05/15/07 – Richard Forno – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
Alright, my friends, welcome back to Antiwar Radio on Radio Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, and introducing our next guest, Richard Forno.
He's an information security specialist and runs the website Infowarrior.org.
Welcome to the show, Richard.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, how are you?
I'm well, thanks for having me.
Well, I'm very glad to have you on.
I read this very interesting article that you wrote for CNET, I think it was early last week.
National ID card, a disaster in the making, that you co-wrote with Bruce Shiner.
Correct, yep.
And this is about the real ID.
Now, it's interesting that in the Republican debate, Ron Paul came out against the national ID card that some of the other Republican candidates were promoting.
And he said he was against having a national ID card, and they all tried to backpedal, but they were referring to some newfangled anti-immigration card.
This real ID act is already a done deal, isn't it?
Well, real ID is a done deal on paper.
Since the Democrats came into office in January, there's been some hearings and concern over this idea because, as you said, it is a national ID card that the Republicans, and some Democrats, but mostly the GOP, is trying to use immigration as another way to sell it to Congress and the American people.
I see.
So it's basically just the same program and a different wrapping.
I think so, yes.
And now for young people listening, this is a pretty young audience here on Radio Chaos.
You may not know, but I guess I'm an old man at 30, and back in the 1980s, there was this idea that the definition of living in slavery was having to show your papers everywhere you went.
People would say that in a German accent, papers please, this means that you're a slave, that you live in totalitarianism.
And it was the idea that Americans would have a national internal passport of any kind was the kind of thing that I believe that when I was a kid would have caused a revolution.
Quite possibly, yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't call it slavery, but I would definitely say that leads to a police state or a controlling state at the very minimum.
Definitely not an American concept.
Yeah, I guess I'm kind of thinking of it in the childlike terms that I thought of it then was black and white footage of some Gestapo thug saying, show me your papers before you get on the train.
Well, that's certainly a possibility.
My concern, as I mentioned in the article, is that the way that the government has mandated Real ID be implemented creates a lot more problems than it cures.
First off, they're not calling it a national ID card because they're letting the states to design and develop and maintain their individual databases like they do now for driver's licenses.
Some states have pushed back and said we refuse to issue Real ID because we value our citizens' privacy.
Now, how many states is that?
I'm aware of, I think, three or four that have come out publicly and passed resolutions against Real ID, and I believe there's another dozen or maybe two dozen that have bills in their legislatures.
But the states will come out and say, we respect our citizens' privacy.
Well, let's say you live in a state like Maine who has said we're not going to issue Real ID.
You have a state driver's license issued by the government of Maine.
Now you go to try to enter a federal building in Washington, D.C., or a federal building in Maine, for that matter.
You will not be able to enter the building because your ID does not conform to the Real ID standards, which means you might have to undergo additional secondary screening like you do at airports.
You might get looked at a little differently because you're different.
Your ID is not officially sanctioned by the federal government.
It creates a different class of citizen, one that's more likely to be suspect, in my view.
And this is how the national government always does it with highway funds or anything else, right?
Well, it's not a federal law that mandates the states absolutely have to do this.
You don't get any money, you don't get any cooperation, you don't get any funds, you don't get access to a federal building, etc.
Right.
It's forced choice.
Right.
And that's actually a real problem.
I mean, the situation you described where people have state legislatures that are trying to stick up for their privacy, maybe a little bit of the old forms of the way our government is supposed to work in this country.
And yet if they do that, they're basically condemning their citizens to not being able to fully participate in the system.
Exactly.
And that's the side effect, or the beauty of the way this program was rolled out, is that the idea will be if the state does that and the citizens encounter resistance, trying to use an ID that's not Real ID compliant, they'll be inconvenienced, they'll complain to their government, and the government will come on board.
So it's a consequence that can turn around to actually get Real ID further implemented.
It's a vicious circle.
And now, what are the requirements for these state IDs to live up to the Real ID Act?
I have the idea that Texas has been qualified since 1995 or so.
We have the magnetic strip on the back, we have to give our thumbprints, we have a digital picture taken, and a digital signature so it's all database ready.
And it's been like this for, what, 12 years now, I think, here.
A lot of states have similar type of requirements.
I don't have a list of them, but Texas is one of several.
My understanding, and again, the DHS document espousing, describing how Real ID will be implemented, discusses these in a lot more detail.
