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There are no guarantees. Ever. It's better to acknowledge that the best intentioned (which this is, admittedly, not) processes can screw up and plan for these s

There are no guarantees. Ever. It's better to acknowledge that the best intentioned (which this is, admittedly, not) processes can screw up and plan for these screw ups. It's why we have cops and a legal system instead of locking everyone in padded rooms.

bilbo0s 13y ago
But, in this instance, there IS a path to a guarantee. If we don't share the information with them... then we guarantee they won't be given that information by us. You need police and a legal system because, as a general rule, citizens have rights. Israel... has no inherent right to the data in question. Therefore, if we cannot share information with them without leaking the operational particulars of the civilian leadership... then we are free to not share data with them at all. And there you have your guarantee.
mpyne 13y ago
As another example, the Navy is full of procedures on how to cover the situation where a procedure wasn't followed properly. You can order a command to ensure that evals are submitted on time as much as you like but in a Navy of 320,000+ active duty sailors eventually some command somewhere will screw it up, so the Navy has procedures for that case too.
enraged_camel 13y ago
The amount of apologism in comments like yours is stunning. What do you mean, "there are no guarantees, ever"? The NSA employs some of the brightest minds in America, and has billions of dollars of funding and (we are just finding out) the influence and authority to do virtually anything. There fucking MUST be guarantees. If guarantees are not possible, then information MUST NOT BE SHARED.
- NegativeK 13y ago
  You're putting words in my mouth. If you design a system based on guarantees, it's going to be brittle. It will fail, and it will be very unpleasant. If you design a system to handle contingencies, like elected official's data getting through, it's going to be more resilient. If you design a system that will handle contingencies and then spending as much money as you can on preventing those contingencies from needing to be used -- well, you're finally developing something useful. Hell, the best guarantee a cryptographer can give you is a one-time pad, and they'll tell you that the human factors involved will be just as bad (and probably worse) than algorithms with weaknesses. But, back to putting words in my mouth: this stuff shouldn't be shared because spying on American citizens is unconstitutional and giving the data to allied nations is backstabbing us in the name of national security -- not because it's impossible to build a perfect system to protect elected officials.
dsuth 13y ago
When the NSA is the group disseminating the information, it very much IS possible to guarantee that certain types of information are not shared. The most obvious solution being: don't share ANYTHING. This is an argument of secrecy versus convenience, which you'd think for your National Security Agency, would be a pretty simple equation. A more cynical view of this is that they've made an intentionally leaky ship to do a ring around domestic spying laws using a 'trusted' partner, but given the recent publicity, I'm not sure they care enough to have even that slim cover of legality.

bilbo0s 13y ago

But, in this instance, there IS a path to a guarantee. If we don't share the information with them... then we guarantee they won't be given that information by us. You need police and a legal system because, as a general rule, citizens have rights. Israel... has no inherent right to the data in question. Therefore, if we cannot share information with them without leaking the operational particulars of the civilian leadership... then we are free to not share data with them at all. And there you have your guarantee.

mpyne 13y ago

As another example, the Navy is full of procedures on how to cover the situation where a procedure wasn't followed properly. You can order a command to ensure that evals are submitted on time as much as you like but in a Navy of 320,000+ active duty sailors eventually some command somewhere will screw it up, so the Navy has procedures for that case too.

enraged_camel 13y ago

The amount of apologism in comments like yours is stunning. What do you mean, "there are no guarantees, ever"? The NSA employs some of the brightest minds in America, and has billions of dollars of funding and (we are just finding out) the influence and authority to do virtually anything. There fucking MUST be guarantees. If guarantees are not possible, then information MUST NOT BE SHARED.

NegativeK 13y ago
You're putting words in my mouth. If you design a system based on guarantees, it's going to be brittle. It will fail, and it will be very unpleasant. If you design a system to handle contingencies, like elected official's data getting through, it's going to be more resilient. If you design a system that will handle contingencies and then spending as much money as you can on preventing those contingencies from needing to be used -- well, you're finally developing something useful. Hell, the best guarantee a cryptographer can give you is a one-time pad, and they'll tell you that the human factors involved will be just as bad (and probably worse) than algorithms with weaknesses. But, back to putting words in my mouth: this stuff shouldn't be shared because spying on American citizens is unconstitutional and giving the data to allied nations is backstabbing us in the name of national security -- not because it's impossible to build a perfect system to protect elected officials.

dsuth 13y ago

When the NSA is the group disseminating the information, it very much IS possible to guarantee that certain types of information are not shared. The most obvious solution being: don't share ANYTHING. This is an argument of secrecy versus convenience, which you'd think for your National Security Agency, would be a pretty simple equation. A more cynical view of this is that they've made an intentionally leaky ship to do a ring around domestic spying laws using a 'trusted' partner, but given the recent publicity, I'm not sure they care enough to have even that slim cover of legality.