Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Keio University Distinguished Professor  
Tokyo Japan  Cell +81 ‭‭70  4490 7275‬‬

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross.stapletongray () gmail com>
> Date: June 24, 2018 at 10:39:15 GMT+9
> To: DAVID FARBER <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts
>
> This reads a little weird.  In that world (my former world), an "air gap" is essentially the act of not connecting 
> two systems.
>
> I left a bit after the Intelligence Community started to elevate "open source intelligence" as a thing, hence wanted 
> much more ingestion of outside stuff, and there was a lot of focus on things like A/B switches, where an analyst 
> could have a classified network connection to their desktop, alongside an unclassified one, and manually switch from 
> one to the other, but you'd have to purge the workstation's memory before going from the classified to the 
> unclassified connection.
>
> Lots of attention paid also (then and certainly now) to "cross-domain" solutions, for moving information from a 
> system at one level of classification, to another at a different one. Less of a problem bringing less sensitive 
> information into a more sensitive system (down to, say, writing a diskette on your workstation connected to the 
> Internet, walking it across the "air gap" via "sneaker net," flipping the write-protect tab, and reading it on your 
> classified workstation); far greater difficulties in going the other direction, and getting anyone to sign off on a 
> solution that could automatically screen information for release.
>
> So something dubbed an "air gap" technology is puzzling...
>
> Related, there was an interesting SBIR topic this past fall: the Air Force was looking for solutions to more cheaply 
> digitize tons of paper whose contents would need to be reviewed for potential declassification and release: 
> https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1319143 
> I know of a clever hack to address a lot of this, piggybacking on an existing company in the (unclassified, not 
> working with the IC) space, and may get around to pitching it some day.
>
> Ross
>
> Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
> Albany, CA
>
>
> > On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 6:09 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Keio University Distinguished Professor  
> > Tokyo Japan  Cell +81 ‭‭70  4490 7275‬‬
> >
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > > From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> > > Date: June 24, 2018 at 00:05:46 GMT+9
> > > To: nnsquad () nnsquad org
> > > Subject: [ NNSquad ] Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts
> > >
> > >
> > > Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts
> > >
> > > https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-engineers-refused-to-build-security-tool-to-win-military-contracts
> > >
> > >      Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in
> > >    Google's cloud division surprised their superiors by refusing to
> > >    work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as "air gap," the
> > >    technology would have helped Google win sensitive military
> > >    contracts. 



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