How would the governemt enforce encryption backdoors seeing that encryption without backdoors alreay exist in the US and will always be available from around the globe.
I followed these guys for a while and all I can say is that they went too big too fast. Not that they are alone or anything. Their service was robust and cool, but a bit too confusing for non-techies to grab a hold of. They ran through their $100 million or so quite fast. I remember seeing these guys running around in their self printed tshirts at RSA 2000 in San Jose - then when they got their funds, that all changed and it seems they played the.com spending game.
As far I am aware - there is not a company out there that has figured out a way to generate a secure and reliable encryption key based upon a scanned fingerprint. Everytime your finger is scanned, the scan is different and the authentication is done using an algorithm that checks a certain number of minutae points. If the match is with a certain percentage, it authenticates. Multiple scans cannot produce the same binary result, so fingerprint scans cannot be used to generate a reliabel encryption key.
So, how do they encrypt files??? Usually, a hard coded key is built (or defined by the user at installation) into the system and fingerprint authentication merely unlocks the key. Most systems also have an override password - which makes this system as secure as the user defined override password.
Biometrics should not be used for high security. They are good at identifiying, but not good in a single token authentication system when encryption is involved. For me, biometrics is a cool convience tool.
My favorite use for fingerprint scanners is simply for the convience. The software remembers all my passwords and I just use my fingerprint to log in to Slashdot.
Congress has an opportunity to do something that they have wanted to do for some time - control public opinion about privacy and encryption. In recent years, as the use of the Internet for ecommerce picked up and became acceptable, the public opinion was strongly in favor of personal privacy and the tools used to ensure it. As we all know, encryption is one of the major tools that allowed people that privacy, security, safety and confidence. Encryption technology, from enigma to Zimmerman and PGP to the present, has been a problem for the intelligence agencies in the US and around the world. Congress tried to control it, but thanks to strong public opinion in favor of Privacy, encryption was winning the battle. The public demanded it and the industry gave it to them (sometimes).
Now, September 11th arrives and stuns the world. The country mourns, but Congress, like any good capitalist, seizes the opportunity to capitalize. They used media and the attack to sway public opinion. People now seem open to sacrificing their 1st amendment rights and eventually their personal privacy for a temporary safety.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
It appears, Congress has done an excellent job of swaying the public opinion about Privacy and used Sept. 11 as the slight of hand trick. Introducing the BACK DOOR policy to encryption is only another step towards 1984 in this database nation. I don't care how they state it in legislation or how they much it is supposed to abide by the normal search and seizure laws.
The year of 2001 was supposed to be the "Year of the Great Privacy Debate." With the broadening use of digital and Internet based communications, the ability for others to intercept those communications have become great. Mobile phones are in the hands of kids calling for a ride home from school, CEOs of major corporations closing a multi-billion dollar deal and even international terrorists. Email and instant messaging (IM) are used for more than novelty and casual exchange. People and businesses conduct much of their daily communications over such mediums. In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, with phone lines down in New York City, email and IM took over as the most available and efficient method of communicating to the world the horrors witnessed by the city. We use these mediums of communication to relay all levels of information from one person and place to another. There is no doubt that there is information floating around these communication networks that is private to individuals and some that is indeed valuable to others.
Everyday, but especially in the wake of September 11th, many government and news agencies around the United States are searching valuable information on these communicatin networks. Today they are searching for clues as to how this event on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 took place and how it took place without warning.
One question that arises is, How did this happen without our knowledge? We spend billions of dollars in the name of National Security and yet something as dramatic and horrific as this could still happen in this country without warning. How could such a strategic and orchestrated attack take place within our boundaries without a hint of what was to come? A plan like this must have been in the planning stage for some time by the attackers and communication over phone lines (land and mobile) and the Internet were inevitable during that process.
