this prima facie (on the face of it) - your terms are in
conflict from the start, so you will be unable to produce any effect
worth contributing to, based on your current terms (which are in
conflict).

That is, we the people, who contribute to your study, will end up, like
every other instance in the past, "screwed over".

So, again, why should we help you?


> (See
> https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/09/executive-order-commission-enhancing-national-cybersecurity.)
> I am one of the 12 designated commissioners.

Western governments appear entirely lacking self awareness when it comes
to what they do (which is a lot of evil actions amongst other things),
how they are perceived by people who directly suffer the consequences of
the "government" not upholding and protecting the absolute human rights
of the people in its own country let alone other countries, as well as
in the eyes of those who witness such injustices.

If some country started conducting extra-judicial drone killings of US
citizens on US soil, do you think there might be an uproar?


You ("government") want to "balance" "competing" interests (so you
imply, you don't even be explicit about this) such as those of the
people (security, privacy and anonymity of communication for example -
we can only hope, you give no promise, no undertaking, we are to trust
you absolutely); and those "interests" of the government, which "should"
be aligned with the people, but never seem to be!

I.e. the interests of the government and military industrial banking
complex (monitoring the people to the greatest extent possible, to aid
those with power and money - i.e. subversion of the "democratic"
"government" to the selfish, greedy and despotic intentions of the few
with great money and great power).

Are you able to affect any real change?

Is there any hope that your study will actually help shift the "balance"
away from those with power, to the people of the world?



It is unlikely you can contribute to true democracy by helping to
dismantle this despotic global surveillance infrastucture that the US
government and its organs has put in place and uses to unilaterally kill
people daily (CIA: "we kill people based on meta data"), but anything
else you do will of course further these despotic intentions and methods
of globabl surveillance and despotic actions of killing people daily
without any trial, without any conviction, without any testing of
evidence and without any jury of ones peers, and therefore you will be
personally contributing to this evil that the world suffers at the hands
of the US government today.

And tomorrow.

And every day after that.

More and more humans being killed.

Illegally.


Herb/ Joy, can you help to stop this?



This global illegal communications intercepting and meta data and actual
data collecting infrastructure, is used on a daily basis to drone kill
people all over the world, outside of any judicial process, outside of
any "democratic" consent of 'the people' other than implied tacit
consent by apathy and momentum (which of course has no hope of competing
with the active monetary and power motivations of the military
industrial banking complex).



Can you help to stop these daily illegal killings?



"Democratic governments" consider themselves sovereign, and with
ultimate authority, and ultimate power.

The supreme authority of the people, both collectively as well as
individually, must be acknowledged, publicly, by any government to
consider itself legitimate, and for that government to be seen as
legitimate by educated humans.

All 'significant' decisions (say anything costing more than $1000, like
unilaterally dropping a drone bomb on a human in a foreign sovereign
country) must be put to the people to decide on, for any "democracy" to
actually be a democracy. Otherwise it is a fascist state, and not a
democracy, and is killing people illegally.
In other countries.
Illegally.



Many humans are schooled, but sadly, not educated.



> Recognizing that trust is hard to build

It is very hard to build when you are facilitating the daily killing of
people around the world, outside the rule of law, outside democracy,
outside sanity.



> and easy to destroy

Extra-judicial killing destroys trust, destroys democracy, and destroys
a nation. North America will ultimately suffer the fallout of its
despotic daily illegal killings.



> (and a variety of things have happened over the last 20 years have
> occurred to do the latter),

Like killing people daily, completely illegally. That will certainly
destroy trust.

No individual can trust North America.

Even presidential aeroplanes (the highest of "diplomatic immunity" if
such a thing even existed or was respected by USA) is violated by the
North American government - witness the grounding of the Ecuadorian
president's plane in America's desperation to try to catch Snowden.

No nation can trust the North American/ USA government.



> one issue that has come up is the enormous
> gap of trust between the U.S. government and the information
> technology (IT) community,

Are you truly surprised?

Are you surprised that there is an enormous gap of trust?

Are you suggesting that gap is not deserved?

