The open source idea was hardly original to me. Others had talked about it for years, most notably Robert Steele, the ex-CIA agent, who observed that publicly available material was often far more useful than the clandestinely gathered variety. I didn’t agree with much of what Steele said—I wanted more isolation between journalists and government than he might have liked. But his basic point was sound. Information was most reliable when it was in the open and could be dissected, rather than hiding it behind a “secret” stamp. The spread of network technology could only strengthen this premise.
Yet another approach could be the selective use of agents, in new-style roles, taking advantage of high technology. Here again I had mixed feelings. But in an era when countries such as Iraq were trying to develop nuclear weapons, this option should be kept alive.
What about terrorists? As with child-molesting rings and drug cartels, Clipper just would not do any good. Secret groups would be the last in the world to use the chip. Far better for intelligence agencies to work on more powerful computers and truly effective software for cracking codes. Breakthroughs might not come immediately, but would sooner or later, and the civilian sector might ultimately benefit when the technology finally did reach the world at large. Advanced supercomputers, for example, could be used for weather forecasting, or for graphics and design—the same wizardry that had helped make possible the Visible Human Project described in the last chapter.
Meanwhile an open-source approach could often do the job. The accused terrorists in Japan hadn’t exactly stayed hidden from the world before the subway incidents. Shoko Asahara, their leader, had delivered sermon after sermon with allusions to poisonous gas; in the city of Matsumoto where he had been at odds with authorities over some land, 7 people had died and 200 had suffered injuries when a cloud of sarin wafted in the area. Small wonder that the Japanese government had caught up with the sect so soon after the Tokyo tragedy. Newspaper databases would have told plenty, beyond any information that happened to be in the government’s own records.
Legally authorized bugs might be yet another solution, and so, at times, might be informers wired to make the best case. In an era of near-invisible electronics, this approach would be increasingly practical.
What’s more, if Bill Clinton and Al Gore really cared about protecting citizens in a high-tech age, they would worry less about snooping on citizens and more about hardening up points of vulnerability. Steele noted how easily criminals could “maliciously interfere with the computers that control the power system. It is relatively easy to destroy computer capabilities—this takes much less skill than to ‘crack’ them and divert computing resources.” Also, terrorists could wreak havoc with computers that controlled telephone systems in such areas as communications for government and banking.
He also warned of interference with the computers of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. “Trillions in digital data” could vanish into the ether. “A massive global economic panic” would ensue. Preventative measures wouldn’t be cheap, but if the American government did care about security, it would prepare realistically for the threats of the information era rather than doing an inept Big Brother act.
To rig up a whole nation for wire taps would be both a waste and a disgrace. I pondered the ironies. Here the NSA and similar agencies were supposed to protect normality—to guard families against dopesters, sex perverts, terrorists, and the rest—and yet Phil Zimmermann the husband and father might go to jail. “I think it’s kind of unreal to him,” Zimmermann said when I asked how his son felt about this. “I tell him that I have some talented lawyers working for me, and that we’re doing the best we can.” And Zimmermann’s wife? “She thinks that they can’t possibly indict me, because that would be wrong—that somehow they’ll realize that and just back out. Of course by the time your book is printed, we’ll know one way or the other whether she was right.”
A Few Words about Library Books,
Democracy, and Socks the Cybercat