There are many "spying" or communication "monitoring" systems set up around the globe by numerous government agencies, US and foreign. The two most widely known entities are code named Carnivore and Echelon. The organizations and agencies behind these systems use this technology to monitor communications over the phone and radio lines and also the Internet. They search and scan privately transmitted communications filtering for keywords in hopes of thwarting terrorism, drug dealing and smuggling, organized crime and anything that endangers public safety and national security.
In this, the year of the Great Privacy Debate, the question of the motives and techniques of Carnivore and Echelon have taken center stage in the public debate forum. Personal privacy is of great value to the people of this country and the world and the use of monitoring technology often violates that very right. In response to these monitoring technologies, as well as in response to security, there has been a surge in the development in privacy and security tools. With the possible death of many aspects of personal privacy in the dawn of the Internet, people demanded tools to protect their rights to communicate freely.
In the dawn of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, there is a big question that now looms over those that have fought hard against the likes of Carnivore and Echelon.
To what extent do we value personal privacy?
Assuming the attackers communicated using traditional methods (land and mobile phone lines and email), these sophisticated monitoring systems should have gotten a hold of something suggesting this attack. It was orchestrated in such a way that many people had to have been involved, which indicates the need of communication. If these attackers used "normal" means of communication, Carnivore and Echelon should have picked up on something - that is unless they had access to advanced means of communication, namely encryption devices and encryption software.
So again, the balance between personal privacy and national security is questioned. With an incident as dramatic as this, the balance has been shifted. The great privacy debate is not new to the 21st Century, it is only debated upon in a different context. Whether it be Roe vs. Wade or Echelon and Carnivore, it is a debate that lives on searching for a balance.
In his book, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (Random House, 2000), Jeffrey Rosen says, "The future of privacy will be determined not by the inherent nature of the Internet, but by social choices about how much privacy we as a society think it is reasonable to demand," But, he adds, "People's subjective expectations of privacy tend to reflect the amount of privacy they subjectively experience; and as advances in technology... have made ever more intrusive surveillance possible, expectations of privacy have naturally diminished."
Today, we have a new social choice to make. We will never be able to return to the same point in the debate as we were prior to this morning prior to 8AM EST September 11. Again, how much do we value personal privacy? Is it worth 10,000 to 20,000 American lives? How many are to follow with similar incidents?
As someone who was (and still hopes to be) heavily involved in the security industry and within the privacy debate, I am at an ethical fork in the road. We developed a highly secure email encryption program that allows someone to send a secure message with complete confidence that it will not be intercepted. That includes malicous hackers and thieves, but more importantly, monitoring technologies such as Carnivore and Echelon. The fork in the road was reached September 11 when these terrorists attacked the principals of our country - democracy, capitalism and military. More fundamental is the attack on our personal privacy and personal freedom. When I was developing, selling and pitching these security products, the most abundant negative response was in regards to national security. The products and services that we developed and sold could indeed be used by terrorists and law abiding citizens alike. The privacy now debate takes a different direction with respect to the realm of high-level encryption products and systems.
Personally, the scariest part of this debate is in either side of the argument. With today's incident, both sides of the debate present scary situations. To the side in favoring personal privacy (use of uncapped encryption levels, banning of such systems as Carnivore and Echelon for example), it appears that our intelligence agencies will never be able to gather enough information required to uncover terrorist attacks such as the one today. People can orchestrate these threats to national security with confidence that they are doing so in private thanks to encryption technology. Encryption historically has been used primarily for military purposes, from Caesar to Hitler.
On the other side of the debate stands the face of national security. If "Enemy of the State" conditions existed, people attempting to orchestrate these attacks would eventually leak important information leading to the demise of the plan. Without encryption software for email and VoIP and encryption hardware for analog land telephone lines, one of our many monitoring systems would surely have caught glimpse of what was to come. If we chose this direction in the fork, is it not impossible to imagine someday living a world similar the one constructed by George Orwell in his look at a futuristic society in 1984 (New American Library, 1989)?
