[discuss] Perception, "facts", and solutions (was: Problem definition 1, version 4)

Tue Jan 21 17:13:46 UTC 2014

Andrew,
The facts are:

1. the NSA has an internal organization and "privacy" problem. How 
Snowdenia was even possible? Two options. For Gov professionnals (not 
journalists or societal engineers):

1.1. either do not trust the NSA and the USA capacity to protect a 
secret. This is  now a dangerous and in any case weak ally.
1.2. or Snowdenia is an USCC (cyber command) operation, Brazil, 
China, UK, France, Germany and Russia at least were previously 
informed and are partnering into. Its target is to introduce some 
common sense in the Congress brains and prepare opinion to their decisions.

2. Snowdenia shows that (1) the state/private digital intelligence 
agencies job is far too easy to accomplish and (2) US citizens had no 
protection against NSA, i.e. against other digital intelligence 
agencies or hacker forces. It means that the US and the rest of the 
world is digitally vulnerable.

2.1. The Internet technology must be urgently harden.
2.2. The digital thread on the US, its economy and military stability 
has increased.

3. Trust in the US capacity to hold a secret had decreased with 
Wikileaks (DoD), the incapacity to protect itself from a Snowdenia 
individual or foreign operation, has still decrease for the countries 
that have not been informed et proven it was a planned operations. 
This commonly accepted distrust as such weakens the State Department 
credibility in the world and could affect the world international policy.

4. Trust in the US technological capacity has also decreased. The US 
have left the world engage into an unsecure internet while they 
themselves used the S/NIPPRNET without passing improvements to the 
users. There is an opportunity for Internet industrial developments 
in software leaders (Eastern Europe/Russia, China, Brazil, possible 
Western Europe).

These are facts from facts.

MG

At 16:14 21/01/2014, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 07:50:39AM +0000, Shatan, Gregory S. wrote:
> > that does not make the statements themselves fact).  We should not
> > treat either opinion to be valid (i.e., to have a basis in fact, as
> > opposed to perception).
>
>Unfortunately, I'm not sure I agree.  I do believe that we should
>address practical problems.  The problem in this case is that other
>governments have expressed the concern that they don't trust the US
>government to act completely distinterestedly, and that as sovereign
>nations they shouldn't have to be subject to the US in this way.  This
>is a practical problem insofar as it presents an obstacle to solving
>other (in my opinion, more important) practical problems we may have.
>
>Whether the mistrust of the US is based in any actions of the US is
>almost beside the point; but in any case, the recent revelations of US
>activity (never mind whether every nation capable does or would do
>these things too; the point is that the US was caught) has eroded such
>trust as there was.  One has to deal with the actual political
>realities regardless of "fact, as opposed to perception".
>
>Best regards,
>
>Andrew
>
>--
>Andrew Sullivan
>ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
>
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