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Respect and Stateful Inspection

Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek (Gus Portokalos - My Big Fat Greek Wedding)

The word respect is derived from Re (to do again) + Spec - (Latin - specere to look, Greek episkopos overseer). In the 1990s Nir Zuk and his team at Check Point created an information security concept know as Stateful Inspection as in to look at things in different states.

Say I drop my car of at the parking lot and leave my keys with the attendant, I would like some assurances that the attendant (or anyone else with access to the keys that I left) did not abuse my car, like drive it around. The best protection for this, that I know, is to take a look (spec) at my car before I turn over the keys and again when I come to retrieve the car. This is the secret to proper accounting. To spec and re-spec. If I only look at the odometer once and have no reading to compare this with, I cannot tell if there was a change.

If I look at someone or something once and think I can make a complete judgment, I would be making a Stateless judgment and fail to appreciate the lessons learned from Nir Zuk and his team. To me this is the meaning of disrespect.

The I Ching or Book of Changes, a basis for binary math and state theory, it is said the only thing we can count on is change. To respect someone or something is to look for, and honor, changes in state. We respect ourselves, our children, our parents and the commonwealth, by continuing to look at and, respect changes.

Stateful inspection is slower than stateless packet filters, but much smarter. It is not easy to be respectful, but it is smarter.

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