The people of this country, citizens and elected officials, will not have to ask the question, stated above, To what extent do we value personal privacy? It was indeed correct to say this year, 2001 is the year of the Great Privacy Debate.
The year of 2001 was supposed to be the "Year of the Great Privacy Debate." With the broadening use of digital and Internet based communications, the ability for others to intercept those communications have become great. Mobile phones are in the hands of kids calling for a ride home from school, CEOs of major corporations closing a multi-billion dollar deal and even international terrorists. Email and instant messaging (IM) are used for more than novelty and casual exchange. People and businesses conduct much of their daily communications over such mediums. In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, with phone lines down in New York City, email and IM took over as the most available and efficient method of communicating to the world the horrors witnessed by the city. We use these mediums of communication to relay all levels of information from one person and place to another. There is no doubt that there is information floating around these communication networks that is private to individuals and some that is indeed valuable to others.
Everyday, but especially in the wake of September 11th, many government and news agencies around the United States are searching valuable information on these communicatin networks. Today they are searching for clues as to how this event on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 took place and how it took place without warning.
One question that arises is, How did this happen without our knowledge? We spend billions of dollars in the name of National Security and yet something as dramatic and horrific as this could still happen in this country without warning. How could such a strategic and orchestrated attack take place within our boundaries without a hint of what was to come? A plan like this must have been in the planning stage for some time by the attackers and communication over phone lines (land and mobile) and the Internet were inevitable during that process.
There are many "spying" or communication "monitoring" systems set up around the globe by numerous government agencies, US and foreign. The two most widely known entities are code named Carnivore and Echelon. The organizations and agencies behind these systems use this technology to monitor communications over the phone and radio lines and also the Internet. They search and scan privately transmitted communications filtering for keywords in hopes of thwarting terrorism, drug dealing and smuggling, organized crime and anything that endangers public safety and national security.
In this, the year of the Great Privacy Debate, the question of the motives and techniques of Carnivore and Echelon have taken center stage in the public debate forum. Personal privacy is of great value to the people of this country and the world and the use of monitoring technology often violates that very right. In response to these monitoring technologies, as well as in response to security, there has been a surge in the development in privacy and security tools. With the possible death of many aspects of personal privacy in the dawn of the Internet, people demanded tools to protect their rights to communicate freely.
In the dawn of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, there is a big question that now looms over those that have fought hard against the likes of Carnivore and Echelon.
To what extent do we value personal privacy?
Assuming the attackers communicated using traditional methods (land and mobile phone lines and email), these sophisticated monitoring systems should have gotten a hold of something suggesting this attack. It was orchestrated in such a way that many people had to have been involved, which indicates the need of communication. If these attackers used "normal" means of communication, Carnivore and Echelon should have picked up on something - that is unless they had access to advanced means of communication, namely encryption devices and encryption software.
So again, the balance between personal privacy and national security is questioned. With an incident as dramatic as this, the balance has been shifted. The great privacy debate is not new to the 21st Century, it is only debated upon in a different context. Whether it be Roe vs. Wade or Echelon and Carnivore, it is a debate that lives on searching for a balance.
In his book, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (Random House, 2000), Jeffrey Rosen says, "The future of privacy will be determined not by the inherent nature of the Internet, but by social choices about how much privacy we as a society think it is reasonable to demand," But, he adds, "People's subjective expectations of privacy tend to reflect the amount of privacy they subjectively experience; and as advances in technology... have made ever more intrusive surveillance possible, expectations of privacy have naturally diminished."
Today, we have a new social choice to make. We will never be able to return to the same point in the debate as we were prior to this morning prior to 8AM EST September 11. Again, how much do we value personal privacy? Is it worth 10,000 to 20,000 American lives? How many are to follow with similar incidents?
