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Australian Law Enforcement Pushes Against Encryption, Advocates Data Retention
angry tapir (1463043) writes "Australia is in the middle of a parliamentary inquiry examining telecommunications interception laws. Law enforcement organisations are using this to resurrect the idea of a scheme for mandatory data retention by telcos and ISPs. In addition, an Australian law enforcement body is pushing for rules that would force telcos help with decryption of communications."
ACC et al always recommend such laws, so far they always get rejected, they aren't practical or cost effective. It would be the same if you asked the FBI or CIA about such laws. I would expect nothing less from them as their goal is to monitor and apprehend criminals and to remove roadblocks from doing that, there job is not to protect privacy, thankfully the privacy advocates are also questioned in the inquiry and they recommend the other extreme, in the end we end up with something in the middle.
Add this as reason #2'175 on the long list of why one should definitely use end-to-end encryption.
If you use a well designed end-to-end encryption, that has been validated by cryptologist (think OTR for chat, ZRTP for voice), I doesn't matter what the quality of the underlying link is or if telcos are helping breaking the link.
Best part? These technology can work over your already existing systems (though ZRTP can't work over Skype's voice and video. It only works over SIP or XMPP/Jingle - i.e.: the standards that the whole rest of the internet is using).
So you can OTR encrypt your chats over your Google Talk's XMPP session.
And there are clients supporting them either out-of-the-box (jitsi, adium) or with a plugin (pidgin), over your existing accounts (XMPP like Google Talk, or any random SIP provider).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When will common people realize that invading privacy is a crime? Instead there seems to be an acceptance of it being just collateral damage in the war against child porn and terrorists.
Don't come with "if you have nothing to hide you don't need privacy" tantrum because I think privacy is an emotional necessity for the development of a healthy brain. Too bad so much will have been lost before before the general public realizes what has been lost.
Now that Australia is getting involved in the global 'school tie' network, the police have been demanding exceptions to all rules of due process. It's partly a 'war on terror' and the start of an Aussie 'War of drugs'. Unfortunately, the 'war on terror' argument is working.
If they want to have fun decrypting, lets at least give them a worthy challenge ;)
I send myself files coded with over 10 different algorythms (use of a bash script to automatise crypt/decrypt.
code is there: https://github.com/jupiter126/...
TPTB really want to drive us towards Mesh Networking with encryption.
C'mon. Do it. Do it. Do it.
Content industry probably behind this.
Sounds like they're copying the law here in the UK. Which for a five-eyes country isn't that surprising.
on & open 24/7 (except in the bathroom) everybody knows whois logged on... pretending corepirate nazi digits will somehow secure us from our fake history & heritage is psychotic thinking at least... can you see us {;^)-)-(? remember,, friends don't let friends blog nuts,, share the keys
Tried to post a comment on their site without having an account. Got an error 403 (forbidden). In other words, the guys creating their website and/or server software are clueless twats.
And every company wanting to avoid the fate of Lavabit must just make sure that they don't have the capability to decrypt customers' data. That way, the company and the customer are safe from law enforcement. (Hiring a lawyer at the right time also helps, and sending keys to a court in a 4 point font doesn't).
That's the excuse that is being trotted out by our lords and masters. In that context, these moves make sense in their eyes. The debate is whether (a) whether the threat is real (b) it's enough to justify the intrusions by the state and (c) whether the state actually achieves anything by these intrusions. All these points are disputable, but it's unfair to dismiss them without consideration.
If I know Tony Abbot and co, there are government law drafters who have been given the task of taking the UK RIP act (the one that lets them send you to jail for refusing to hand over encryption keys) and invent a similar law that fits the Australian system.
To be "jailed for refusing to reveal keys" requires that there ARE EXISTING keys in the first place.
Modern encryption like OTR and similar are based around "perfect forward secrecy". They DO NOT use stable cryptographic key on purpose, instead they rely on "ephemeral keys" (in the case of OTR, that's DHE).
There's no real key to be handed over.
(Also because there's no real key to be handed over, DHE needs to be paired with something else to authenticate guarantee against MITM attacks.
The web use public keys for that (RSA is a popular thing). In the case of OTR, instead of keys they use "Socialist Millionaire, it doesn't rely on any actual key)
(That's part of the discussion around Lavabit, had they used PFS, they would be able to simply handle their key and switch to newer. The NSA wouldn't be able to decrypt anything with the old keys (if DHE or ECDHE was used instead) and they wouldn't be able to further impersonate Lavabit if the revealed keys was revoked/updated. Saddly Lavabit used classical public key crypto and all communication would have been retro-actively hosed by revealing the key.
It's also part of the discussion around Heartbleed. If heartbleed has been used to retrieve keys, sites using classical PK would be more compromised than sites using DHE/ECDHE : the former had all they communication retro-actively hosed, the latter can only be impersonated in the future until they leak is discovered and the key revoked/changed)
Of course, as mentioned by the parent-poster, this is all shiny and nice in the math/crypto world, but...
it works right up to the moment when it is a crime if you use non-government approved encryption methods.
The Australian government could make a future law making mandatory to use special forms of crypto, that DO use keys (say bye-bye to DHE/ECDHE or at least ECDHE with a secure elliptic curve) and that require the key to be deposited in a government-accessible escrow (like requiring the password to be transmitted crypted with a government-own public key, or requiring ECDHE with government-compromised curve).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I long to see they efforts with PGP/GPG
They are dumping the "Google Talk" brand for their chat and moving to the consolidated "Google+ Hangouts" service.
That service, according to its authors, works on a modified XMPP.
