Bruce Schneier wants to make surveillance costly again

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The ongoing revelations of governmental electronic spying point to a problem larger than National Security Agency malfeasance, or even of security weaknesses. Rather the controversy arising from Edward Snowden's leaked documents suggest we face unresolved issues around data ownership, argued security expert Bruce Schneier.

"Fundamentally, this is a debate about data sharing, about surveillance as a business model, about the dichotomy of the societal benefits of big data versus the individual risks of personal data," Schneier told attendees of the Usenix LISA (Large Installation System Administration Conference), being held in Washington this week.

"We might not buy [it], but the basic NSA argument is 'You must give us your data because it is keeping you safe.'"

Schneier has been an outspoken critic of the NSA since Snowden, a former NSA contractor, first leaked documents showing the many ways in which the intelligence agency had tapped into the Internet and data centers to collect data en masse about people's activities.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3481126/bruce-schneier-wants-to-make-surveillance-costly-again/?olo=rss

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1. Tim Berners-Lee: NSA spying is 'betrayal' of world wide web

SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE, the inventor of the world wide web, has condemned the cracking of encryption codes by intelligence agencies in the US and the UK as "appalling and foolish".

The computer scientist said there should be a "full and frank" public debate over mass internet surveillance, as revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, The Guardian says.

Berners-Lee's comments came as the heads of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 prepared to face questioning by MPs in the Commons later today. Questions "over the conduct of Britain's spy agencies" will be raised during the 90-minute appearance in front of parliament's intelligence and security committee (ISC), the paper says.

Today's session will give the nine members of the ISC committee and its leader, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, "a chance to question the agencies about the reach of the mass surveillance programmes that have provoked a global debate about privacy in the internet age," the Guardian says.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/nsa/55961/tim-berners-lee-nsa-spying-betrayal-world-wide-web

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2. How Google paved the way for NSA's intercepts - just as The Register predicted 9 YEARS AGO

Flashback Much hilarity has greeted Eric Schmidt’s deeply sincere “outrage” at his “discovery” that the NSA was spying on Google. For example, Vanity Fair pointed Mr Schmidt to some helpful Google searches.

But the NSA is merely treading in some well-worn footsteps – some of which were made by Google itself. Let us refresh your memory of one of the most prescient and chilling pieces of prediction in the last decade. For all this was forecast here at The Register in early 2004 – nine years ago.

In early 2004, Google launched Gmail. Gmail performed an automated interception of your email, and – having scanned the contents and guessed at its meaning – ran contextual advertising alongside it.

Former security advisor Mark Rasch, an attorney who had worked in the Department of Justice’s cyberfraud department during the Clinton administration, and was writing for Security Focus, raised a very interesting problem. If Google could search through and read your email without explicit legal authorisation, then surely the security agencies could do the same.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/google_nsa_intercepts_the_register_forecast_9_years_ago/

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3. MPs to quiz spy bosses: Who are Britain's spymasters?

Britain's spy bosses will make a historic first public appearance before MPs today, when they will be quizzed by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.

Appearing in public together for the first time ever, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, director general of MI5 Andrew Parker, and the director of GCHQ Sir Iain Lobban, will be asked about the work of their organisations at a time when they have been under intense scrutiny following the disclosures by former US intelligence operative Edward Snowden.

But who are the three men at the helm of our secretive security agencies?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mps-quiz-spy-bosses-who-2686451

[AnotherMcIntosh]

4. It's all the Republicans' fault

or so we've been told.