PRISM And Your Business (Or: Dependence Is Risky) Jul 18th 2013, 11:12
Could you do without the Internet? Might government interception drive you to disconnect?
There was no evidence that Romeo was in direct communication with Juliet, but the frequency of the notes, tweets and calls of each to Friar Lawrence was conclusive to Capulet.
Sound familiar?
PRISM, the U.S. Government's recently-documented project of recording communications metadata could be just as revealing. And it hasn't been confined to the U.S.
Governments could use these records to determine your friends, medical problems, business transactions and the places you've visited. While President Obama insists that nobody's reading your email, the metadata being collected by the government may be far more revealing than the content of the actual messages.
But wait! Whose eye is that peeking at the metadata? Is it your business rival, tracking those companies called by your sales force? Are your competitors tracking your suppliers?
Is that so far-fetched? Not at all:
"Risk is a necessary consequence of dependence."
So wrote Dan Geer in the June 2013 issue of ACM Queue, the magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery. And we've certainly become dependent on the Internet.
But we trust those placed high in government, don't we? Have there been no instances of bribery or corruption in Canada, in the UK, in the U.S? Nor any cases of low-ranking staff given untrammeled access to (supposedly) secure information?
Bradley Manning, anyone?
Timeo Danaos Et Dona Ferentes?
The story of the Trojan horse teaches us to beware of unexpected gifts. Postal service, telephony and the Internet, for example.
The leakers and unveilers all took oaths. And they've been accused of treason for their revelations.
But there are oaths taken that appear less significant. The oath that concerns me most is the one taken by various government officers.
In the UK: "I, [Insert full name], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second and her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God."
In Canada, it's quite similar: "I, [name], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God."
In the U.S., the oaths of office taken by the President and senior officials of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of Government as well as the Military and the Intelligence communities contain the words, "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."
The Fourth Amendment to that Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." (It was enacted 4 March 1789.)
Wholesale interception of data without "probable cause" appears to make all of PRISM illegal. It's "interesting" to hear Mr. Obama—a constitutional lawyer in a past incarnation—explain this. And to hear Mr. Cameron (UK) and Mr. Harper (Canada) on their complicity.
But, getting back to business: it appears that while storing data in the cloud is reasonably secure, getting it there may be less so.
George Orwell, who died in 1950, couldn't have invented a more intrusive omnipresence.
The Bottom Line
Risk is indeed a necessary consequence of dependence. But the silver linings are the tremendous benefits we get from modern communications, plus unfettered access to stored information, in amounts unimaginable a generation ago.
Yes, we could eschew our computers, the Internet, telephones even. But is that realistic? What are your thoughts
By Peter H. Salus (@petersalus)
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