As someone who was (and still hopes to be) heavily involved in the security industry and within the privacy debate, I am at an ethical fork in the road. We developed a highly secure email encryption program that allows someone to send a secure message with complete confidence that it will not be intercepted. That includes malicous hackers and thieves, but more importantly, monitoring technologies such as Carnivore and Echelon. The fork in the road was reached September 11 when these terrorists attacked the principals of our country - democracy, capitalism and military. More fundamental is the attack on our personal privacy and personal freedom. When I was developing, selling and pitching these security products, the most abundant negative response was in regards to national security. The products and services that we developed and sold could indeed be used by terrorists and law abiding citizens alike. The privacy now debate takes a different direction with respect to the realm of high-level encryption products and systems.
Personally, the scariest part of this debate is in either side of the argument. With today's incident, both sides of the debate present scary situations. To the side in favoring personal privacy (use of uncapped encryption levels, banning of such systems as Carnivore and Echelon for example), it appears that our intelligence agencies will never be able to gather enough information required to uncover terrorist attacks such as the one today. People can orchestrate these threats to national security with confidence that they are doing so in private thanks to encryption technology. Encryption historically has been used primarily for military purposes, from Caesar to Hitler.
On the other side of the debate stands the face of national security. If "Enemy of the State" conditions existed, people attempting to orchestrate these attacks would eventually leak important information leading to the demise of the plan. Without encryption software for email and VoIP and encryption hardware for analog land telephone lines, one of our many monitoring systems would surely have caught glimpse of what was to come. If we chose this direction in the fork, is it not impossible to imagine someday living a world similar the one constructed by George Orwell in his look at a futuristic society in 1984 (New American Library, 1989)?
The people of this country, citizens and elected officials, will not have to ask the question, stated above, To what extent do we value personal privacy? It was indeed correct to say this year, 2001 is the year of the Great Privacy Debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they aren't gonna make any $$$ when they give away their core product.
How would the governemt enforce encryption backdoors seeing that encryption without backdoors alreay exist in the US and will always be available from around the globe.
I followed these guys for a while and all I can say is that they went too big too fast. Not that they are alone or anything. Their service was robust and cool, but a bit too confusing for non-techies to grab a hold of. They ran through their $100 million or so quite fast. I remember seeing these guys running around in their self printed tshirts at RSA 2000 in San Jose - then when they got their funds, that all changed and it seems they played the .com spending game.
As far I am aware - there is not a company out there that has figured out a way to generate a secure and reliable encryption key based upon a scanned fingerprint. Everytime your finger is scanned, the scan is different and the authentication is done using an algorithm that checks a certain number of minutae points. If the match is with a certain percentage, it authenticates. Multiple scans cannot produce the same binary result, so fingerprint scans cannot be used to generate a reliabel encryption key.
So, how do they encrypt files??? Usually, a hard coded key is built (or defined by the user at installation) into the system and fingerprint authentication merely unlocks the key. Most systems also have an override password - which makes this system as secure as the user defined override password.
Biometrics should not be used for high security. They are good at identifiying, but not good in a single token authentication system when encryption is involved. For me, biometrics is a cool convience tool.
My favorite use for fingerprint scanners is simply for the convience. The software remembers all my passwords and I just use my fingerprint to log in to Slashdot.
Time to get your game on boys.
you have substance
Congress has an opportunity to do something that they have wanted to do for some time - control public opinion about privacy and encryption. In recent years, as the use of the Internet for ecommerce picked up and became acceptable, the public opinion was strongly in favor of personal privacy and the tools used to ensure it. As we all know, encryption is one of the major tools that allowed people that privacy, security, safety and confidence. Encryption technology, from enigma to Zimmerman and PGP to the present, has been a problem for the intelligence agencies in the US and around the world. Congress tried to control it, but thanks to strong public opinion in favor of Privacy, encryption was winning the battle. The public demanded it and the industry gave it to them (sometimes).
