The president made a morally bankrupt decision in banning refugees

Someone asked me on Facebook what my problem was with the “Temporary Ban” that President Trump imposed. I thought I would go into some detail.

What Has Happened?

First, how does the President have this authority in the first place? Federal law states that he may suspend travel of entire classes of people that he may state and for a period of time such as he may determine. Here’s what 8 USC § 1182(f) states:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

The courts will determine if this is sufficient power, and President Trump’s order does quote other laws. The key point is that Congress envisioned the need for the president to act quickly.

The meat of the order that has caused all the chaos is as follows:

I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

For clarity, C-2 and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas are used by diplomats and their families (you can find all the visa categories here). In other words, excluding those visas, in the general case, all other non-citizens who hold passports from the seven countries in question are barred from entering the United States, whether they are visitors or resident aliens.

There are a few exceptions:

(g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.

This means that the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security can update the rules. There is no Secretary of State at the moment. This leaves the Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. This apparently happened over the weekend, according to some reports.

The text of the order then has several references to people fleeing religious persecution, such as the following:

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.

The majority religion of each of the countries listed in the ban is Islam. What this rule states is that if you are a woman persecuted for wearing not wearing a head scarf and happen to be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist, you get priority. If you are Muslim you are out of luck.

I have, then, three objections to the presidential order.

1. Callous Disregard for Human Life

The way it was implemented stranded many people thousands of miles away from their homes and loved ones, and in some cases leaving some who were visiting a foreign country in a position where they would be forcibly returned to a “home” country that would put their lives at risk. How might this happen? Imagine a man who was born in one of the countries “of concern” (say, Iran) but departed as a political refugee to England. Then he moved to the United States, because he married an American woman. His home, his wife, and perhaps children are in the United States. If he went back to England, or worse, to some other country, last week to visit a sick friend or relative, he would not have permission to return to the United States, and he wouldn’t have permission to remain in the UK. That means that he would be at risk of being sent back to Iran. The original order did not take people like this man into account. Even to this moment, if he does not yet have a green card (that takes a year or two), he would not be able to get back home. Even at relatively low probabilities of this happening with any one individual, The Law of Large Numbers means that a case like this has almost assuredly happened. Perhaps many.

2. Made Up Threat

President Trump wasn’t responding to a real threat. The Wall Street Journal (no liberal bastion) analyzed this in depth and found that of “180 people charged with jihadist terrorism-related crimes or who died before being charged, 11 were identified as being from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia”. Moreover, in the past 24 hours, it’s become clear that the president acted without proper input from his Secretary of Homeland Security. And so, this was, as my friend and columnist Bruce Schneier coined the term years ago, Security Theater.

A decision that has no upside tradeoff that harms others is, by definition, morally bankrupt. I conclude that Trump is therefore morally bankrupt.

3. Religious Bigotry

I wrote at the top that I had three objections. The third objection is that the ban, as written, has the tinge of bigotry, because one religion in particular is disfavored – Islam.

Conclusions

There may be times when we need to suspend travel to the United States in a hurry. Imagine what would happen if there were a rampant and dangerous pandemic. The president needs to have the authority to protect the country in those sorts of circumstances. We need to be able to trust that the president will use his authority in a moral and responsible way. He didn’t do that here. Far from it. In this case he acted in callous disregard for human life. The president abused his authority.

On criticizing President Trump

I’ve have been debating with friends about how best to deal with the new president and his administration. Some say, “Give him a chance,” while others think he’s already gone too far. A former president made the point far better than I could have, and so I’m simply going to quote him:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Teddy Roosevelt, in a letter to the Kansas City Star, 18 May 1918

Should Uber require a permit for testing?

The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting on the ongoing battle between Uber and state and local governments. This time it’s their self-driving car. Uber announced last week that they would not bother to seek a permit to test their car, claiming that the law did not require one. The conflict took on a new dimension last week when one of Uber’s test vehicles ran a red light.

Is Uber right in not wanting to seek a permit? Both production and operation of vehicles in the nearly all markets are highly regulated. That’s because auto accidents are a leading cause of death in the United States and elsewhere. The good news is that number is falling. In part that’s due to regulation, and in part it’s due to civil liability laws. I’m confident that Uber doesn’t want to hurt people, and that their interest is undoubtedly to put out a safe service so that their reputation doesn’t suffer and their business thrives. But the rush to market is sometimes too alluring. With the pace of technology being what it is, Uber and others would be in a position to flood the streets with unsafe vehicles, possibly well beyond their ability to pay out damages. That’s when regulations are required.

There are a few hidden points in all of this:

As governments consider what to do about regulating the Internet of Things, they should recognize that much of the Internet of Things is already regulated. California did the right thing by incrementally extending the California Vehicle Code to cover self-driving vehicles, rather than come up with sweeping new regulations. Regulations already exist for many other industries, including trains, planes, automobiles, healthcare, electrical plants.
We do not yet have a full understanding of the risks involved with self-driving cars. There are probably many parts of the vehicle code that require revision. By taking the incremental approach, we’ve learned, for instance, that there are places where the vehicle code might need a freshening up. For instance, self-driving cars seem to be following the law, and yet causing problems for some bicyclists.
IoT regulation is today based on traditionally regulated markets. This doesn’t take into account the full nature of the Internet, and what externalities people are exposed to as new products rapidly hit the markets. This means, to me, that we will likely need some form of regulation over time. There is not yet a regulation that would have prevented the Mirai attack. Rather than fight all regulation as Uber does, it may be better to articulate the right principles to apply. One of those is that there has to be a best practice. In the case of automobiles, the usual test for the roads is this is whether the feature will make things more or less safe than the status quo. California’s approach is to let developers experiment under limited conditions in order to determine an answer.

