Hi, Alea,
I lost track of this board awhile ago... until somebody (you admire) pointed me here last night.
I'm not going to take the discourse to the level you suggest. Your opinion regarding my status as "captive"... while I'm sure is a heartfelt assessment... doesn't comport with facts... financial or otherwise. I just read a lot of stuff, Alea. And I try to read from ALL sides, not just the one that fits my worldview. The NSA is the easiest possible target. But... there's a whole side of their house that has nothing to do with SigInt (spookiness)... and everything to do with defending networks and systems.
I did just notice you asked about Richard Stiennon on the iHUB board.
So allow me to tell you what I know about Richard:
* I met Richard four years ago for breakfast here in Austin. He is, personally, a very likeable guy. He is a complete gentleman. Like a lot of folks in Michigan, he's had some tough times. But he has a following... especially among the broader security vendor community... to whom he markets his services. (That's what former Gartner analysts do.) Until the recent conference, Richard had a paid-for relationship with Wave. (It is my theory that Richard has had a very tough time endorsing Trusted Computing because he has so many clients who, broadly speaking, have no Trusted Computing involvement. Or are TC competitors. But that's a theory.)
* I think--and this is my opinion only--that Richard falls into the Libertarian camp known as "anarcho-capitalists." It's my understanding that that is about as fringe as Libertarians go. That may not be quite right, i.e. the label for Richard's beliefs. But at the recent conference Richard informed me (among other items) that he does not believe there is something called "money laundering." There's just money... flowing. Further he said that Scott Charney at Microsoft was suspect... because Charney is a former government employee. (Richard does believe that, pretty much, everything government is bad. I don't fall into that camp. But every other morning I sit at a Starbucks table with folks who are committed to that belief system.)
* Richard is not a futurist. I'm not either. You're probably closer to that one than either Richard or me.
* To date (almost), Richard has been lukewarm (at best) about Trusted Computing... even though his services were paid for by Wave on at least a couple of occasions. He seemed to warm to Trusted Computing
just in time for the recent conference. (Again, he was not PAID to speak; though I'm pretty certain his expenses and travel were covered.) During several LinkedIn exchanges with Richard over the past 4 years, he has (more than once) been an opponent of Trusted Computing. That opposition shows itself to this day in his assessment that TC is a solution in search of a problem. (He has a point with that one. But I think it's a point that is lost on any organization having to address the Advanced Persistent Threat... BIOS-level attacks, etc.)
Best Regards,
c m
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