Re: Re[3]: national security

[jfcm <info at utel.net>]

At 00:49 29/11/03, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> OK.. change "HQ computer" to "www.ANYTHINGBIG.com", and change "enemy" to
> "random hacker in another country".  There's boxes that *have* to be visible
> to the world because they provide service and connectivity to the outside
> world - and you can't even hand-wave "put them in a DMZ" because then you
> still need that address mask to tell if the other end of the connection is
> coming from outside, another DMZ machine, or an internal machine.

Yes. but more than that. We talk of the internet itself. The US strategy 
may amount to an US DMZ or a chain of DMZ. I do not think there are any 
objection to that. Except that it underlines that we are not in an open 
worldwide network anymore, or at least not at the same layer.

This has a first direct implication which is the impossibility to accept 
anything unique and common to systems which wants to be unique by 
themselves. One has to find other solutions. No master / slave, not peer to 
peer.

One good example is the DNS. TTLD Managers are authoritative (like running 
their own DMZ). Yet ICANN wants to be authoritative (hence the problems it 
faces). Question: is there a way to make authoritative indepedent systems 
to share into an unique common system?

This leads to an anlyze of the authority and shows that the American 
language misses the word (hence the commonly shared images and 
understanding, capacity to discuss it) we found in Europe as "conceration" 
(French/Eurospeak). This means that authority is not delegated (as DNS 
says), nor shared (as in a democracy) but retained by each participant 
(making consensus the only decision process - as at the IETF, ITU, do ). 
One may name this polycracy. Currently the European problem in accepting 10 
new countries is to regress from polycratic decision process to democratic 
votes. This creates sngle point of failures: the group or the unique 
country (on 25) making the majority and rises the difficulty (polycratic 
consensus had solved): the quality of the voter. Some times Luxembourg has 
not the same weight than Germany or France.

This is the same with networks. Most of the propositions I hear here are 
not acceptable on the long range because they are ideas to develop 
something, not to better serve a group. Engineers see a network as 
connected machines. Developpers as communicating applications. Users see 
them as groups of people.

When you think about reducing risks to the people (not only haked machined 
or DoSed network),  you must thnk global (in the Engilsh/French 
meaning:  i.e. all the parts of the concerned whole - not as a 
single/simpliistic whole - as "put the militaries behind a DMZ"). So you 
must look as the point of failure of each element (hardware, software and 
brainware) and then of the  system.

To take your example or mine. The hacker is going to intrude the computer. 
The foreigners are going to intrude the networks. All this is going to make 
the nation (its computers through its networks) unstablized. If you take 
the barycenter of all the single points of failure, you will discover that 
in most of the cases:

- in Peace time it is the Parliament. Because major decisions are taken 
there. Example the anti spam law, right now, in the USA which is a major 
threat on many countries economomy in legalizing bandwith consuming 
mailing. And you use a Police to protect the Parliament.This is not the 
case we consider.

- in time of crisis, it is one single person (too fast to ask for a law). 
And the real decision maker is the person next to him. This is why military 
HQs are potentially everywhere. They are where a decision is required, in 
front of a weakness, at a critical time. Army is the tool to land the 
decision make at the single point of failure to reduce it.

jfc