[governance] NSA sabotage of Internet security standards

[Norbert Bollow]

Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:

> This is a bit of a contradiction
> 
> 1. You +1 norbert saying that international civil society should not
> participate in this process
> 
> and
> 
> 2. You hope that untainted top US cryptographers follow their UK
> colleagues.  If the UK colleagues are expected not to participate in
> this process ..

There is of course no contradiction between US cryptographers
participating in US national processes and them at the same time
following the example of UK colleagues in jointly making a clear
political statement.

That said, as soon as an internationally credible review process
for crypto specs has been established, I would certainly hope that
some US cryptographers will be participating there.

> As it is, cryptographers from the USA are very active on this - and
> not all of them are NSA stooges, strange as it may sound in the
> paranoia laden atmosphere here.

I don't think that it is paranoid to think that the percentage of US
cryptographers with true independence from them US surveillance-
industrial complex is probably very small.

Even a tenured professor is not independent in this sense if he or she
for example desires to undertake a research project for which research
funding might conceivably come from such sources.

This relates to the very fundamental question about what is “civil
society”. My view is that only people and organizations are qualified
to be considered “civil society” who are truly independent of all
industry and government interests in regard to the topic areas on
which they engage.

That is not to say that everyone else is “NSA stooges”. Of course that
is not the case.

But civil society in the above mentioned mentioned strongly independent
sense, especially organizations that already have expertise in regard
to Internet governance processes etc, need to realize now that having
political science expertise, even together with a general understanding
of the Internet, is not sufficient for ensuring that democracy has a
future on this planet.

With the NSA's actions, crypto specs have become a key battleground.

For that reason, civil society orgs need to invest in first building up
the necessary expertise for being able to competently engage in this
topic area, and then in doing whatever it takes to get an internationally
credible review process for crypto specs established.

Greetings,
Norbert

-- 
Recommendations for effective and constructive participation in IGC:
1. Respond to the content of assertions and arguments, not to the person
2. Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept

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