Now, September 11th arrives and stuns the world. The country mourns, but Congress, like any good capitalist, seizes the opportunity to capitalize. They used media and the attack to sway public opinion. People now seem open to sacrificing their 1st amendment rights and eventually their personal privacy for a temporary safety.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
It appears, Congress has done an excellent job of swaying the public opinion about Privacy and used Sept. 11 as the slight of hand trick. Introducing the BACK DOOR policy to encryption is only another step towards 1984 in this database nation. I don't care how they state it in legislation or how they much it is supposed to abide by the normal search and seizure laws.
Yeah, it's his fault. Wait, the plain white envelope or the manila legal sized ones? Both of them.
A hammer is also a tool and people have used that kill people. Ban hammers.
Ouch. No mom, I don't need to go to the emergency room because the encryption algorithm only hit me in the buttocks. The wound is not bad at all.
The year of 2001 was supposed to be the "Year of the Great Privacy Debate." With the broadening use of digital and Internet based communications, the ability for others to intercept those communications have become great. Mobile phones are in the hands of kids calling for a ride home from school, CEOs of major corporations closing a multi-billion dollar deal and even international terrorists. Email and instant messaging (IM) are used for more than novelty and casual exchange. People and businesses conduct much of their daily communications over such mediums. In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, with phone lines down in New York City, email and IM took over as the most available and efficient method of communicating to the world the horrors witnessed by the city. We use these mediums of communication to relay all levels of information from one person and place to another. There is no doubt that there is information floating around these communication networks that is private to individuals and some that is indeed valuable to others.
... have made ever more intrusive surveillance possible, expectations of privacy have naturally diminished."
Everyday, but especially in the wake of September 11th, many government and news agencies around the United States are searching valuable information on these communicatin networks. Today they are searching for clues as to how this event on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 took place and how it took place without warning.
One question that arises is, How did this happen without our knowledge? We spend billions of dollars in the name of National Security and yet something as dramatic and horrific as this could still happen in this country without warning. How could such a strategic and orchestrated attack take place within our boundaries without a hint of what was to come? A plan like this must have been in the planning stage for some time by the attackers and communication over phone lines (land and mobile) and the Internet were inevitable during that process.
There are many "spying" or communication "monitoring" systems set up around the globe by numerous government agencies, US and foreign. The two most widely known entities are code named Carnivore and Echelon. The organizations and agencies behind these systems use this technology to monitor communications over the phone and radio lines and also the Internet. They search and scan privately transmitted communications filtering for keywords in hopes of thwarting terrorism, drug dealing and smuggling, organized crime and anything that endangers public safety and national security.
In this, the year of the Great Privacy Debate, the question of the motives and techniques of Carnivore and Echelon have taken center stage in the public debate forum. Personal privacy is of great value to the people of this country and the world and the use of monitoring technology often violates that very right. In response to these monitoring technologies, as well as in response to security, there has been a surge in the development in privacy and security tools. With the possible death of many aspects of personal privacy in the dawn of the Internet, people demanded tools to protect their rights to communicate freely.
In the dawn of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, there is a big question that now looms over those that have fought hard against the likes of Carnivore and Echelon.
To what extent do we value personal privacy?
Assuming the attackers communicated using traditional methods (land and mobile phone lines and email), these sophisticated monitoring systems should have gotten a hold of something suggesting this attack. It was orchestrated in such a way that many people had to have been involved, which indicates the need of communication. If these attackers used "normal" means of communication, Carnivore and Echelon should have picked up on something - that is unless they had access to advanced means of communication, namely encryption devices and encryption software.
So again, the balance between personal privacy and national security is questioned. With an incident as dramatic as this, the balance has been shifted. The great privacy debate is not new to the 21st Century, it is only debated upon in a different context. Whether it be Roe vs. Wade or Echelon and Carnivore, it is a debate that lives on searching for a balance.
