A small editorial about recent events.

[dan at geer.org]

Chris Palmer writes:
-+------------------
 | 
 | dan at geer.org writes:
 | > You know, as a security person, I say all the time that the greatest
 | > threat is internal threat, not external threat.  In my day job, I/we
 | > make surveillance tools to prevent data threat from materializing, and
 | > to quench it if it does anyhow.  I tell clients all day every day that
 | > when the opponent can attack location independently, and likely
 | > without self identification, your only choice is pre-emption, which
 | > requires intell, which requires surveillance, which requires listening
 | > posts.
 | 
 | Are you saying we need to carefully surveil our government and pre-empt
 | it from attacking us, or that our government should carefully surveil us
 | and pre-empt us from attacking it?
 | 
 | > And I'm just talking about intellectual property in the Fortune 1000,
 | > not the freaking country.
 | 
 | Let's hope society as a whole never resembles life inside the Fortune
 | 1000 too closely.
 | 


  IF ( I believe what I tell my customers )
THEN ( it applies more broadly than them )

That's all.  I do believe what I tell them,
and I am certain it is a fundamental truth
rather than an advertising slogan.  As such,
I should (and do) snap to attention and salute
it when it appears in other guises in other venues.

As to whether you should surveil the government
or the other way around, David Brin's book,
_The Transparent Society_, and the mountains 
of commentary it has spawned probably answer 
the question better than I ever will.

As to society looking like the Fortune 1000,
I (also) agree that I'd rather it did not,
but I look at globalized competition, the
first-world's populace that beyond all else 
wants to be protected/taken care of, and
a planet where jihadists and sociopaths have
an increasing edge, and I ask myself why I
shouldn't imagine that the Fortune 1000 are
not anomalies but avatars, that they are merely
the first to adopt what we will soon demand
as a societal entitlement?  The more crowded
we get the more controls we have to have to
keep the jihadists and sociopaths in their
place, the populace protected, and so forth.
The Internet is a crowded place in that sense;
everyone is your next door neighbor.

Personally, I am working on my farming skills
as fast as I can and do, in truth, intend to
drop out of sight / get off the grid.  What
some may interpret as apologies for the first
or second estate are, at least as I mean them,
nothing but an attempt at Real Politik.  Hope
I'm wrong, but I don't bet against my intuition.

Probably a rat hole,

--dan


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