Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: more on How to own the Internetin your pare time
From: David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 19:15:57 -0400
-----Original Message----- From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com> Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 17:23:16 To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com Subject: Re: IP: more on How to own the Internetin your pare time Here's some new thinking on security. I'm serious - it's not a joke - but perhaps a starting point. Actual threats increase proportional to the number of enemies creating them and the resources needed to execute them. Potential threats increase proportional to the number of people imagining them. We only need to stop the actual threats. However, our investment in threat management tends to track potential threats, which can grow without bound: Potential threats grow when secrecy creates unknowability. An open/transparent world reduces imagination of potential threats. It also increases the reliability of assessing actual threats. Which tends to synergize with Moynihan's sound-bite: "Secrecy is for losers". So here's a radical proposal: openly publish most (if not all) of the information collected by the CIA, NSA, ... to public inspection. Figure out how to avoid compromising sources where needed, but get all of it out, efficiently. Use the Internet, because it scales, rather than TV, print, and Radio, which don't. This will enable all of civil society to become outsourcers of the costly mundane details of threat management, leaving the difficult and specialized functions to experts with specialized resources. In this world, terrorist's ability to use the leverage of "unknown" threats and rampant paranoia of their targets to amplify their meager efforts would be dramatically reduced. Can we completely eliminate risks or threats? Recognizing that we cannot is the first step to managing them. For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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