Subject: Re: [Curdle] Adoption

From: denis bider <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 18:23:03 +0000

Phillip:

> Since there are about a million people with a Top Secret
> clearance including foreign nationals and anyone with a
> Top Secret clearance can read any of that material unless
> it is further classified, Top Secret isn't very secret at all.

As far as I know, access is on a need-to-know basis. Clearance does not imply automatic access. It's a hurdle that has to be cleared, but there is also need-to-know.

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 13:39:00 -0500

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 1:23 PM, denis bider <[email-masked]> wrote:
> As far as I know, access is on a need-to-know basis. Clearance does not
> imply automatic access. It's a hurdle that has to be cleared, but there is
> also need-to-know.

SCI is the 'need to know' part. It is the compartmentalized
intelligence that is the interesting stuff.

Right now, the US Federal govt. obviously does not have a good
infrastructure for controlling Top Secret material and making it need
to know. Otherwise Snowden would not have had access to the crown
jewels of the NSA and Manning would not have had access to every
SECRET diplomatic cable. There is obviously a gap between aspiration
and achievement.

I think that we could build such a system however. That is what I am
looking to do with the Mathematical Mesh.

At present, the Mesh is focused on the problem of making existing
crypto applications easy to use. Which it does by simplifying the
process of key management. But the architecture is designed with the
use of Matt Blaze's proxy re-encryption (recryption) in mind.