[HN Gopher] NIST Privacy Framework
___________________________________________________________________
 
NIST Privacy Framework
 
Author : sacrosanct
Score  : 72 points
Date   : 2023-04-18 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
 
web link (www.nist.gov)
w3m dump (www.nist.gov)
 
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| [flagged]
 
  | Raineer wrote:
  | If you're going to blame NIST for what NSA did in this case -
  | you might as well say "don't even trust anyone for digital
  | privacy" since the NSA already collects literally everything
  | from everyone.
  | 
  | I think the implication that NIST lacks integrity is unfair.
 
    | vuln wrote:
    | "Not wittingly"
    | 
    | https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73.
    | ..
 
  | retrocryptid wrote:
  | Did you read the content at the link you posted? It seems to
  | imply the opposite of the comment you made.
 
  | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
  | My understanding was that NSA was the bad actor here. Not NIST.
  | They intentionally withheld information about a timing
  | vulnerability in an encryption algorithm that was being
  | evaluated for standardization by NIST.
 
    | mananaysiempre wrote:
    | We'll see once _Bernstein v NIST_ [1] settles, though I'm
    | willing to accept that was normal bureaucratic apathy and
    | inertia rather than anything nefarious. Still, if we change
    | "trust NIST [not to _be_ evil]" to "trust NIST's processes
    | [not to be _exploitable by_ evil]", I'm not at all reassured.
    | It pays to remember the backdoor was not at all unknown[2]
    | even before the standard entered NIST from ANSI.
    | 
    | Honestly, the whole debacle with making NIST be in charge of
    | (civilian) cryptography makes me more than a little bit sad.
    | Originally, it's a metrology institution. Metrologists
    | (worldwide) are a very small circle of narrow-focused (and
    | not outrageously well-paid) specialists that usually react to
    | anybody being interested in their field with the kind of joy
    | most often encountered in small fluffy animals. (They are
    | similar to archivists, observational astronomers, or
    | invertebrate biologists in that way.) Now it seems as though
    | the whole enterprise in the US has become tainted by the
    | association with the national security behemoth.
    | 
    | [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64872195/bernstein-
    | v-na...
    | 
    | [2] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/01/14/hopef
    | ull... (I especially like the passive-aggressive patent)
 
      | KennyBlanken wrote:
      | If it were not for the fact that this has happened
      | _multiple_ times, and that each time the cryptography
      | community was openly skeptical, I could believe  "normal
      | bureaucratic apathy and inertia."
 
        | tptacek wrote:
        | What are the "multiple" times here?
 
      | tptacek wrote:
      | Bernstein vs. NIST is just a FOIA suit, about an open
      | standards contest where all the participants were public
      | academics. It's not going to uncover the next BULLRUN.
 
        | mananaysiempre wrote:
        | I don't really expect it to (and the known situation is
        | bad enough already that I don't expect much would change
        | even if it did).
        | 
        | But I do hope it'll shed some light on the entanglement
        | (pun not intended) between the NSA and whatever process
        | drives NIST's crypto publications. There obviously has to
        | be some, given the former is the US government crypto
        | expert and the other is the issuer of public documents on
        | US government crypto. But as a data point for NIST's
        | credibility, it'd be nice to know how screwed up it is
        | there. Maybe I won't learn anything about that here
        | either? Dunno.
 
| dboreham wrote:
| Regulatory capture sausage in the making?
 
| javier_e06 wrote:
| From their site: "The NIST Privacy Framework is a voluntary tool
| developed in collaboration with stakeholders intended to help
| organizations identify and manage privacy risk to build
| innovative products and services while protecting individuals'
| privacy."
| 
| What is a voluntary tool? Beats me. Who are the stakeholders?
| Beats me. Help organizations to manage risk. What kind of risk?
| Whose privacy? yadda yadda yadda.. Run on sentence. My take away:
| NIST needs to hire writers.
 
  | stonogo wrote:
  | "Voluntary tool" means other federal agencies are not required
  | to adopt it. "Developed in collaboration with stakeholders"
  | means this was not 100% internally developed at NIST.
  | 
  | The rest of your questions are answered in the FAQ.
  | 
  | It's not a run-on sentence; it's just a long one, and if you're
  | looking for a way to ensure your users' privacy while building
  | a computer-oriented service, that executive summary tells you
  | enough to decide whether this is something you want to further
  | investigate. Drive-by web forum commentators, in general, are
  | not considered target audience for these documents.
 
  | varunjain99 wrote:
  | Maybe it was written by ChatGPT!
 
    | gdevenyi wrote:
    | Just a Bueracrat. Same thing.
 
      | retrocryptid wrote:
      | If you were there when we were writing that copy back in
      | 2005, you could have schooled us in how not to write like a
      | LLM that hadn't been invented yet.
      | 
      | Also, the copy you're referring to was written by a
      | contractor, not "a bureaucrat."
 
  | blakes wrote:
  | With NIST frameworks, one needs to explore a bit. Here are some
  | of the stakeholders:
  | 
  | https://www.nist.gov/privacy-framework/request-comment
  | 
  | And here is the PDF that should answer all of the other
  | questions you have:
  | 
  | https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.01162020.pd...
 
