Re: Top Secret DOD Data over the Public Internet? Thoughts?

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com>]

Matt Curtin wrote:
> It seems that it would be a standard communications security problem.
> NSA presumably has crypto to send messages safely over cables they
> don't own, airwaves, and all kinds of other stuff.

There are movements afoot to potentially completely re-write the
notion of black networking and how classified materials are
handled. I tried to allude to some of this in my earlier post on
this thread. ;)  In other words, there are forces arguing that
maybe it might be OK to mix classified and SBU networks
and it might even be OK to shift away from "need to know"
toward "push to consumer" information architectures. Such
changes would be profound in implication, results, and in their
impact on how networking and computing is done within
the DOD and IC.

As you can probably imagine, these issues are technical as
well as highly charged political footballs that touch on
organizational pride, budgets, and missions. The 9/11 commission
report and the political fallout from that, as well as the election
year, are more likely to affect what happens than anything to
do with technology and/or what makes sense. There are so
many forces at play it's impossible to even sense them all
at this time, or to guess what will win and what will lose. As with
all of these intensely political turf-fights, we should expect
to see "trial baloons" floated - and we should expect to see
pre-emptive "media leaks" in which one agency leaks information
to the press "BAD THING ABOUT TO HAPPEN" in a move
for leverage. What was being said in the article was a journalist's
re-interpretation of what a bureaucrat said about another
agency's ideas. How accurate and unbiassed do you expect
such reportage to be?

As a citizen and taxpayer, I was horrified by the tiny toe-dip
I took in researching how the government does its computing.
Most Americans have no idea how dysfunctional bureaucracy
really is, because - so far - it has managed to avoid collapsing
under its own weight.

If you want to truly horrify yourself on these topics, I have a
reading list on:
http://www.ranum.com/security/homeland_security/books
some of these books were source material for my book
on homeland security. Taken together, they're really really
really really depressing reading.

mjr. 

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