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Wired News *Search:* Text Size: Small Text <#> Normal Text <#> Large Text <#> Larger Text <#> [Home] [Technology] [Culture] [Politics] [Wire Services] [Blogs] [Columns] [Wired Magazine] How to Code a Constitution Breaking News Breaking News from AP and Reuters * Alito parts with conservatives on execution * Lawyer for US priest says to appeal extradition * More cartoons, protests in Mohammad blasphemy row * Raytheon quarter profit rises on defense sales * Insurgent attacks kill four US troops in Iraq * See Also * Scientists: Bush Distorts Science * Lawbreaker in Chief * Furor Grows Over Internet Bugging * Anonymity on a Disc * 'UnGoogleables' Hide From Search Commentary by Jennifer Granick | Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Feb, 01, 2006 As Congress considers reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, we could really use a few good hackers in the debate. Hackers already know a lot about how to build a system that works, whether it's a network or a government. That's because the principles our legal system employs to protect life and liberty are very similar to the principles that computer scientists use to design secure systems. We need hackers right now because -- whether they know it or not -- they understand democracy. Circuit Court columnist Jennifer Granick *Circuit Court* Take a close look at our nation's current surveillance laws and you'll see some of the bedrock legal principles of democracy at work. These include the separation of powers, checks and balances, due process, burden of proof, transparency and oversight, limited discretion and the rule of law. Both the Wiretap Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, enlist these principles to make sure that when the government listens in on our conversations, it does so in accordance with the values of a free society. You can compare these legal concepts to the eight principles for designing secure systems set forth in an article by Jerome Saltzer and Michael Schroeder and discussed in Computer Security: Art and Science by Matt Bishop, where I ran across them. These principles are: * *Separation of privilege:* The protection mechanism should grant access based on more than one piece of information. * *Least privilege:* The protection mechanism should force every process to operate with the minimum privileges needed to perform its task. * *Open design:* The protection mechanism should not depend on attackers being ignorant of its design to succeed. It may, however, be based on the attacker's ignorance of specific information such as passwords or cipher keys. * *Fail-safe defaults:* The protection mechanism should deny access by default, and grant access only when explicit permission exists. * *Complete mediation:* The protection mechanism should check every access to every object. * *Economy of mechanism:* The protection mechanism should have a simple and small design. * *Least common mechanism:* The protection mechanism should be shared as little as possible among users. * *Psychological acceptability:* The protection mechanism should be easy to use (at least as easy as not using it). Separation of privilege is like the separation of powers coded into the Constitution. A computer system requires a user name and password; a surveillance warrant requires executive and judicial examination. Least privilege resembles the Constitution's enumerated powers or the surveillance statutes' general prohibition on eavesdropping. The law broadly prohibits intercepting communications, then specifically defines limited exceptions to that rule, including probable cause. Just as you don't need root to do word processing, you don't need to listen in on everyone's conversations to fight crime. Open design is analogous to transparency and oversight: If electronic surveillance is carried out as part of a criminal probe, at some point the target of the investigation -- and all the people he spoke with who were eavesdropped upon -- must be told about it. More on point, Congress and the public know the legal process, and there are strict reporting requirements, even if the specific information about the wiretap applications is kept from view. If, as the Bush administration has recently asserted, our homeland security hinged on nobody knowing that the government was conducting warrantless wiretaps, then the program’s benefit was illusory to begin with. As the old hacker adage puts it, security through obscurity is no security at all. We "fail-safe" by denying the government access to our private communications by default, and granting it in an emergency. In a bigger sense, we fail-safe by outlawing antisocial behavior, even though we understand that there may be extenuating circumstances that we consider on a case-by-case basis. That's why we need a law against torture, regardless of hypothetical ticking-bomb situations in which some might justify the practice. The complete-mediation and least-common-mechanism principals explain why warrants must specifically define the person to be monitored, and why there are limits on how collected information can be used. If you're suspected of a crime, it's not a license for the government to rummage through all of your belongings or listen to all your phone calls in a fishing expedition for any wrongdoing whatsoever. Economy of mechanism does not work in my analogy, because getting democratic government right is complex -- certainly, running a democracy is more difficult in some ways than running a dictatorship. Psychological acceptability, though, plays a key role. The government's legitimacy comes from its democratic principles, and ultimately it derives its power from the people it serves. Hackers understand the protocols for building secure, functional systems. The law is just another protocol, with similar properties. It is not something that politicians or lawyers are necessarily any better at than the average citizen, especially if she's a hacker. - - - /Jennifer Granick is executive director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society , and teaches the Cyberlaw Clinic ./ [Print story] <1,70114-0.html>[E-mail story] * Page 1* of 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ads by Google Free Compliance Guide The Facts On Patriot Act Section 326 Compliance: Free Download www.innovativesystems.com GIFTS Software Inc Anti-Money Laundering & OFAC Solutions - Free online demo www.giftssoft.com USA Patriot Act Solution Complete tracking and reporting for Patriot Act Section 326. 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