The past week a group off skilled people under the lead off Professor Olav Lysne https://www.simula.no/people/olavly made public their work on-behalf of the Ministry of Defence https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/fd/id380/ on how a setup for collecting digital data from International fiber connectivity can look like. The report can be found on this (sorry Norwegian only) https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/departementene/fd/dokumenter/lysne-ii-utvalgets-rapport-2016.pdf link.
The report covers many areas that to be honest brings about some questions that should give some ground for a wide debate, and that has been one of the key elements from the group of people that have written the report.
Looking at the debate on several web pages lately I see that most posters off comments from my view are very negative to the whole idea of collecting data of any sort. The ones that know me know that I am really negative to the tracking of any sort of activity on the Internet, but looking at the traffic of the World it makes me wonder if there might be other sides to consider here.
Looking at the report and some suggestions that come forward on how the technical setup might look like I am sure something can be doe. In my world the tech side is the minor challenge ;-).
There are some discussions on data breach and that “nothing” is 100% secure. I can agree to this conclusion on anything that is connected but there are ways to minimize the risks of tech breaches. The real challenge here is always the human factor that in my world always is the lack off rational part. What I mean with this is that there will always be an “itch” to make changes to an original setup.
What the report is covering is the need for the Norwegian Army (Intelligence) to have insight into digital traffic also on physical fiber links inn – and out of Norway. I am not entering the why, but looking at it from an open mind I guess they already have the access to other forms of digital signaling and into Norway most traffic is monitored anyways from some countries close to us and with the physical fibers crossing their territory.
So why the fuzz and big discussion? In my world it seems there is a mix up off whom will access the collected data and the lack off trust in the ones that ask for the setup. Looking at history I guess one can document this lack of trust.
So how can one maybe help reach a more to the topic debate, and maybe via simple technical architecture control several sides of what makes this difficult?
The report states parts of a solution involving existing rutines from crime investigations and not many if any have questions to this existing setup. So what is new here?
Secrecy, army, collecting, metadata, politicians, “partnerships”, exchange of information, etc. as some elements that have not been covered. How hard can it be to track the usage of the data? I for one have more than one idea of how to track the usage. One other element I have seen is the lack of trust in the politicians (what´s new??) and the lack of knowhow among the control functions for the Intelligence like services. I am sure this last part can be handled if there are changes made to the qualifications of the members. Former politicians are seldom close to the right qualifications…
So again I think we should have a closer look at the setup and maybe not hammer it all with the slogan I have seen around, the members have no idea of what they are talking about and that encryption will make it all a waste of time..
regards
bj