Ride the Lightning

Will the Real President Obama Please Stand Up?

February 18, 2015

I have no idea what President Obama really stands for on privacy issues these days.

Last week, as CNET reported, the President signed an executive order mandating the creation of specialized organizations that will allow the government and companies across the tech, finance, energy and health care industries to share information about threats as they occur.

Known as "information sharing and analysis organizations," or ISAOs, these new entities can be not-for-profit community organizations, membership groups or single companies. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security would then be authorized to approve classified information-sharing arrangements and to ensure that ISAOs can access classified threat information. The order would also fund the creation of a nonprofit organization to develop a set of voluntary standards for ISAOs. He shared his vision at a White House Summit held at Stanford University.

So here we are sitting around the campfire toasting marshmallows.

Except- not everyone. It appears to me that the government is meeting considerable resistance in its attempt to foster information-sharing. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt were all invited to the Stanford event, but didn't attend. Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke, but talking about people's rights to privacy and security.

During the same week, in a story from The Mac Observer (hat tip to Dave Ries), we have the President officially coming out in support of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's push for backdoor government access to private encrypted data, and even going so far as to suggest U.S. companies that offer ways to decrypt user data are patriots. The original American patriots must be rolling in their graves.

Forcing companies to build a way into their encrypted services to allow government access would give law enforcement agencies access to our private communications. It would also give criminals the same access. Back doors are vulnerabilities. And who in the heck would be nutty enough to buy American products which have built-in backdoor access for the U.S. government?

In the U.K., encrypted services that don't offer backdoors into data would be outlawed under the current proposal. Don't think that wouldn't come across the pond if it succeeds in the U.K.

I guess, now that I think about it, the real President Obama has already stood up.

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