IP: more on A Pentagon gift to the terrorists/mobiles/Blackberry

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Nathan Cochrane <ncochrane@theage.fairfax.com.au>
Organization: The Age newspaper
Reply-To: ncochrane@theage.fairfax.com.au
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:00:57 +1000
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu, Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Re: IP: A Pentagon gift to the terrorists/mobiles/Blackberry

Hi Dave

"To that end, the Defense Department is now prohibited from purchasing
any software that has not undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit
said he is unaware of any open-source software that has been tested."

Stenbit should check again with the NSA and not buy into the Microsoft
FUD blizard.

 From the NSA's website:

http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

"As part of its Information Assurance mission, the National Security
Agency (NSA) has long been involved with the computer security research
community in investigating a wide range of computer security topics
including operating system security.

"The results of several previous research projects in this area have
been incorporated in a security-enhanced Linux system

"Linux was chosen as the platform for this work because its growing
success and open development environment provided an opportunity to
demonstrate that this functionality can be successful in a mainstream
operating system and, at the same time, contribute to the security of a
widely used system. Additionally, the integration of these security
research results into Linux may encourage additional operating system
security research that may lead to additional improvement in system
security."


One of the reasons why smart security people like open source is because
it is open to scrutiny. Of course, Stenbit could follow the Windows or
SDMI or DVDCCA models; and we know where that leads.


BTW I hope the FOMA phone is going well. I saw some of these at the ITU
conference in Hong Kong last year and at an earlier CeBIT. These NTT
stands were the standout crowd favorites. Although I remain to be
convinced that videoconferencing is of much value, and could be lethal
in certain situations such as while driving a car.

Some research from Australia published in the Canadian medical journal
says young drivers are those most at risk. These are the drivers most
likely to take up advanced services such as SMS, MMS and
videoconferencing, the researchers say. The younger or less experienced
are a greater risk on the road because they are easily pushed beyond
their more limited mental processing abilities, the research says.

It's not so much a matter of having your hands on the wheel, that's easy
compared to processing visual cues, so a handsfree kit is of little
value, it's reported.

I'm not sure that the Nintendo generation with the Herculean thumbs born
of hours of playing Quake and Mario are less able than their elders to
process the visual cues as the researchers contend. The danger may be
that driving for them is too much like a videogame generally. Whatever,
doing anything else while driving a car -- even more mundane "adult"
activities such as disciplining unruly backseat children or putting on
makeup -- has got to divide attention that should be on the road.

I seem to recall US research on this topic some time ago, which came to
the same conclusions after reviewing US traffic accidents. The incidence
of accidents among those using or not using a handsfree when an accident
occurred were the same.

 From an ABC Australia report:

"According to David South of VicRoads the research is "very clear" that
talking on any communication device to a person not present in the car
will affect driving, probably by affecting concentration - regardless of
whether it's handsfree. However, he said, banning the use of handsfree
devices was "a bit beyond" what policymakers in Australia felt they
could go."

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s303714.htm

Last week I was at a Telstra (Australian partly privatised telco)
discussion of upcoming mobile applications. An interesting application
was using these nextgens phone as mobile mapping agents, similar to that
already used in fixed car systems. But the discussion didn't include
usability aspects, such as who would hold the phone -- obviously it's no
good for a driver alone in a car. However if the application exists,
people will be tempted to use it. There was also no indication about
whether the application would have voice recognition or speech, as is
more common in dedicated in-car systems.

Finally, you will be pleased to know that a Blackberry service will be
unveiled in Australia by Telstra this week, so you will never be far
from these e-mails when you next come to town.

cheers

Nathan


David Farber wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed@reed.com>
> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 06:48:01
> To: farber@cis.upenn.edu, ip <ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com>
> Subject: A Pentagon gift to the terrorists.
> 
> This little paragraph (and the "prohibition" it refers to) indicate that 25
> years of computer security research has had zero impact where it matters.
> 
> At 03:44 AM 5/23/2002 -0400, Dave Farber wrote:
> 
>>Stenbit said the debate is academic and that what matters is how
>>secure a given piece of software is. To that end, the Defense
>>Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not
>>undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of
>>any open-source software that has been tested.
>>
[snip]


-- 

Nathan Cochrane
Deputy IT Editor
:Next:
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.next.theage.com.au



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