by Roger Erickson, Open Operations Forum
Have you watched the videotaped interview of Edward Snowden in Moscow? The interview drives home the reality of a very simple fact.
The entire current state of computing is an abuse waiting to happen.
Every aspect of social information assurance has to be rethought, from the IP packet on up.
Yet our US media seems to be censoring the Snowden Interview, while YouTube and other websites block it? What don’t our own government and corporations want US citizens to hear?
“the video has been taken down almost immediately every time it’s posted on YouTube”
The videotaped interview with Snowdon doesn’t reveal anything new at all. It does, however, drive home some of the truly astounding “situational” facts that have already been reviewed at length in print.
Yet the whole context barely makes operational sense, once it’s overwhelming implications sink in. Three aspects of our current context emerge, and they are worth stressing.
- One agency’s runaway capabilities have clearly compromised the entire workings of the US Congress, POTUS AND SCOTUS – not to mention the rest of the electorate. We HAVE no civil protections. They are ALL compromised! Completely.
- How and why? Entirely due to a broken policy and personnel system, relying upon campaign funding from corporations angling for contracts to staff said agency.
- All this has occurred WHILE that agency and those corporations employ truly juvenile IT/IS operations & controls which leave THEMSELVES totally compromised!
It’s like one, huge, Heath Robinson STUPID machine!
We’re extremely lucky that this hasn’t ALREADY blown up into unimaginably bad outcomes. At the heart of it are completely archaic information-assurance methods, layered on top of a TOTALLY compromised personnel system. Even worse, both of those are layered on top of a near hopelessly ill-informed electorate. What COULDN’T go wrong?
Here’s a good synopsis of the print and video details previously disclosed: (Same video, on YouTube and at CCC-TC, Germany)
NSA “TURMOIL” is deep packet inspection (of any computer whatsoever, anywhere),
NSA “TURBINE” is deep packet injection (of info into any computer, including your account, at your bank!)
NSA “QFIRE” is their integration.
@#$%^&! When is enough more than enough? It’s like we’ve all caught the Clapper. Yet this is far worse than other social diseases.
“the NSA has in a literal sense retarded the process by which we would secure the internet”
That really hits home.
If we retard internet security, we’re retarding our culture (and everyone else’s too).
Forget endemic dash cams in Russian cars, this immediately puts pressure on all people everywhere in the entire world … to store, verify and DOCUMENT every single IT packet that ever goes in to or out of their IT devices AND their home routers or cable modems … purely for defensive purposes. Otherwise, anyone can be framed.
Does anyone smell a protection racket coming?
The entire current state of computing actually is an abuse waiting to happen.
As is the state of Democracy in the USA. We have democracy compromised.