At a minimum, it's got to have machine-readable card strips, tamper-proof, forge-proof, biometrics of some sort, thumbprints, something that is more secure than they have at present.
So, I mean, they're raising the bar on the actual ID as far as what goes into it.
And although you point out in your article that all you need to get the federal ID, obviously besides giving up your thumbprint and that kind of thing, is a state ID that says that that's you, and it's still just as easy as it's always been to fake a state ID.
Well, right.
I mean, one of the key things that Bruce and I discussed in earlier versions of the article was the fact that the vulnerability exists where you get a state ID that you could create or craft or forge or what have you that proves your identity.
And the government, the DHS, has essentially said it's too hard for us at the federal level to establish guidelines for proving your residence.
So we're going to leave it up to the states to develop their own guidelines as to what will constitute residency, improve someone's residency.
So, for example, in Texas, you might be able to provide a bank statement and a current utility bill.
While in Virginia, it might be a birth certificate and school transcripts or something else.
So there's no standard at that level, so what might work in one state may not work in another state.
And so if you can get a fake ID on the state level, you can use that to get a fake national ID?
Yeah.
Just as simple as that.
That's a possibility.
Well, wonderful.
That's going to protect my privacy, right, by just giving me one more number to have stolen from me?
What RealID does, in my view, and a lot of folks' views, is it's a knee-jerk reaction to a vulnerability from September 11th.
The end result, like many politically sponsored initiatives, is to create the appearance that we, the government, are doing something to fix the problem, and forget that it may cause additional problems or may not truly be as effective in doing what we say it's going to do.
And RealID is a perfect example of, we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it.
Right, like that English sitcom.
Yes, Prime Minister.
Ah, I like you.
That's actually one of my favorite shows.
That's funny.
Well, I've actually never seen it, but my boss, Eric Garris, at AntiWar.com says that all the time.
Something must be done.
This is something.
We must do it.
I highly encourage you and your listeners to check out the box.
It's just as relevant today in the States as it was 20 years ago in the UK.
Yeah, well, it sounds like a lot of fun, and it does sound like, basically, the thought process that goes into all these things, whether it's nationalizing the airport security, or the RealID Act, or any of the rest of this stuff.
Right, I mean, the big vulnerability that caused September 11th was the vulnerability of cockpit doors.
If the cockpit doors had been reinforced and properly secured, even if you had fake IDs and whatever, and terrorists could board a plane, they couldn't commandeer the aircraft.
So, because that one vulnerability launched this entire cabinet department and all these other changes that may or may not provide any additional real security.
Sure, and really, even if they had left the cockpit doors alone, now that Americans understood that a hijack meant a deliberate crash rather than a short trip to Cuba, you could have left the doors alone, and every American on any hijacked plane would have fought back just like the guys on Flight 93.
Exactly.
What it really comes down to, and I've been roasted alive publicly when I say this, but we cannot live in a totally safe world, or a totally safe society.
How dare you say that?
That's horrible.
Exactly.
I, as a security person, I understand the nature of risk, and I'm willing to accept a certain level of risk to offset convenience of living or traveling or doing something else.
Unfortunately, that kind of runs contrary to what we see in Washington and the folks who just rattle off talking points.
If you look at security and the risks facing this country from a holistic and objective perspective, you kind of scratch your head and go, wait a minute, where's this happy balance?
And are we overcompensating for something?
Yeah, and you know, I don't even like that dichotomy at all, liberty on one side and security on the other.
I don't think that's right, because it seems to me like the freer you are, the safer you are, because the person being made safe is the person responsible for providing that safety and has the most incentive to provide that safety.
Indeed, indeed.
And especially in a country like ours, where we have always traditionally been a beacon of, you know, visiting and friendship and a relatively open society with laws and regulations and rules, a lot of these changes, such as real ID and waiting in line three hours at the airport, run contrary to the American dream and the American way of life.
And are we willing to sacrifice what makes America America in an effort to protect America?
In which case, are we destroying ourselves to save ourselves?
And that's a question that I really have not seen answered or debated too much publicly.
Yeah, I mean, the question is, what was it that we had right in the first place that made this country worth preserving?
And I would say, well, try to take an extreme example.
Free speech in the sense of people being able to get on the Internet and figure out holes in the security at a nuclear power plant.
In my mind, that's a wonderful thing, because that's the only way anybody's ever going to get security at a power plant right.
