Security Engineering, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 10Boundaries

They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

– TS ELIOT

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

– SCOTT MCNEALY

10.1 Introduction

When we restrict information flows to protect privacy or confidentiality, a policy goal is usually not to prevent information flowing ‘down’ a hierarchy but to prevent it flowing ‘across’ between smaller groups.

1. If you give the million US Federal employees and contractors with a Top Secret clearance access to too much Top Secret data, then you get a whistleblower like Ed Snowden if you're lucky, or a traitor like Aldrich Ames if you're not.
2. As mobile phones spread round the world, they've made wildlife crime easier. Game rangers and others who fight poaching face organised crime, violence and insider threats at all levels, but unlike in national intelligence there's no central authority to manage clearances and counterintelligence.
3. If you let too many people in a health service see patient records, you get scandals where staff look up data on celebrities. And the existence of big central systems can lead to big scandals, such as where a billion English medical records going back a decade were sold to multiple drug companies.
4. Similar issues arise in social care and in education. There are frequent calls for data sharing, yet attempts to do it in practice cause all sorts of problems.
5. If you let everyone in a bank or an accountancy ...