I recently submitted comments to the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies along with 46 other leading technologists. The mission of this Review Group is to assess whether technological advances, specifically technical data collection capabilities, have undermined the public trust. (Spoiler alert: they have.)
Our comments focused on the need for a technical expert to advise the panel on how online systems work and what the implications are of tapping into them. We also expressed our concern that the NSA’s efforts to subvert encryption and to plant backdoors undermine security for everyone online. Most importantly, our comments include a number of technical questions that we feel this panel should focus on and, when possible, ask that the intelligence community provide answers. You can read the full comments here.
The panel’s work was affected by last week’s government shutdown. It’s not clear how this delay will impact their timeline for a final report, if at all, but I don’t expect to hear answers to our questions soon.
Ashkan Soltani 