NSA Spying: "We need to reclaim the internet" - Times Online

The NSA has cheated and abused the power. We engineers have built the Internet – now we need to fix it.

6 September 2013 clock 17:28 11 comments

computer and network journalist Bruce Schneier | © Attila Kisbenedek / AFP / Getty Images

The American computer scientist and security analyst Bruce Schneier calls in a commentary in the Guardian technicians and engineers, to say no more about the methods of the NSA and to blow the whistle. They should also build a secure Internet, which makes the mass surveillance by states impossible. Times Online published his appeal exclusively in German translation.

and us – -

government and industry have betrayed the Internet. By the NSA has undermined the Internet at any level to make it a huge, all-encompassing surveillance platform, it has a fundamental social contract undermined.

Neither the companies that build the infrastructure of the Internet and regulate, even those that sell hardware and software, nor to those that store data, you can still trust that they manage the network ethically correct.

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This is no longer the Internet, the world needs, and not what its creators had imagined. We need to reclaim us. And by “we” I mean the developers.

Yes, this is first and foremost a political problem that requires political intervention. But it is also a technical problem. And there are several things that engineers can do now – and should

. First, we should explain. If you are not an official secret support of the government and so far have not National Security Letter get, you are not tied to state secrecy rules or decrees muzzle. If you have been contacted by the NSA, because a product or protocol to be infiltrated your company, you should do it publicly. Obligations to your employer do not apply when it comes to illegal or unethical acts. If you work as classified data with official and are really brave: Say what you know. We need whistleblowers.

We need to know exactly how overturn the NSA and other intelligence agencies routers and hubs, encryption technologies and cloud services. I already have five stories of people like you exist, though I’ve only just started collecting. I want 50 of these stories, because in bulk we are safer. This form of civil disobedience is the morally right way.

Second, we can design. We need to find out how we can rebuild the Internet to prevent this kind of mass spying. We need new technologies to prevent communication of agents to disclose private information.

We can ensure that monitoring is more expensive. Specifically, this means that we need open protocols, open implementations and open systems – because they are harder for the NSA to evade. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the organization that defines the technical standards of the Internet, has convened a conference in Vancouver in early November. The Task Force should devote their meeting this goal. This is an emergency that requires an emergency intervention.

Third, we can influence the policy I was spared so far and I am saddened to say., the U.S. has shown that it is not ethically manage the Internet. Great Britain is not better. The deeds of the NSA legitimize the abuse of the Internet by China, Russia, Iran and others. We need new ways of network regulation, namely those that make it difficult technology powerful states to monitor everything. We must, for example, more transparency, oversight and accountability of governments and companies demand.