    | mcint wrote:
    | Excellent links, thank you!
    | 
    | I can imagine the benefit of having this as a reference,
    | instead of needing to have meetings across departments and
    | levels to negotiate who's responsible for what, in an open-
    | ended way.
    | 
    | Thanks to NIST for providing a Schelling point for
    | appropriate coordination to uphold privacy, and a scaffold of
    | reasonable good, reasonably thorough thinking about how to
    | appropriately handle privacy, and the general roles of
    | everyone involved in a coherent effort inside or outside an
    | enterprise. Raising the water line!
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | schnable wrote:
  | I suspect this is a result of too many writers!
 
  | billiam wrote:
  | This one is in the tl;dr HN uninformed expert Hall of Fame. Did
  | you click even one level down? NIST is a standards organization
  | whose usually very careful work is to provide frameworks for
  | people to make products, make business decisions, and create
  | entire industries. It's not a single Github repo you can clone
  | or a blog post can can dissect. The companies, researchers, and
  | organizations that will use this framework understand it and
  | will I am sure be able to use it and suggest areas of
  | improvement.
 
  | Kalium wrote:
  | If I may attempt to offer a translation:
  | 
  | > The NIST Privacy Framework is a voluntary tool
  | 
  | This is something that organizations can choose to use. We are
  | a standards body, not a regulatory agency.
  | 
  | > developed in collaboration with stakeholders
  | 
  | We actually talked to people who need and use standards of this
  | sort. We integrated their feedback.
  | 
  | > intended to help organizations identify and manage privacy
  | risk
  | 
  | The goal is to help organizations understand the chances they
  | are taking with private data.
  | 
  | > build innovative products and services while protecting
  | individuals' privacy
  | 
  | While still being able to actually make use of the data to
  | accomplish goals that matter in some way.
  | 
  | ----
  | 
  | Basically, this is completely comprehensible to most people and
  | organizations who expect to be making use of this sort of
  | standard. Like any technical document, it has a specialized
  | vocabulary. It is not written for, and should not be judged by,
  | the prose expectations of the general population.
  | 
  | NIST has writers. They are technical writers who are writing
  | technical documentation intended for technical readers. We
  | should calibrate our expectations accordingly.
 
    | ozim wrote:
    | I agree full stop. Would like to know background of parent
    | poster just to understand his motivation for criticizing.
    | 
    | Was he writing with negative approach just because he can or
    | he just failed to get the meaning between the lines because
    | he is not the target audience?
 
      | Kalium wrote:
      | At a guess, not the target audience combined with a failure
      | to recognize it as a technical document. The latter is
      | completely understandable. NIST uses words that can be
      | found in daily business use, but they take on technical
      | meanings.
 
  | unethical_ban wrote:
  | A voluntary tool is a tool you don't need to use.
  | 
  | NIST is a government organization, and it helps to explain that
  | this is a tool provided by government for your discretionary
  | use; it is not a regulatory framework.
 
  | retrocryptid wrote:
  | It's okay, you're not the target audience. People who are
  | already know the answers to these questions.
 
  | pleasantpeasant wrote:
  | Maybe they don't want you to know those things.
 
| ChikkaChiChi wrote:
| This is from 2020
 
| psychphysic wrote:
| I know we don't have much choice but is this really safe?
| 
| The recent pentagon papers are nothing if not impressive of how
| deeply US intelligence is in just about every conversation that
| matters.
| 
| So can we trust NIST? As far as I know there have been concerns
| in the past that they have played ball and so have private
| security firms.
| 
| That said maybe a US backdoor is better than all round shoddy
| engineering?
| 
| I imagine something like this would be a great way to slip in a
| weak link.
 
  | unethical_ban wrote:
  | This is a policy framework, not an encryption algorithm.
 
  | kjs3 wrote:
  | What 'choice' exactly are you being denied?
 
    | psychphysic wrote:
    | Alternative sources of advice that isn't confirmed to work
    | with NSA to spy on people.
 
      | kjs3 wrote:
      | You do understand this is a non-obligatory guidance
      | document, right? You can continue to not read nor
      | understand it and no one will be any the wiser. The NSA
      | will almost certainly not put you on a blacklist someplace
      | (no promises and all that). Then you can google "privacy
      | framework" to find a wealth of other non-obligatory
      | guidance documents more to your liking (most of which will
      | reference a NIST document or two someplace, so be careful).
 
        | psychphysic wrote:
        | I guess you're being purposely obtuse here. It's probably
        | not as funny or smart as you think though.
        | 
        | To spell it out as simply as possible for you (just
        | incase) I'd sure like it if there was a privacy framework
        | document not created by a likely adversary.
        | 
        | I'm sure there is good advice in whatever documents the
        | FSB or China's MSS. Create, is there an alternative
        | source that could be trusted?
        | 
        | If you don't know what the word alternative means please
        | Google it.
 
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-18 23:00 UTC)