Former FBI Chief Keeps Up Anti-Crypto Campaign

ganns.com writes "Former FBI director Louis Freeh is urging lawmakers to limit encryption products that don't include backdoors for government surveillance." Still urging, that is.

Comments

Still urging...

[program21]

Still only urging, for now. I'm sure at some point one of our fine elected officials will introduce some 'anti-terrorism' bill that mandates government backdoors in crypto, in the interest of 'national security' and 'definding against terrorists', of course.

Re:Still urging...

[uncoveror]

If John Law has a backdoor, soon anyone will be able to use it. Anybody who doesn't get that probably has a VCR flashing 12:00, and is still looking for their "any" key. Even without them using encryption, the F***ing Bungling Idiots can't catch terrorists. We need to scrap the FBI, and start over.

Re:Still urging...

[program21]

I understand that if there is a backdoor, it will eventually be exploited. But try explaining it to the public over the word of the FBI, who's no doubt going to claim that the existence of a backdoor helps fight terrorism.
This may be easier now that it would have been 2 years ago, given the high-profile virii that have been around the media lately. People may (I say may, not will) realize that this is asking for something to happen. Then again, they may not.

Re:Legality

[forsetti]

But how will the govt know whether that is a terrorist using encryption, or a regular joe sending lots of encrypted personal messages, not realizing that personal stuff "should not" be encrypted?

And why should "personal, non-secret, communication" be not encrypted? Even if I am just sending my wife a grocery list or sending my aunt a christmas list, I don't want the hacker along the way to be able to read it!

Re:Legality

[DustMagnet]

Terrorist can always just use codes words. For all you know, when I say "blueberry" in a comment, I'm telling all my friends I'm going to have a big party next Friday.

Outlawing (or discouraging) encryption hurts innocent people far more than terrorist or your favorate evil of the day.

This is rediculous.

[tachyonflow]

Even if Congress does pass laws restricting how citizens can use crypto, I don't think terrorists will be motivated to use the restricted versions of the software.

When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto.

Red Herring, and LIES

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The man is a disingenous fraud, a good politician, and an incompetant in the fields of security and intelligence.

Freeh needs to find a whipping boy for the failures of correlating the various peices intelligence datum, which occurred on his watch. Restricting legal access to crypto will only assist in the illicit observation of constitutionally protected speech by private individuals, and destroy what little competitive advantage is enjoyed by U.S. software industries over their counterparts in Israel and India.

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

Louis Freeh is responsible, in a large part, for the biggest intelligence failure in modern recollection. None of the failure in this effort was for lack of access to encrypted communications, but from standard failures of organization and communications within the concerned agencies.

The Heritage Foundation - not normally critical of the FBI's mission - has this to say:

But what if FBI intelligence fails to collect, analyze and share this information? This could happen, the commission found, because "the guidelines under which FBI agents operate ... are badly written and confusing. These are guidelines that set out the terms under which the FBI can open a preliminary inquiry against somebody who may be suspected of being a terrorist. All of us read them (they run to about 42 pages) and we had a number of current and former FBI agents testify that they found them confusing."

The commission recommended that then Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh rewrite the guidelines into "more easily understood English."

Moreover, the FBI had no procedure for disseminating useful information for analysis within the agency or sharing it with other government agencies.

Information which was obtained, in Los Angeles, for example, but did not immediately apply to the case at hand, would simply not leave the regional office, even though it might provide important clues for another investigation, says Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador at Large for Counterintelligence during the Reagan Administration and former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.

Encryption wasn't used in this instance. No evidence for it has ever been found. Freeh has a broader, more insidious agenda here, involving free speech and civil liberties. Unfortunately, the record shows that deep, analytical thinking about these issues is outside the grasp of the majority of America's elected representatives.

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[neocon]

Kids these days...

Actually, the record shows that despite a lot of lobbying by the Clinton administration, spearpointed by Freeh himself, our representatives made the right choice, and said no to key escrow.

In other words, despite the efforts of those like Freeh, the system's worked pretty well at safeguarding people's rights...

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[jeffy124]

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

I believe the proper & more accurate expression is "getting toothpaste back in the tube"

Also, he must think terrorists are idiots. If you knew that Country X required backdoors in crypto products, would you buy a crypto product made in Country X and then use it to hide plans about lauching attacks against Country X? It doesnt take much for terrorists to get their encryption products from more lenient sources - like Canada for example.

And like you said, it's already out there, and ain't goin back.

Frankly - I dont think his urging will go very far beyond discussions like these.

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Actually, the record shows that despite a lot of lobbying by the Clinton administration, spearpointed by Freeh himself, our representatives made the right choice, and said no to key escrow.

In other words, despite the efforts of those like Freeh, the system's worked pretty well at safeguarding people's rights...

Right, you are!

As they say, "That was then, this is now." Personally, I wouldn't expect the same kind of result in the post 9/11 period of hysteria, coupled with the kind of assaults mounted by the Bush administration.

But,
I do hope you continue to be correct...

Cat's already out of the bag

[Gerry Gleason]

You can't take away the technical capability to encrypt because this is already widely distributed code. Even when it was illegal to export strong encryption, people just based any software product that did this someplace else. It's a global neighborhood, at least when it comes to tech savy groups.

As a practical matter, basic encryption needs to be part of a lot of emerging systems. There is so much going on in digital wireless, and it isn't going to stop soon. With processors getting faster each year, you have to up the number of bits in your encryption just to stay ahead of what can be broken with commodity hardware and dumb software (brute force).

The government will always have access to the means to decrypt codes that wouldn't be practical for anyone else. The question becomes whether it makes any sense to limit most uses of crypto to a level between what is easy, and what the government can decrypt with some effort. They don't seem to be doing too well catching people who aren't using any crypto, so what's the point.

IMHO, the only thing that can be accomplished is to hurt commerce and individual privacy. It is often just a matter of setting parameters to set the length of keys and such, and they are going to make companies who do anything with encryption do extra paperwork and such to track it. And god forbid you want to user GnuPG for anything. I'm sure they want to outlaw that completely.

Backdoors?

[gl4ss]

What's the point in encrypting anything if you leave a backdoor? wouldn't that be like building a HUGE S**TY wall around your town and leaving the gate shut without a lock. aren't any good crypto algo developed so that there's as little possibility as possible(zero) of that somebody finds a quick walk-around attack?(like just editing the header as i believe those pdf's cracked)

Wouldn't this only produce questionable algorithms? if the gov. can read it why wouldn't somebody else be able to read it too or just abuse the system(corp x says it's fbi connection there's a problem with individual y, fbi agent NOrman CLUE just pops out access for the corp x to y's keys.).

besides, the terrorists can either use already developed 'good' crypto soft or just code their own(oh well, maybe they're trying to turn coding into some thing only sanctioned guilds can do, wait a minute, that would be cool actually, if little perverse).

too much encryption?

[smartfart]

Actually, if you're going to be serious about encryption, you ought to encrypt everything you send out.

If you encrypt only the sensitive stuff, anyone watching you knows when you do it. If you routinely send encrypted traffic, no one is going to know when one of your messages actually contains something you'd rather not have divulged.

The military does this all the time. They blast all kinds of noise on the band, and only rarely send any actual message, thus keeping their stuff hidden in plain sight.

There was even (in keeping with the latest trend on /.) a science fiction story that used this as a plot vehicle, which told of messages being received from distant planets where usually there was stellar noise. I want to say it was "The Mote in God's Eye", but don't quote me on that.