Outside Innovation

How Should the Disclosures about NSA Snooping Change Things?

I can’t ignore Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelation: The US government is snooping much more than our US Constitution allows on the private communications of its citizens, residents, and even lawmakers. Not to mention the rampant electronic eavesdropping being carried out by our spies hacking Internet and phone systems in most other countries. This is not a good time to be an American in the world. It’s embarrassing to be living in a “democratic” country that has turned fascist since 9/11.

It’s not my practice to speak out on politics to my clients. But I can’t ignore the fact that my most loyal customers have been discussing these events quite volubly online since the news broke. Their consternation isn’t so much political as it is technical: it appears that the NSA’s snooping has actually compromised ALL of the certificate-authority based security provisions that our entire global economy depends upon!

There are two main consequences from these revelations that I foresee. But I also fear that PR spin, human nature (bury our heads in the sand), and apathy (I have other things to worry about; I don’t have time to worry about whether I’m being spied upon) will, once again, prevail.

Identity and Digital Asset Management

By Peter Horne

My recent post about online identity, “How to Think about Privacy and Managing Your Online Identity” discussed the fact that we don’t own our identities, as they are simply identifiers inside processes that we don’t control. My proposition was that because we can’t control the processes that control our identities, we only have limited scope for control. Basically, we can choose what processes we enter, and, once in them, we can choose what we do; but, other than that, we have no control. So we just have to be judicious about what we choose to reveal about ourselves.

We Need an Alternative Concept to "Identity"
But is that all that we can do? I think the answer is in two parts. The first part is that, at this point in time, that is all we are able to do, and the second part is that we are accepting that this is the way the online world works. But what if we change the way we think about identity - will we change what we accept? If we change what we accept, will the way we have to operate online change with it?

The problem with "identity" is that it is ethereal, and we cannot measure or manage it. We need to define identity in a way that is concrete, measurable, and something that has intrinsic value that is worth defending.