[Cryptography] ZDNet: "US government pushed tech firms to hand over source code"

[Ladar Levison]

On 3/17/2016 7:24 PM, Tom Mitchell wrote:
> Technology makes wide sweeping tools economical and
> near easy.  It is too easy for a loop "for i=1 to 10" to be
> transformed into a loop "for i =1 to 2^100".   The bounds 
> are effectively limited only by money and bandwidth. 
>
> These are differences.  I can worry about what the secrets 
> hide.   I do worry what I see in public and that makes me
> believe the domain of secrets is very much larger than 
> I would like.

See the attached image for a graph showing the growth in classified
information through FY 2014. The original source for the image, and more
scary statistics:

https://www.archives.gov/isoo/reports/2014-annual-report.pdf

Or for an older version of the graph (through FY 2011):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Information_Security_Oversight_Office_%28ISOO%29_2011_Annual_Report_to_the_President.pdf/page12-1275px-Information_Security_Oversight_Office_%28ISOO%29_2011_Annual_Report_to_the_President.pdf.jpg

Didn't President Obama promised to improve transparency in government
when he was on the campaign trail? Makes you wonder if we can trust his
comments about proper protections for civil liberties in our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies.

I believe his background as a civil rights attorney, and professor of
constitutional law (U of Chicago), gave him the right vocabulary to
assuage the public's fears regarding increasing surveillance use (and
abuse). Whether you believe his promises is a personal decision -
because he certainly hasn't proved the system has adequate protections
in place. That would require letting everyone peek behind the curtain.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Classification.png
Type: image/png
Size: 34606 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20160318/a85ec6a4/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20160318/a85ec6a4/attachment.sig>