Originally published February 23 2006
Legal expert says computer security could teach lawmakers some new tricks
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Jennifer Granick, executive director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, argues that the government should incorporate the principles of computer security into its legislative efforts.
As Congress considers reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, we could really use a few good hackers in the debate.
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.
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.
* Least privilege: The protection mechanism should force every process to operate with the minimum privileges needed to perform its task.
* Psychological acceptability: The protection mechanism should be easy to use (at least as easy as not using it).
A computer system requires a user name and password; a surveillance warrant requires executive and judicial examination.
We "fail-safe" by denying the government access to our private communications by default, and granting it in an emergency.
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.
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