Re: Standing up an intel op with seized funds

["Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins () arbor net>]

On Apr 10, 2011, at 8:59 PM, Nick Selby wrote:

> Federal government spending priorities have been much in the news recently, and I think that moving the money to the 
> general fund simply punts the political football into different arenas.

Which is in fact the arena in which it's supposed to be; obviating the principle of subsidiarity by doing otherwise 
removes the ability of the legislative to oversee and control the actions of the executive.  This holds true at the 
local, state, and federal national levels of government within any type of political system.

I live and work in a part of the world in which it is not unheard of for law enforcement agencies to be deliberately 
underfunded by the authorities and then left to their own devices in terms of enforcing the law, raising revenues, and 
compensating their members.  The results are, shall we say, mixed.

> I appreciated your comment very much.

Thank you for your kind words.  From the standpoint of the information security professional, your article is actually 
an exposition of a classic example of the manifold dangers that lack of appropriate controls and oversight lead to in 
any sphere of activity, human or electronic.

The larger point is that, irrespective of the personal and professional integrity of individual actors, any system of 
any type in any context (not just governmental; but one could certainly argue *especially* governmental) must be 
designed in such as way so as to assume the worst about those actors; and to define the scope of, provide visibility 
into, and allow mitigation of their actions as required.  

This is a foundational principle of information security - i.e., hope for the best, but plan for the worst - and its 
abeyance in both the specific case under discussion and in the application of information security tools and techniques 
in law enforcement in general certainly gives one pause.  

In particular, combining the role of leader of the police intelligence unit described in the article with the power to 
seize assets in order to fund said police intelligent unit creates an overwhelming inducement to a) justify as much 
asset forfeiture as possible in order to b) develop enough intelligence to justify even more asset forfeiture.  Whether 
deliberate or accidental, this feedback loop is a stunning policy design flaw in the law enforcement agency in 
question, with strong negative implications for the real and perceived integrity of agencies and individuals in 
question.

The infosec implications of/analogies relevant to the above are left as an exercise for the reader.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () arbor net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

                The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

                          -- Oscar Wilde

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