If it's a secret, then they'll be able to get away with, you know, more lax security.
Right.
And it's funny you mentioned security and power plants.
One of the early security provisions after 9-11 was enacting executive orders and rules protecting companies from disclosing or having to acknowledge problems that were reported or discovered in their plants that may not be security related.
So some of these rules were done under the guise of security and protecting the homeland.
But in reality, they benefit to don't have to disclose certain things to the government, or rather the government is obligated to protect that information.
I want to get kind of back to the point I was making earlier about if this was 1982 or something, they tried to give us all a national ID card, people might have grabbed their rifles over something like this.
And this is like Red Dawn or something.
Yeah, it is.
It's a fundamental shift, I think, in the core of American culture.
But looking back, and I'm older than you, if you're 30 and feeling old, I'm 34 and I must be antiquated.
But my sense is that the American public has become much more passive, politically passive, socially passive, culturally passive.
And as a result, there's not a lot of interest in really what is the core fabric of this country.
As long as I can live my life and don't bother me, hey, I'm happy.
And I think that's a problem.
That's what allows these sort of rules and requirements and regulations to get pushed out or at least snuck in.
And now, let me try to play Cheney's advocate here a little bit if I can.
In your most open-minded sense, is there a way, do you think, that the real ID card actually could help prevent terrorism?
Honestly, I don't think so.
Because if a terrorist, if somebody bad wants to do something, if somebody's hell-bent on doing something dangerous or evil or terrible, they're going to do it whether or not they have a real ID card.
So it's like back a few years ago when there was a big announcement that the airlines no longer would ask you the four questions when you checked in.
Are these your bags?
Are you holding anything for somebody?
And people realized after 10 or 15 years of being forced to ask these questions, wait a minute, a bad guy who is going to kill somebody, he's not going to worry about lying to a ticket agent.
No.
So if I'm a terrorist and I want to blow up a power plant, whether or not I have a real ID is totally immaterial.
I'm still going to do what I want to do.
So all the real ID and national ID card does is really impede the normal law-abiding citizens of the country who now have to be inconvenienced.
Now, do you think this may have something to do with why they did not debate the Real ID Act at all but stuck it in appropriations bill for the war in Iraq?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Without a doubt.
I mean, and that's an old Washington trick.
If you have something controversial, you attach it to a must-pass piece of legislation.
And this bill was passed, I forget when, but probably one of those late at night deals, we just do a voice vote and off you go.
So there was no debate on it.
No debate on a national ID card for the American people in the U.S. Congress.
No.
And that's why now, in the past month, you've had a few town hall meetings, DHS has had their comment period where people could reply on this proposal.
And, of course, now that you've got the opposition on Capitol Hill, there are hearings.
Bruce was testifying up there the other day about real ID.
So now that there's a balance of power in Washington, these sort of programs are getting a little more scrutiny as opposed to being just railroaded in the past without question.
Now, are you seeing the Democrats in Congress inclined to do anything about this?
I believe they are concerned and they are starting to understand that this really isn't a good idea for a number of reasons.
I don't know if they'll be willing to go off on a limb and put the total stop on the real ID because the Republicans could come back and say, well, see, look, they're soft on terrorism because they don't want to protect their homeland.
So I'm not sure how they would actually respond to it.
Yeah, well, you put it that way, I think they'll respond with their typical cowardice, which is, oh, please don't call me weak on terrorism.
Especially going into the elections.
But politicians aside, this is an issue that's done quite a bit to unite disparate interests on the left and the right, too, out here in the country.
I've seen people like Bob Barr, former Congressman Bob Barr, working with the ACLU on this.
Sure.
That's just what I was going to say.
People can change.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, what's interesting about this, I'm not so sure that Bob Barr has changed all that much.
I think it's just that he stuck to his principles while the country went on without him.
And he's saying, now, wait a minute, you know, part of conservatism is conserving the Bill of Rights, isn't it?
Don't want to just throw that out the window.
Quite possibly, yeah.
I mean, he may not have changed.
He may just have a different interpretation of conservatism than his colleagues here.
Yeah.
His former colleagues now, yeah.
Sure.
And that may be very, very much a part of it as well, that he's not in on it.
Wow.
So I guess I really don't know where further to go with this, except maybe, you know, what you see for the future of the fight against the Real ID Act.