In his book, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (Random House, 2000), Jeffrey Rosen says, "The future of privacy will be determined not by the inherent nature of the Internet, but by social choices about how much privacy we as a society think it is reasonable to demand," But, he adds, "People's subjective expectations of privacy tend to reflect the amount of privacy they subjectively experience; and as advances in technology
Today, we have a new social choice to make. We will never be able to return to the same point in the debate as we were prior to this morning prior to 8AM EST September 11. Again, how much do we value personal privacy? Is it worth 10,000 to 20,000 American lives? How many are to follow with similar incidents?
As someone who was (and still hopes to be) heavily involved in the security industry and within the privacy debate, I am at an ethical fork in the road. We developed a highly secure email encryption program that allows someone to send a secure message with complete confidence that it will not be intercepted. That includes malicous hackers and thieves, but more importantly, monitoring technologies such as Carnivore and Echelon. The fork in the road was reached September 11 when these terrorists attacked the principals of our country - democracy, capitalism and military. More fundamental is the attack on our personal privacy and personal freedom. When I was developing, selling and pitching these security products, the most abundant negative response was in regards to national security. The products and services that we developed and sold could indeed be used by terrorists and law abiding citizens alike. The privacy now debate takes a different direction with respect to the realm of high-level encryption products and systems.
Personally, the scariest part of this debate is in either side of the argument. With today's incident, both sides of the debate present scary situations. To the side in favoring personal privacy (use of uncapped encryption levels, banning of such systems as Carnivore and Echelon for example), it appears that our intelligence agencies will never be able to gather enough information required to uncover terrorist attacks such as the one today. People can orchestrate these threats to national security with confidence that they are doing so in private thanks to encryption technology. Encryption historically has been used primarily for military purposes, from Caesar to Hitler.
On the other side of the debate stands the face of national security. If "Enemy of the State" conditions existed, people attempting to orchestrate these attacks would eventually leak important information leading to the demise of the plan. Without encryption software for email and VoIP and encryption hardware for analog land telephone lines, one of our many monitoring systems would surely have caught glimpse of what was to come. If we chose this direction in the fork, is it not impossible to imagine someday living a world similar the one constructed by George Orwell in his look at a futuristic society in 1984 (New American Library, 1989)?
The people of this country, citizens and elected officials, will not have to ask the question, stated above, To what extent do we value personal privacy? It was indeed correct to say this year, 2001 is the year of the Great Privacy Debate.
The year of 2001 was supposed to be the "Year of the Great Privacy Debate." With the broadening use of digital and Internet based communications, the ability for others to intercept those communications have become great. Mobile phones are in the hands of kids calling for a ride home from school, CEOs of major corporations closing a multi-billion dollar deal and even international terrorists. Email and instant messaging (IM) are used for more than novelty and casual exchange. People and businesses conduct much of their daily communications over such mediums. In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, with phone lines down in New York City, email and IM took over as the most available and efficient method of communicating to the world the horrors witnessed by the city. We use these mediums of communication to relay all levels of information from one person and place to another. There is no doubt that there is information floating around these communication networks that is private to individuals and some that is indeed valuable to others.
... have made ever more intrusive surveillance possible, expectations of privacy have naturally diminished."
Everyday, but especially in the wake of September 11th, many government and news agencies around the United States are searching valuable information on these communicatin networks. Today they are searching for clues as to how this event on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 took place and how it took place without warning.
One question that arises is, How did this happen without our knowledge? We spend billions of dollars in the name of National Security and yet something as dramatic and horrific as this could still happen in this country without warning. How could such a strategic and orchestrated attack take place within our boundaries without a hint of what was to come? A plan like this must have been in the planning stage for some time by the attackers and communication over phone lines (land and mobile) and the Internet were inevitable during that process.
There are many "spying" or communication "monitoring" systems set up around the globe by numerous government agencies, US and foreign. The two most widely known entities are code named Carnivore and Echelon. The organizations and agencies behind these systems use this technology to monitor communications over the phone and radio lines and also the Internet. They search and scan privately transmitted communications filtering for keywords in hopes of thwarting terrorism, drug dealing and smuggling, organized crime and anything that endangers public safety and national security.
