more on Anti-terrorism software that balances privacy and security?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: January 25, 2006 5:40:30 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Anti-terrorism software that balances  
privacy and security?


Dave,

Reduced to its essentials, here is what I believe is the fundamental
question in this regard (irrespective of the apparently misleading
aspects of the UCLA press release).  Is it in the interests of
society to provide the powers-that-be with mass surveillance
algorithms and/or tools that are relatively easy and inexpensive to
deploy and use -- especially when all control and oversight is in
the hands of the same or affiliated entities?

My view is that the presence of considerable cost and other
"friction" in such surveillance systems are crucial elements that
help reduce (but are certainly not sufficient to eliminate) abuse of
such capabilities and associated tradecraft.

When we start to hear talk of highly-efficient surveillance tools
designed to be widely deployed, alarm bells should start ringing.
Some persons might applaud such systems in the hands of those that
they trust, but we must assume that in the future such capabilities
-- particularly if embedded within technological infrastructures and
widely used systems -- may take their orders from authorities
potentially ranging from irresponsible to genuinely evil.

Too much efficiency in surveillance technology greatly increases the
risks of abuse.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
   - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com


 - - -

> moraal; NEVER let PR folk at research papers or at least read the
> damn PE before you approve the relase.
>
> Dave
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Peter Capek <capek () ieee org>
> Date: January 25, 2006 3:40:04 PM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] Anti-terrorism software that balances privacy and
> security?
>
> There's a paper and set of charts describing this work available at
>
>       http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail/PUBLIC/index.html
>
> Perhaps we can get one of the authors to elucidate this work.   But I
> found
> the charts to be fairly clear.  This work addresses the problem that
> the criteria
> used (all that's addressed is the presence of specific words) to find
> textual
> communication "of interest" are classified.   Today, this
> necessitates gathering into
> a secure and classified environment ALL communication of interest,
> which has
> scaling, cost, reliability and perhaps other problems.   The question
> the authors
> address is how to produce a program which can be used in a non-secure
> environment to scan text, and produce an encrypted version of
> interesting
> messages, which is then decrypted in a secure environment.  (Think
> hashing
> and public key encryption.)  The point is that it's not possible to
> tell, from
> the scanning program, which words caused a document to be interesting.
> I'm sure I've oversimplified this, but I think I have it essentially
> correct.
>
> It's really misleading to call it "anti-terrorism" software.  And at
> this point,
> according to the charts at least, it's not software - only an
> approach and
> some theorems.
>
> Lastly, the article cited earlier is misleading in that it says the
> technique
> "[discards] communications from law-abiding citizens before they ever
> reach the intelligence community."   This approach knows nothing about
> whether the people sending or receiving mail are law-abiding, or even
> whether
> they're citizens.  Its operation is based solely on the presence of
> specific words
> in the message text, although I suppose some of those words could be
> e-mail
> addresses.
>
>               Peter Capek
>
>
>
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