My hope is that people like you, you know, your listeners, other people of both political parties who are concerned about a national ID system, the issues it raises from a privacy perspective, an identity theft perspective, from a police state perspective, from an inconvenient thing, a citizen's perspective, should do what they do best.
You know, debate it publicly.
Local community action groups, write your congressman, talk to the media, get the word out.
Let's get this debate off the ground at a grassroots level so that something that was snuck into a must-pass bill in the dead of night doesn't fundamentally change the fabric of American society.
Good call.
And let me ask you one more thing.
In reading a little bit, and I didn't have, well, I didn't spend enough time really researching for this show, but I noticed that you wrote, you've written something about the counter, pardon me, the cyber-terrorism myth.
And I was reminded that the White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke was demoted to cyber-terrorism chief because of what a terrible threat cyber-terrorism was.
So I guess I wonder if you could quickly tell us what cyber-terrorism means and why is it that it's a myth rather than a dangerous threat.
Well, first off, I do hold Dick Clarke in a high degree of esteem.
He has done wonders.
Well, he's had his shortcomings, as we all have, but he has preached some worse wisdom in recent years, and I have come to respect him and his insights.
Why do I think cyber-terrorism is a myth?
Well, there's one big reason.
If we're going to call cyber-terrorism cyber-terrorism because it involves computers, then couldn't we say 9-11 is aero-terrorism because the weapon was an airplane?
Right.
You know, the shoe bomber, is he now a shoe terrorist?
So, cyber-terrorism, or that term, it's a very sensational connotation.
And really what it comes down to is making sure that you have systems, if they are deemed critical to your security, you know, a power plant or a water supply or a banking network, if something is deemed critical, you afford the protection that is needed by the very fact you said it's critical to my company or our country.
And if you don't do that, then, you know, you reap what you sow, and it's nobody's fault but your own if you get hacked or whatever happens to your networks.
But so you don't think this is a threat in any sense that Osama bin Laden gets his 10 best computer geniuses together and they decide to hack the Pentagon and hack the big banks and destroy their computer systems or something?
No.
In fact, I made a joke a few years ago when we found a laptop in Afghanistan.
We had maps of the Brooklyn Bridge and some other, you know, landmarks in New York, and New York City went on high alert when that news came out.
Well, my joke was that's about as cyber-terrorism as you're going to get from Al Qaeda.
Yeah.
You know, just leaving a few maps on a CD somewhere, that's enough to scare us, so therefore it's terrorizing us.
Yeah, which really begs the question of whose fault that was, whether the terror is really just within us.
I mean, especially in that case where the only reason we know about that laptop is because they burned the best Al Qaeda informant they had ever flipped, who was bringing all Al Qaeda guys into Karachi to get arrested.
But they had to make John Kerry look weak in the middle of the Democratic Convention, so that was more important.
Yeah.
I mean, if you want a clear-cut example of politicizing a war or politicizing security issues, both sides over the past several years are a prime example of it, and the results are scary.
The results lead to such things like real ID or long lines at the airports, keeping documents secret, things like that.
Well, it's been six years.
Maybe now, finally, we've actually kind of crossed that point and taken our deep breath, and if we can't roll this stuff back, at least perhaps we can mount sustained efforts to stop the next versions of them as they come down the pike.
Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, I mean, I breathed a sigh of relief in November and then again in January when the Democrats took both houses of Congress.
Not that I'm a huge Democrat fan, but at least it meant that we would see more debate and things could slow down and be discussed more openly here.
There was accountability and there was balance being restored inside the Beltway, and I think that's a really good first step.
Well, balance is one thing.
I'm going to wait on accountability.
Yes, I agree.
All right, well, hey, this has been very interesting.
Tell me, besides infowarrior.org, which is your website, where else can people read what you write?
Well, they can pretty much see my writings there.
They can Google me.
I've got a ton of articles on my website, links to my books, and that's probably the best portal you're going to find for me.
Okay, and this gig at CNET, is that a regular thing?
No, every now and then if I have a really good commentary, I'll submit it, and if they want to run it, they'll run it.
If not, I'll just post it on my website.
Okay, great.
Well, I really appreciate it.
Everybody, Richard Forno, he's an information security specialist.
His website, infowarrior.org.
Thanks.
Thank you.
This is Antiwar Radio on Chaos 959 in Austin, Texas.