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How To Foil NSA Sabotage: Use a Dead Man's Switch
mspohr writes "Cory Doctorow has an interesting idea published in today's Guardian on how to approach the problem of NSA 'gag orders' which prevent web sites, etc. from telling anyone that they have been compromised. His idea is to set up a 'dead man' switch where a site would publish a statement that 'We have not been contacted by the government' ... until, of course, they were contacted and compromised. The statement would then disappear since it would no longer be true. He points out a few problems... Not making the statement could be considered a violation of disclosure... but, can the government force you to lie and state that you haven't been contacted when you actually have?"
Rsync.net has been doing this for years; rather than the statement disappearing in case of an NSL being issued, it simply would stop updating. Indeed, their canary text also points out the same possible flaws: "This scheme is not infallible. Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations. The news clip in the signed message serves to demonstrate that that update could not have been created prior to that date. It shows that a series of these updates were not created in advance and posted on this page."
The rsync canary is a good idea, another standard approach for delicate communications are job advertisements.
In this case:
A large ad in a suitable newspaper that you are searching for a lawyer.
In the case of a signed (and dated) statement, you still hold the controlling factor and would necessitate coercion on the behalf of the other party. If the other party (government or individual) is willing and able to bear sufficient coercion upon you to acquiesce to perjury, than the system fails. So, one should only implement such a model if one believes that the level of coercion is within the limits of one's conviction to resist - otherwise you're setting yourself and your "trusted" parties up for compromise.
A "dead man switch" system like this certainly lends itself to a civil disobedience of passive resistance in the tradition of Gandhi, and MLK Jr. But what level do you go for? If I recall right (and strongly paraphrasing), Gandhi's solution to the atomic threat was to allow yourself to be nuked so that the children of the "victor" would express enough horror at the methods that they would reject the philosophy used for the strike and therefore giving the "victim" the final moral victory. Personally, I suspect that I am vulnerable to coercion threatening the annihilation of my entire nation - and probably even a lesser version closer to home.
One thing I've learned about the country with the Bill of Rights is that there are times when the government does exceed its authority, and sometimes even the courts rubber stamp it (although not always - look at Jackson and the Supreme Court), but ultimately a correction factor is applied. Sometimes this is a groundswell of public ire, a brave confrontation like Ed Murrow, and often a combination of the two (i.e. civil rights in the '60s). Although occasionally, due to lack of notoriety or some such, the lesson isn't completely learned until the next generation reads it in their history books (i.e. syphilis study).
Finally, one also need to make sure that anyone else with the authentication to substitute for you holds the same convictions. For example, Thoreau only spent the one night in jail because someone else paid his poll taxes.
Yes you do. I was born and raised in the USA and most everyone I meet approves of everything that they do to fight the boogymen.
It is RARE to find someone that actually wants the govt to follow the constitution.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.