The title of this blog post is a headline from the NYTimes on 18 Dec. 2014, B1. Here is a reaction written back in January 2014.
Trust is earned but government hasn’t made any effort. Indeed, government today is failing to deliver quality information security that it routinely managed in the past, before the current big data age. Hence, there exists a certain nostalgia for an America that served its people without endangering their rights. We can recover that America if we make an effort and match our technology to the new challenge.
Once, information access permission routinely required two factors: “right to know” and “need to know”. Now, only the first factor is required to roam freely through sensitive information archives of unprecedented scale. That failure to enforce sensible access requirements lead directly to the Manning and Snowden fiascos.
Trust? It must be earned. The first step has to be the discovery of a way around Executive Order 13587 of October 7, 2011. When President Obama signed that order, he endorsed a rather cogent analysis of the information access and sharing crisis but the order mandated an administrative solution. I am sorry, but the Mannings and Snowdens don’t follow administrative regulations. Real change is necessary. Change will not be forthcoming however without a swift kick to the wrenches that jam the gears of effective governance.
The right direction is this: restore the “need to know” requirement that sensible governments have always imposed on individuals who want to poke around in sensitive files. Our government information systems deleted that requirement when government embraced electronic databases. A modern database very easily implements a “right to know” policy but – being a relatively passive entity – it lacks a perspective on “need to know”. Also, answering a query that is broad enough to detect and stop terrorism does, frankly, require a synoptic view across all data resources. The current system is probably the best we can do with antiquated technology.
With modern technology on the other hand, data can be kept in small, well protected locations. Algorithms that operate on encrypted data can detect relationships between individual facts and events recorded in the separated locations. Those detected relationships serve as a “need to know” justification to share. That justification will alert people with the “right to know” that they should share and combine just the related facts – without exposing the entire data collection. Such a modern system is proactive. It performs limited sharing based on need and leaves the bulk of sensitive data well protected. It doesn’t need to be prompted to act when there is probable cause. It draws attention to critical problems and can compel attention. Thus, with modern technology, the public is safer is two ways. Data are better protected and essential facts are pushed into the hands of individuals who serve to protect the public.
Cooperation is the topic of this blog. Security is connected to the evolution of cooperation by the technology that reduces the risk of transactions. People will share and cooperate when there is less risk in the sharing process. Thus technology will enable better cooperation. We – as a society – will cooperate better to advance our causes and overcome our challenges.