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Obama Releases National Strategy For Information Sharing
wiredmikey writes "President Obama on Wednesday released a national strategy designed to balance the sharing of information with those who need it to keep the country safe, while protecting the same data from those who would use it to cause harm. 'The National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding' outlines how the government will attempt to responsibly share and protect data that enhances national security and protects the American people. The national strategy will define how the federal government and its assorted departments and agencies share their data. Agencies can also share services and work towards data and network interoperability to be more efficient, the President said. The President aimed to address concerns over Privacy by noting, 'This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected.' The full document is available here in PDF format from the White House website."
The National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding' outlines how the government will attempt to responsibly share and protect data that enhances national security and protects the American people...The President aimed to address concerns over Privacy by noting, 'This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be â" and will be â" protected.'
Great. That means we will never need to use Wikileaks again because the government will from now on share information with its people, and protect human rights.
This is a great sigh of relief to people like Julian Assange, Private Bradley Manning and those who respect their leadership and courage to share information about what their government is up to. Finally we get transparency in government while at the same time the average citizen will be free from unwarranted and ubiquitous surveillance.
This almost seems to good to be true. It almost seems as if I'm dreaming. It doesn't seem real: A government we can trust.
I call shenanigans. This is just their attempt at making us feel better so that we'll (resist less when we) "share" more data with them.
This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected.
The US government does what it wants, when it wants. They "share" information by not protecting or encrypting data (ooooh, a laptop!) or by squeezing it out of foreign countries, and many other ways. They want every ISP to keep perpetual records on any and all web activity, cell providers to hand out live and historical GPS info, blah blah blah.
For those on their "If you're not doing anything wrong ..." soapbox just keep in mind that they will eventually get to the point that trying to protect the last semblance of privacy from the government will be classified as "doing something wrong". There's no need to keep any secrets lad, because we'll keep 'em for you. Scouts honor.
A center for information sharing? Sweden has had this for a long, long time!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They are going to use MS Sharepoint, aren't they ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
"individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected"
Yeah, right. This coming from the alleged constitutional law professor who signed the PATRIOT act extension.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The Senate is about to vote on an extension of the controversial FISA Amendments Act -- the unconstitutional law that allows the NSA to spy on Americans speaking to people abroad without a warrant. Yet you wouldn't know it by watching CSPAN because the Senate isn't debating it.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/senate-wants-sneak-warrantless-spying-bill-extension-law-without-debate-lets-call
Your information is our information, and my information is only mine, no matter where in the world you are.
Of course that matters, with that information sharing you won't be just a number next monday. Identifying people so easy to fool is vital for national security.
The 911 Commission had a few bullet points about "sharing", and an executive order followed.
What's crucial to understand about large bureaucracies is that they are not incentivized to share information, rather, to talk about the sharing of information as it had occurred.
Fortunately, as soon as he's got Gun Control sorted, Joe Biden can set about fixing this. Because nobody does it better than Uncle Choo-Choo.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If information can be gathered, it will be. If laws are passed to restrict access to it, people will find ways around the laws and/or just plain break the law when they want to. This is true in both the public and private sectors.
Whether it's websites that find new ways to track everywhere you browse, or government boffins who want to know what you eat for breakfast and how often you have sex, they ARE going to get that information. The technology exists now to do it, so they WILL do it.
What should TERRIFY all of us -- without exception -- is the way this is being handled, both in the private and public sectors: "we will gather the info, but we promise not to abuse it and we will restrict access to it."
Folks, that ain't gonna happen. People are people. Crooks are crooks and curiosity kills every time.
Perfect example and please don't take this the wrong way. I'm NOT trying to restart the old debate about healthcare in the US. But I have to admit that it has puzzled me that some of the same people who scream about businesses tracking everything we do, don't say a word about the FACT that the Affordable Health Care Act creates one of the largest, most invasive and complete databases of health information that has ever existed.
And our protection? The same thing you see here. "We promise not to abuse this goldmine of information in any way. We're the government and we're here to help. Trust us."
Do you REALLY believe that, in a tight election, juicy tidbits aren't going to magically "slip" out about some challenger's medical history?
I don't know what the answer is. But if you begin to understand that there is no real expectation of privacy anymore, you're at least headed in the right direction.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
'This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be â" and will be â" protected.'
I mean, really...can this statement possibly be any more Orwellian?
They've got to realize how totally full of shit that statement sounds, even to someone with no dog in the fight. I refuse to believe they are so clueless as to believe that statement does anything but incite and fan the flames of distrust and hostility.
It's like they're trying to get people to start a rebellion, so they'll have an excuse to declare martial law and roll the Hellfire-equipped drones, checkpoints, and armor out on the general population.
It would certainly be ironic if US citizens end up being saved from tyranny not by elections, rebellion, or the judicial system, but by Iran or N. Korea nuking Washington, D.C. either by ICBM or by a smuggled-in device.
Personally, if I were a D.C. resident and accidentally learned of such a plot, either to nuke D.C. and/or to assassinate top government leaders, I'd quietly leave town and keep my mouth shut. And that really hurts me to have to say about my own nation's government and it's leaders. But sadly, it and they have become everything that the US has fought politically and waged wars against for over 100 years.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Um, you have your end of the world prophecies mixed up. The one that happens tomorrow is based on the fact that the Mayans never got around to creating the calendar for the next long cycle. Seeing as how their civilization collapsed/got wiped out several hundred years before the end of this one, one can understand that oversight. The rapture is part of one of the end of the world traditions that include the phrase, "no man knows the day or the hour." If you are going to make fun of nutjobs, get your nutjobs straight.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It helps to have 51% of an electorate that is dumber than a box of rocks.
That's no hard feat in a country where at least 91% of the electorate qualify for that description. Educated voters are few and far between. Ask the average voter what he thinks about Keynes or parliamentarism, and you'll be met with a blank stare at best.
I think you meant 90%
Why not just call it the Ministry of Truth?
An easy, convenient, public and accountable way to ask for info and get a nicely worded "fuck off" in response every time.
Obama's has been at least as bad on transparency as Dubya since his first presidential campaign ended. I think he was the less-bad choice of the Big Two candidates over the last couple of elections but I don't have the wool over my eyes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected.
Why don't I believe you? Oh, that's right, because you've expanded the power of the police state just as much as any executive before you.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
... what does this really mean?
Obviously this is a public relations piece, and has been meticulous scrubbed to minimize the risk of losing votes through accidental candor. Still, if you look carefully, you can catch glimpses of the mindset in the way things are phrased and structured.
From page 14, here are the top five priority objectives:
Priority Objectives
Top Five
The following objectives capture the highest five priorities of the Administration in achieving the infor-mation sharing and safeguarding goals of this Strategy.
1. Align information sharing and safeguarding governance to foster better decisionmaking, performance, accountability, and implementation of the Strategy's goals.
2. Develop guidelines for information sharing and safeguarding agreements to address common requirements, including privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, while still allowing flexibility to meet mission needs.
3. Adopt metadata standards to facilitate federated discovery, access, correlation, and monitoring across Federal networks and security domains.
4. Extend and implement the FICAM Roadmap across all security domains.
5. Implement removable media policies, processes and controls; provide timely audit capabilities of assets, vulnerabilities, and threats; establish programs, processes and techniques to deter, detect and disrupt insider threats; and share the management of risks, to enhance unclassified and classified information safeguarding efforts.
Notice anything different in the structure of the items? Here, I'll point out the one that is different:
2. Develop guidelines for information sharing and safeguarding agreements to address common requirements, including privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, while still allowing flexibility to meet mission needs.
See it yet? OK, I'll bold the section that makes this item uniquely structured:
2. Develop guidelines for information sharing and safeguarding agreements to address common requirements, including privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, while still allowing flexibility to meet mission needs.
Nice -- it's the only one that says, Except when it would interfere with the mission. Isn't it fascinating that every other one of the top five points is just stated, but with civil liberties, privacy, and civil rights, they feel both compelled and uninhibited in adding, Except when it would interfere with the mission. They couldn't make it through one simple declaration that sometimes the rights of the citizens enumerated in The Constitution preempt the authority of government without adding, We don't really mean this one.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It strikes me now, perhaps due to recent events, that there is perhaps less philosophical difference between 'information' and 'arms' in today's world than many would allow. Just as weaponry can be used to liberate or oppress, so too can information. No matter how you look at it, we, as a society, have granted the government a 'monopoly on violence'. In the interest of pursuing the greater good, we grant the Government our trust, such that it alone is able to use violence, and we take that right (if one could call it that) away from the individual. The government can create police forces, use threats of violence to incarcerate people for violating laws, etc. Sure, there are abuses occasionally (police brutality, wrongful imprisonment) but for the most part the tradeoff is beneficial to all. Far better for the Gov't, with adequate checks and balances, to be the sole administrator of violence in society than to have a system of vigilante justice and local militias.
The key phrase there, though, is 'adequate checks and balances'.
With information, I see things in much the same way. We count on, and in fact demand that our government to protect us from threats, both internal and external. As the world becomes more interconnected, it would be foolish to think that this could be adequately done without access to privileged information. Who is taking flight lessons, and who is paying for them? Why did four moving trucks leave the church and head to the football game, 2 days after one of the church-members purchased 2 tons of ammonium nitrate? Oh, he's a farmer and he makes similar purchases annually, and today is the annual church tailgate event? Fine. Other situations one can easily imagine? Not so fine.
The point is that if one removes their tinfoil hat for a moment, one realizes that access to privileged information and a means to integrate multiple stores of data is a valid (and necessary) means for the Gov't to protect the citizenry of the country in the way that we, as a society, demand. We certainly don't want private citizens or corporations with authority to access that data, just as we don't really want armed gangs enforcing their version of justice. It is an explicit tradeoff of individual privacy and the common good.* The problem, as I see it, is that the institutions which would provide the checks and balances necessary to justify our trust in the Gov't having a monopoly on information are not nearly as mature as those that protect us from Governmental abuses of force. There are no Miranda rights, ACLU's, or hierarchical court systems by which to air grievances and have them heard in some semblance of an unbiased fashion.
That said, I do believe that a framework is possible that would provide enough transparency to enable trust, while still providing the Gov't enough capability to assist in ensuring the public safety. I don't know exactly what it would look like, but these would be some of the tenants I'd start with:
- 7 year horizon on data (i.e. no individual piece of data can be stored by the Gov't on private citizens longer than this time, and algorithms can't have access to data older than this)
- For a reasonable fee, the right of all citizens to view their own records and challenge the information contained within (kind of like credit agencies, but 'better')
- Civilian organizations charged with verifying the integrity of algorithms and data stores
- etc?
* For those who would quote Franklin, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety", I offer another quote: "Fuck off". This isn't about giving up your rights. It is about entrusting the Government with a monopoly on certain types of privileged information, just as we grant them authority to establish police forces, and other executive functions. We are talking about the same Government, by the way, that you already trust with your life every time you get on an elevator without checking the inspection certificate, proceed through a green
Yeah, because you need to be equipped with a college education to be swayed by facts instead of charisma and bullshit.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
President Obama on Wednesday released a national strategy designed to balance the sharing of information with those who need it to keep their asses covered, while protecting the same data from those who should rightfully own it.
Here's my version of Obamass sharing.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.