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New Software To Balance Privacy and Security?
An anonymous reader writes "Claiming to provide both security and privacy, researchers at UCLA say they have developed a system to monitor suspicious online communication that discards communications from law-abiding citizens before they ever reach the intelligence community." From the article: "The truly revolutionary facet of the technology is that it is a new and powerful example of a piece of code that has been mathematically proven to be impossible to reverse-engineer. In other words, it can't be analyzed to figure out its components, construction and inner workings, or reveal what information it's collecting and what information it's discarding -- it won't give up its secrets. It can't be manipulated or turned against the user."
It also means that lawful citizens who do fit the parameters are reported on. The same as if the agencies are grepping.
a savvy person may be able to tell that the program is running in the background ... by distributing this software all over the Internet to providers and network administrators, you can easily monitor a huge data flow
How will this software be "distributed"? Virus? Payload in a Sony rootkit? Thousands of patriotic sysadmins? Plenty of potential for evil to be done here!
Paid Q&A/Research
If that isn't putting the priest in charge of Sunday School, I don't know what is.
The problem is not Privacy vs. Security. You will never have Security. Not yours. You can have privacy, though.
The problem is, and always has been, balancing privacy and convenience.
This new development both scares and encourages me. This is a step forward in surveillance, which involves watching people, eventually probably watching all of us. Fortunately, though, that would have an upside in that people can't get away with things when they're caught red handed... Unless they have some really good lawyers. Anyways that's just my two cents.
So, it collect all data fitting into the criteria set by the agency without any chance of anyone ever knowing what those criteria were? How is the "law-abiding" citizen to know he's not accidentaly fitted one? They say it improves privacy, but it actually removes it, since you can never know you've not been deemed a "terrorist".
So, when I take my case to court, that they're illegally intercepting my communications just to look for dirt to ruin my political campaign, it's impossible to reverse engineer and prove that they were only looking for terrorists?
I mean, the captured documents could already have been altered, no way to prove that they didn't, now.
Not to mention the way it works amounts to what is essentially an eternal wiretap of everyone, guilt, innocence and suspicion matter not.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
So, it has been mathematically been proben impossible to reverse engineer... has it also been mathematically proven impossible to socially engineer?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Uh, have we entered some new bizarre Orwellian Twilight Zone? So basically an uncrackable secret black box that the government can install on any machine to intercept any traffic with no ability for the surveilled party to repudiate the content (or perhaps even be aware of the surveillance?) is somehow a win for privacy? WTF.
BREAKING NEWS. The government has devised a fool proof plan to protect your privacy. They will simply garrison an intelligence agent in your house recording everything you do to make sure that the government doesn't inappropriately invade your privacy. (for your own safety please do not attempt to resist; you will have to be beaten to protect your own privacy, after which you will be dumped in a shallow unmarked grave - again for your privacy)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Oh the funny part - there's no need to reverse engineer it; the guts would be fully described in the resulting Software Patent.
Worst case, pull an SCO and sue them for violating your stuff, and demand un-obfuscated *everything* during discovery.
On the fun side, wait until RIAA/MPAA gets their agenda piggybacked into these little boxes.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
"Because the code cannot be analyzed, terrorists using the Internet to communicate will never know if the filter has pinpointed their data or not."
Uhm, excuse me, but this is exactly the situation right now. Since when do terrorists ever KNOW that security is on to them until they're caught? Terrorists take precautions against being detected by ANYTHING. Terrorists with the slightest brains do not talk about operations in the clear at any time. What then is this software supposed to detect? Where is the benefit?
Supposedly the benefit is that "harmless" communication is never seen by the Fed. Bullcrap. The parameters of the software are SET by the Fed - they can see anything they want. That's obvious from the article as it glosses entirely over the matter of "criteria" in the first place.
This software would only be safe in the hands of someone who IS safe. In the words of the DRM enthusiasts, it only "keeps honest people honest." And since the criteria is changeable - as well as the appointment (or election) of the people who set the criteria - this is no security at all.
In the hands of George Bush, Dick Cheney and General Hayden, you're screwed, blued and tattooed.
This is nothing more than a propaganda piece put out at this time because Bush is in danger of being impeached over the spying issue. That's the bottom line.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There is no tradeoff between privacy and security, so there is no need to "balance" them. An individual is not secure if their privacy is being routinely violated.
The tradeoff is between privacy and totalitarianism. Solutions that attempt to split the difference are not helpful.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty