Congress Considers Mandatory Crypto Backdoors

disappear writes: "Wired news reports that Congress is considering restrictions on crypto software in the wake of the terrorist attack. 'Nuff said." This will be the next battle -- especially in the wake of this week's tragedies, and the the allegations that the prime suspect Osama Bin Laden is a heavy crypto user. The battle of privacy and safety is going to begin in earnest now.

Comments

My essay

[jallen02]

This is what I am afraid of! :(

Please read my essay and if you like it pass it on to people. We can't let this happen. I have been saying this since day one. Please please think about this :(

The Price of Freedom

Jeremy

Clock It! 2001-1984=17 Years Late

[Col. Panic]

The price of safety is too high if we are to reveal all communications to a government body. I am reminded of the arguments to register all firearms and the corresponding cry, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!"

Carnivore is one thing, but a backdoor to all crypto is yet another. Financial transactions from private organizations are routinely encrypted for obvious reasons. Are we to trust government employees with all financial transactions merely because we elect them? I think not.

We cannot allow the government a "skeleton key" to all crypto if only for the reason that it can then be compromised by others for whom access was not intended. Urge your congresscritter just to say "no".

Heavy crypto user?

[Glytch]

Are they nuts? This guy lives isolated in mountain camps. I doubt he's even a heavy electicity user.

His sympathizers, on the other hand...

Re:Heavy crypto user?

[Tim C]

That's exactly what I'd have done in his position - made the world think that I was out of touch, with a primitive communications infrastructure at best.

Appear to be less of a threat than you are, and you get left alone, and can choose your battles. Appear to be gaining in power, knowledge and skill, and someone will have a go at taking you out for their own good.

I'm not saying that that's the case here; just that that's what I'd do (and I'm no crimincal mastermind :) )

Cheers,

Tim

How would that help?

[cperciva]

From what I've heard, Osama Bin Laden doesn't use cryptography so much as he avoids using electronic communications at all. He has even (gasp) been reported to meet with his underlings *physically*, as in "lets all go into the same room and talk face-to-face".

Cryptography wouldn't really help terrorists much anyway, because electronic surveillance can still pick up who is talking to whom; the real problem is when people avoid electronic communications, because then you can't do anything without spies on the ground.

don't forget Rivest's "Winnowing and Chaffing"

[siraustin]

Back in 1998 Rivest wrote Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption.

New Hampshire

[1010011010]

I think "Live free or die" is pretty good. Along with "Don't tread on me," and "the best we can hope for the people is that they are armed."

The revolutionaries who founded the United States of America are chock full of good quotes on freedom and defending freedom.

Mandatory backdoors -- french tried, gave up.

[Nonesuch]

The government of France tried this. They outlawed all forms of encryption without providing the keys to the french government.

For example, I worked for a major semiconductor and radio communications corporation. We encrypted all private circuits to all remote offices, in the US and abroad, except that in France we had to provide the keys to the French government.

End Result?

The French intelligence agencies would hand over to major french businesses the 'competitive intelligence' collected from foreign corporations operations in france, allowing them to underbid competitors, etc.

There are several well-documented cases of government abuse of this information. In France the level of distrust got so bad that they eventually relaxed this policy due to foreign based companies withdrawing their business.

Re:Best reply

[lie as cliche]

`I think the best reply one can give to the politicians who want to impose this is: "And Osama Bin Laden is going to throw away his foreign-developed, non-backdoored encryption software and buy US-made backdoored encryption software exactly why?'"

I don't.

The objective here isn't to stop the guy. They could've if they'd wanted to. About a week before the attack the U.S. Postal Service stopped delivering air mail to the region. They knew something we didn't, and opted not to stop it. And I think I know why.

We hear a lot about terrorism against the U.S.. We don't usually hear the other side's complaints. Obviously they don't think of it as terrorism, they think of it as some sort of a protest. I wonder what they're protesting, and why. If our government did something unjust to them, I wouldn't trust our media to tell us about it. But as a tiny little group of malcontents going up against the U.S., about their only recourse is an attack like this. Given that the U.S. government knew about it beforehand, they didn't bargain to prevent it for one of two reasons. Either the price was considered too high, or the U.S. government thought that an attack like this would end up working in their favor. They've been looking for an excuse to nullify cryptography for years now. Anybody remember the Clipper chip? The legislation keeps being defeated, because people are siding with the need for privacy. Now they've been able to demonstrate a supposed need for the U.S. government to know everything that's being said anywhere in the country. Perhaps they think it will sway the common consensus in favor of their legislation.

Galling, isn't it. More impressive (from a logistical standpoint) than crippling a nation with a store-bought knife and their own planes, is the prospect of prying your way into a nation's cryptography with someone else's store-bought knife, someone else's plane, and a bunch of lives you don't care about because you think of them as "your citizens", in the same usage as "your house" and "your car". Oh, and a temporary economic setback which you mitigate by printing more baseless currency. Clever.

Re:I don't think so.

[Jeremi]

When all the lawful crypto users are using back-door laden crypto, the criminals and terrorists will walk right through those back doors to wreak more havoc. How does that help anyone?

Only outlaws will have encryption.. blah blah blah

[drsoran]

Benjamin Franklin didn't have terrorists walking onto airplanes and crashing them into buildings full of tens of thousands of people. I think you can safely say this situation is quite a bit different than anything anyone could have predicted 200 years ago.

As for "mandatory crypto backdoors", I think it's become a common saying that when encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use encryption. This is a ridiculous time to be making any hot-headed decisions on something like this. Even if the US did make some inane law mandating backdoors in encryption there are plenty of free and completely open strong algorithms out there to use. What stops terrorists from using these other programs NOT made in the US or writing their own code?

This is the kind of thing that happens after every tragedy unfortunately. Emotional people start making emotional cries for immediate changes. After a school shooting people call for a ban on guns. People, shooting another person is already illegal! Banning guns are not going to stop a *criminal* from shooting people. Banning strong encryption is not going to stop criminals or terrorists from using strong encryption! Hijacking airplanes is also a crime but that didn't stop a bunch of whacked fundamentalist motherfuckers from doing it now did it?

Remember CipherSaber

[victim]

Sorry I slept too late and didn't get this in until the wastelands of the later articles, but...

Any decent programmer can write their own encryption in a matter of minutes. Go look at the CipherSaber home page.

In George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, Jedi Knights were expected to make their own light sabers. The message was clear: a warrior confronted by a powerful empire bent on totalitarian control must be self-reliant. As we face a real threat of a ban on the distribution of strong cryptography, in the United States and possibly world-wide, we should emulate the Jedi masters by learning how to build strong cryptography programs all by ourselves. If this can be done, strong cryptography will become
impossible to suppress.

So get out there and write build yourself a saber. Then use it to encrypt a short reply to this article with the key freedom.