None of this gets to my favorite part, which is whether Uber’s service can be hacked to cause chaos on the roads. Should that be tested in advance? And if so how? What are the best practices Uber should be following in this context? Some exist.

Time to end the war on the network

When Edward Snowden disclosed the NSA’s activities, many people came to realize that network systems can be misused, even though this was always the case. People just realized what was possible. What happened next was a concerted effort to protect protect data from what has become known as “pervasive surveillance”. This included development of a new version of HTTP that is always encrypted and an easy way to get certificates.

However, when end nodes hide everything from the network, not only can the network not be used by the bad guys, but it can no longer be used by the good guys to either authorize appropriate communications or identify attacks. A example is spam. Your mail server sits in front of you and can reject messages when they contain malware or are just garbage. It does that by examining both the source of the message and the message itself. Similarly, anyone who has read my writing about Things knows that the network needs just a little bit of information from the device in order to stop unwanted communications.

I have written an Internet Draft that begins to establish a framework for when and how information should be shared, with the idea being that information should be carefully shared with a purpose, understanding that there are risks involved in doing so. The attacks on Twitter and on krebsonsecurity.com are preventable, but it requires us to recognize that end nodes are not infallible, and they never will be. Neither, by the way, are network devices. So long as all of these systems are designed and built by humans, that will be the case. Each can help each other in good measure to protect the system as a whole.

Photo of Edward Swowden By Laura Poitras / Praxis Films, CC BY 3.0

Learning from the Dyn attack: What are the right questions to ask?

The attack on DNS provider DYN’s infrastructure that took down a number of web sites is now old news. While not all the facts are public, the press reports that once again, IoT devices played a significant role. Whether that it is true or not, it is a foregone conclusion that until we address security of these devices, such attacks will recur. We all get at least two swings at this problem: we can address the attacks from Things as they happen and we can work to keep Things secure in the first place.

What systems do we need to look at?

End nodes (Cameras, DVRs, Refrigerators, etc);
Home and edge firewall systems;
Provider network security systems;
Provider peering edge routers; and
Infrastructure service providers (like DYN)

In addition, researchers, educators, consumers and governments all have a role to play.

Roles of IoT

What do the providers of each of those systems need to do?

What follows is a start at the answer to that question.

Endpoints

It’s easy to pin all the blame on the endpoint developers, but doing so won’t buy so much as a cup of coffee. Still, thing developers need to do a few things:

Use secure design and implementation practices, such as not hardcoding passwords or leaving extra services enabled;
Have a means to securely update their systems when a vulnerability is discovered;
Provide network enforcement systems Manufacturer Usage Descriptions so that the networks can enforce policies around how a device was designed to operate.

Home and edge firewall systems

There are some attacks that only the network can stop, and there are some attacks that the network can impede. Authenticating and authorizing devices is critical. Also, edge systems should be quite leery of devices that simply self-assert what sort of protection they require, because a hacked device can make such self-assertions just as easily as a healthy device. Hacked devices have recently been taking advantage of a gaming mechanism in many home routers known as Universal Plug and Play (uPnP) which permits precisely the sorts of self-assertions should be avoided.

Provider network security systems

Providers need to be aware of what is going on in their network. Defense in depth demands that they observe their own networks in search of malicious behavior, and provide appropriate mitigations. Although there are some good tools out there from companies like Cisco such as Netflow and OpenDNS, this is still a pretty tall order. Just examining traffic can be capital-intensive, but then understanding what is actually going on often requires experts, and that can get expensive.

Provider peering edge routers

The routing system of the Internet can be hijacked. It’s important that service providers take steps to prevent that from happening. A number of standards have been developed, but service providers have been slow to implement for one reason or another. It helps to understand the source of attacks. Implementing filtering mechanisms makes it possible for service providers to establish accountability for the sources of attack traffic.

Infrastructure providers

Infrastructure upon which other Internet systems rely needs to be robust in the face of attack. DYN knows this. The attack succeeded anyway. Today, I have little advice other than to understand each attack and do what one can to mitigate it the next time.

Consumers

History has shown that people in their homes cannot be made to do much to protect themselves in a timely manner. Is it reasonable, for instance, to insist that a consumer to spend money to replace an old system that is known to have vulnerabilities? The answer may be that it depends just how old that system really is. And this leads to our last category…

Governments

The U.S. Capitol Governments are already involved in cybersecurity. The question really is how involved with they get with IoT security. If the people who need to do things aren’t doing them, either we have the wrong incentive model and need to find the right one, or it is likely that governments will get heavily involved. It’s important that not happen until the technical community has some understanding as to the answers of these questions, and that may take some time.

And so we have our work cut out for us. It’s brow furrowing time. As I wrote above, this was just a start, and it’s my start at that. What other questions need answering, and what are the answers?

Your turn.

Photo credits:
Capitol by Deror Avi – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Router by Weihao.chiu from zh, CC BY-SA 3.0
DVR by Kabel Deutschland, CC BY 3.0
Router by Cisco systems – CC BY-SA 1.0