Are you mistakenly believing that the U.S. government is good and
wholesome?



> from which many IPers are drawn.

Perhaps their conscience is getting to them, with all the killings
happening by their infrastructure, on a daily basis, by the US military?

Killing takes a toll on conscionable humans.



> This rift
> is not helpful to either side,

It is not helpful to the US government.

But this rift is VERY helpful to we the people. We are suffering the
despotic actions of the US government.

We are suffering the US government:
 - killing people daily, extra-judicially
 - monitoring most of the worlds communications in real time
 - collecting of most of the worlds comms meta data
 - the use of the things we make (computers, networks, crypto systems)
   to kill people extra-judicially on a daily basis
 - the targetting and stalking of our best and fairest (those who want
   to bring the US government to account, to blow the whistle on
   despotic actions)
 - the reckless debt creation
 - the financial meltdown to come, which was mathematically guaranteed
   when the US dollar was taken OFF the gold backing standard
 - endless violations of human rights by the US government, all around
   the world, on a daily basis


We, IPers, crypto nerds, cypher punks, programmers, hackers, crackers,
moms, dads, brothers and sisters, artists and all the rest, we NEED to
maintain distrust of the US government, or for some of us, we will be
killed as a result of our righteous actions!

If we let down our guard, we will be imprisoned for many years simply
for exercising our right of freedom of speech!


HOW DARE you suggest that our distrust is not helpful to our side.

And who's SIDE are you on?!!!!


When the government is at war with people/ on the other side, of its own
people, and you work for the government, are you on the right side or
the wrong side?


Shouldn't you be trying to cause others "in government" to treat the
people as not "on the other side"?


How can you, the government, speak to us like this?



> and I'd like to solicit input from the IP community about what you
> think the government can do

- destroy all meta data collected

- dismantle the global monitoring infrastructure

- rapproach with Russia (the US MIC needs an enemy to maintain
  justification for its funding)

- dismantle Ramstein Air Base

- respect China

- respect sovereignty of nations

- obtain permission from sovereign democratically elected governments
  before going to war or assisting in any way a civil war within a
  country

- respect international law

- respect the rule of law



> or refrain from doing

- stop collecting meta data

- stop killing people daily, illegally

- stop overthrowing sovereign nations

- stop frauding your own elections



> to help bridge that gap.

Stop killing people illegally.


> It would be most helpful if you could three things in your response:
> 
> 1 - Your best examples of things the government (and what part of the
> US government) has done to alienate the IT community specifically.
> (Or, at the very least, show how the examples you provide connect to
> the interests of the IT community.)

Using the IT community created infrastructure, to illegally kill people
every day, every week, every month, every year, year after year.

Can this be stopped?



> 2 - Things that the U.S. government could realistically do in the
> short and medium term (i.e., 0-10 year time frame) that would help
> bridge the trust gap.  If your answer is "Don't do dumb things!", ultimateit
> would be better and more useful to provide *examples* of what not to
> do.

Stop killing people illegally, every day, in sovereign countries all
around the world.


> 3 - Things that the U.S. government could realistically do in the
> longer term to do the same.

Promise to the world, publicly, repeatedly, to never kill people
illegally again.

Promise to the world, publicly, to stop sending weapons to anyone.

Promise to the world to start obeying the rule of law, international
law, and the UN Security Council.

Stick to these promises.



> Please send your responses to CENCinput1 at gmail.com.  (I set up this
> email address, but I'd like to keep the traffic separate from my
> non-Commission work email.)  I promise to read as many as I can
> individually and share what I learn with the commission membership.
> 
> Also, feel free to circulate this call for input to anyone else you
> feel would want to comment.
> 
> Thanks much
> 
> Herb
> 
> =======================================================================
> Herb Lin
> Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation
> Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
> Stanford University
> Stanford, CA  94305  USA
> herblin at stanford.edu
> 650-497-8600 office || 202-841-0525 cell || 202-540-9878 fax
> AIM herblin (any time you see me)
> Skype herbert_lin (usually by appointment)
> Twitter @HerbLinCyber
> This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found
> online.
> 
> - - - End forwarded message - - -