Pair sought common ground between security, privacy
BY Florence Olsen
FCW, Published on Mar. 20, 2005
An unusual task force began meeting shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The group's members, known as the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, were determined to find a way to prevent such awful events from happening again.
Composed of about 50 prominent experts, the task force met frequently in small groups and as a whole to analyze and discuss the problem with senior Bush administration officials.
(((I don't have any problem with these info-security graybeards
getting together to hash things out behind the curtains.
but "the problem with senior Bush administratioin officials"
is the problem with senior Bush administration officials.
These are guys who genuinely think that John Poindexter
is a genius. Iran-Contra operations with keys and cakes
and stray missiles... that's about as good as these
senior officials get. They just plain lack talent for
governance. They're unworldly fanatics.)))
(((On the plus side, Al Qaeda are even more unworldly
and fanatical than the Bush Administration; so there
have not been any more grand terror attacks on the
American homeland; and with any kind of luck, we
might get over the terror shivers and eventually
do something effective and sensible. Not in
this Administration, obviously, but it's not
entirely impossible.)
In December 2003, they offered a recommendation: Use network and database technologies that are commercially available to reorganize the federal government and eliminate the communication failures that allowed the 2001 attacks to happen.
(((You don't make institutional rivalries vanish by
waving a magic wand. Cops still don't talk to firemen,
not because they have the wrong phones, but because
cops just don't talk to firemen any mkore than the
Bush Administration is gonna talk to these supergeeks.)))
With such a reorganization, federal and local authorities could finally
connect the dots about future terrorist plots and get information they need to avert surprise attacks, the group argued.
The Markle Foundation's task force was not a typical one. Its members were an unusual mix of national security, privacy and technology experts, many of whom have government experience but now work in the private sector. Jim Dempsey, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, and Gilman Louie, president and chief executive officer of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm financed by the CIA, were among the leading
members.
The task force's work was influential. President Bush issued an executive order in August 2004 requiring the creation of an information-sharing network. Congress enacted intelligence reform legislation in December 2004, incorporating the task force's ideas.
"Can you name any other private report that has been translated directly as legislation?" asked Paul Rosenzweig, senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "It is almost impossible to think of a private organization that has had as much influence on a substantive policy as the Markle Foundation has had on the information-sharing network in the legislation." (((Well, the Heritage Foundation ought to know; they'll be privately writing legislation for Congress for as long as the Republicans stay in power.)))
In discussions that lasted sometimes for several days, Dempsey said, members of the task force reached consensus on several compelling ideas that have gained widespread, although not universal, acceptance. First among them is the notion that federal officials should rely more on information technology
to safeguard national security.
"It's one of our strongest suits in fighting terrorism," Dempsey said,
adding that federal officials have not yet made good use of IT to prevent future attacks. (((Yeah, we've got national dabatanks and Al Qaeda isn't a nation, so, well, of course a nation ought to use its massive bureaucratic powers to defeat mountain bandits.)))
Second, the task force said that federal agencies must protect people's privacy as they try to strengthen national security in an age of terrorism. An IT "program that does not respect privacy from inception is doomed to fail," Dempsey said. (((It may be doomed to fail anyhow.)))
He cited as an example the brief existence of the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program, which lawmakers quickly cancelled. "The public, the Congress, the executive branch will not tolerate, even in the face of this serious threat, a program that intrudes upon privacy," Dempsey
said. (((The fact that it was the brainchild of an Iran-Contra conspirator who spent most of his energies deceiving and buffaloing Congressmen has apparently been forgotten and forgiven by Congress.)))
In addition, the group's members said technology can enforce government policies automatically, without human intervention. "We now have the capability to do that," Louie said. (((Yeah, you can get tossed straight into a Cuban gulag without a human whisper of dissent!)))
The task force became a proponent of the idea that federal agencies could reorganize their intelligence operations by utilizing powerful network and database technologies. "For the first time, we can leverage the power of the network," Louie said, "making it much harder for someone to attack this country than if we were operating as separate, distinct organizations."
Many ideas from the task force originated with Louie and Dempsey. For example, Louie contributed his know-how for designing and building commercial technologies, Dempsey said.
Louie also brought a Silicon Valley perspective to the task force. In that environment, business executives emphasize "collaboration, innovation, flexibility and interoperability — all of the things that are missing from the governmental IT process," Dempsey said. (((Silicon Valley stock-jobbing, accountant fraud, monopolies, DRM... hey wow, those are also missing in the public domain, imagine that!)))
Other task force members echoed the view that Louie's unique perspective on government IT derives from his experience as a venture capitalist for the CIA. (((I want the T-shirt.)))
"The CIA and intelligence community have the same IT problems that industry is facing: managing vast amounts of data and creating secure communications," said Jeffrey Smith, a senior partner in the law firm Arnold and Porter, a member of the task force and a former CIA general counsel.
That means that commercial technologies developed for Citibank can solve the CIA's problems, too, if they are put together the right way, Smith said.
(((People make war like they make money, and boy is there ever a lot of money in the latest war.)))