In this, the year of the Great Privacy Debate, the question of the motives and techniques of Carnivore and Echelon have taken center stage in the public debate forum. Personal privacy is of great value to the people of this country and the world and the use of monitoring technology often violates that very right. In response to these monitoring technologies, as well as in response to security, there has been a surge in the development in privacy and security tools. With the possible death of many aspects of personal privacy in the dawn of the Internet, people demanded tools to protect their rights to communicate freely.
In the dawn of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, there is a big question that now looms over those that have fought hard against the likes of Carnivore and Echelon.
To what extent do we value personal privacy?
Assuming the attackers communicated using traditional methods (land and mobile phone lines and email), these sophisticated monitoring systems should have gotten a hold of something suggesting this attack. It was orchestrated in such a way that many people had to have been involved, which indicates the need of communication. If these attackers used "normal" means of communication, Carnivore and Echelon should have picked up on something - that is unless they had access to advanced means of communication, namely encryption devices and encryption software.
So again, the balance between personal privacy and national security is questioned. With an incident as dramatic as this, the balance has been shifted. The great privacy debate is not new to the 21st Century, it is only debated upon in a different context. Whether it be Roe vs. Wade or Echelon and Carnivore, it is a debate that lives on searching for a balance.
In his book, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (Random House, 2000), Jeffrey Rosen says, "The future of privacy will be determined not by the inherent nature of the Internet, but by social choices about how much privacy we as a society think it is reasonable to demand," But, he adds, "People's subjective expectations of privacy tend to reflect the amount of privacy they subjectively experience; and as advances in technology
Today, we have a new social choice to make. We will never be able to return to the same point in the debate as we were prior to this morning prior to 8AM EST September 11. Again, how much do we value personal privacy? Is it worth 10,000 to 20,000 American lives? How many are to follow with similar incidents?
As someone who was (and still hopes to be) heavily involved in the security industry and within the privacy debate, I am at an ethical fork in the road. We developed a highly secure email encryption program that allows someone to send a secure message with complete confidence that it will not be intercepted. That includes malicous hackers and thieves, but more importantly, monitoring technologies such as Carnivore and Echelon. The fork in the road was reached September 11 when these terrorists attacked the principals of our country - democracy, capitalism and military. More fundamental is the attack on our personal privacy and personal freedom. When I was developing, selling and pitching these security products, the most abundant negative response was in regards to national security. The products and services that we developed and sold could indeed be used by terrorists and law abiding citizens alike. The privacy now debate takes a different direction with respect to the realm of high-level encryption products and systems.
Personally, the scariest part of this debate is in either side of the argument. With today's incident, both sides of the debate present scary situations. To the side in favoring personal privacy (use of uncapped encryption levels, banning of such systems as Carnivore and Echelon for example), it appears that our intelligence agencies will never be able to gather enough information required to uncover terrorist attacks such as the one today. People can orchestrate these threats to national security with confidence that they are doing so in private thanks to encryption technology. Encryption historically has been used primarily for military purposes, from Caesar to Hitler.
On the other side of the debate stands the face of national security. If "Enemy of the State" conditions existed, people attempting to orchestrate these attacks would eventually leak important information leading to the demise of the plan. Without encryption software for email and VoIP and encryption hardware for analog land telephone lines, one of our many monitoring systems would surely have caught glimpse of what was to come. If we chose this direction in the fork, is it not impossible to imagine someday living a world similar the one constructed by George Orwell in his look at a futuristic society in 1984 (New American Library, 1989)?
The people of this country, citizens and elected officials, will not have to ask the question, stated above, To what extent do we value personal privacy? It was indeed correct to say this year, 2001 is the year of the Great Privacy Debate.