Currently:
- pidgin (and other XMPP users) can log with XMPP even if they switch to hangouts.
- Google+ Hangouts doesn't accept server-to-server communication (you can only chat with other Google users. You need a separate account, for example @jabber.org, to be able to chat with the rest of the XMPP network) [*]
- Google+ Hangouts users only receive message that are sent while they are logged into XMPP at the same time (if both end points are online, you receive the message through XMPP). Google+ Hangout has some weird propretary extensions using GMail as a storage for offline communication. (So you won't receive your missed message in pidgin when you log in, they'll appear in your inbox instead) [*]
- As a corrollary of the previous, Google+ Hangout use a "Read up until this point" shared with GMail to handle advertising of who has read what. 3rd party users will by missing that too. [*]
So hangout is currently functional, but service is severely degraded (until Google publish their extension or someone take opportunity to reverse engineer them), and it's again back to "isolated islands of communication" like in the prehistory of internet chat, all in the name of "protecting against SPAM".
Current speculation is that XMPP is a too precious service for Google in the corporate world, and that they'll end-up opening a bit the protocol. (On the other hand, I don't set my hopes high for inter-system communication: given the current trend in both their concurrent [Facebook and Whatsapp, Skype, etc.] and mail system in general [overzealous SPAM filtering tends to shut out small private server] )
----
[*] So basically their level of support of XMPP is degraded back to the level of facebook's: it more or less works, but misses lots of functionality (offline message/history, who-has-read advertising), and is an isolated island (facebook only provide XMPP as an alternative interface for 3rd party clients. They don't accept server-2-server).
The only difference is that Google service actually still run on a XMPP-derivative back-end (according to the other).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
No your honour, it is not encrypted data. My friends and I send random data to each other just for fun... z"dy`e"DG"NkOV83,N:
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
you're suggesting end-to-end encryption, and then suggesting a service by a company that forces and guarantees eaves dropping in its EULA? = wrong
OTR works as an overlay. It first encrypts message (using perfect forward secrecy with DHE and deniable [=keyless] authentication with Socialist Millionaire).
Then it sends *THAT* message over the network.
The thing which transits through the network is completely useless for any interception.
Want a proof ? Open two clients: open pidgin with OTR enabled, open Gmail's Google Talk at the same time.
Send a message with pidgin to an end-point having OTR enabled too (say a jitsi user).
The other end-point receives a clear mesage (thanks to its copy of OTR), but the message logged on the server (appearing in Gmail) is crypted gibberish.
(For added secrecy, you can also use TOR, then the ISP couldn't even intercept even the metadata).
(And tor is working for adding a OTR-enabled InstantBird into their bundle).
You could even do the same on Skype (which completely close-source) though it would require a lot more hassles.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I was thinking reason #2175 that Australia is a lost cause. They seem dead set down there on being just like the UK, which has headed down a very scary path. Any person with any desire to not become a slave to the state should be making plans to leave...
Bug post from a user using XMPP with Hangout. It works but offline message aren't supported (as Hangout instead use Gmail for history storage).
I also had a link with a citation from author explaining that hangout is still an XMPP derivative under the hood, but I lost it :-(
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's so sad to see my adopted country, Australia, going down the same drain as the country our family sought economic refuge from, England! At any moment, the AFP could break down the door, nick the disk drives, and put me in the clanger until I hand over the crypto passphrases. Information security is under threat in Australia. Knowing my luck, the NSA has read the IP address for this AC post, given it to their Australian mates at the DSD, and the AFP (Australian Federal Police) are on their way with sledgehammers. Well maybe it's not quite that bad (for me) this year, but in a few years I will be looking overseas for some sort of private information refuge. I can imagine that in 5 to 10 years from now, people will immigrate to get information freedom. The freedom to think aloud with being eavesdropped and videoed. Please mod this item down immediately so that no one notices it.... (By the way, NSA, I'm not really at this HTTP client IP address. I hacked into someone else's computer so that I could use their IP address for this AC post!)
and steal data so they can help their criminal friends on wallstreet to get richer
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The police and security agencies I've read about, e.g. FBI, MI5, Scotland Yard, have long and shady histories when it comes to infiltrating legitimate political organisations and trade unions and undermining them, or outright intimidating and/or ttacking them.
I've also read that the regimes in N. Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., do more than just this. Why not develop and use technology that protects political engagement and democratic paricipation?
We used to use paper envelopes with glued or wax seals, and the government guaranteed they would deliver the letter unopened. You could verify both in the era when that was current technology. For the king's spymaster to read your mail, he had to get an order from a judge to authorize it, and employ a fair bit of skill to replace the broken seal or envelope. Similarly, "pen registers" of who you communicated with also required judicial permission, but weren't detectable.
Over time the technology changed, but the guarantees held. They hold to this day.
Today we need the same guarantees for email, that a security service needs a court order, and that you can detect non-deliver or opening. This suggests a B>very different law than proposed here. The ACC should be saying
davecb@spamcop.net
Title: "Letters ~= end-to-end encryption" - We used to use paper envelopes with glued or wax seals, and the government guaranteed they would deliver the letter unopened. You could verify both in the era when that was current technology.
There's a difference though. In the "wax seal" era you mention, the whole thing still rely on trust. You would need to trust the government, and the government neet to guarantee that the letter gets through unopened.
The only thing you could hope for is being able to *detect* tampering. Not *prevent* tampering.
Modern day cryptography is based around a no trust paradigm. The lesser number of people you need to trust, the better.
(And in the case of OTR, you don't even trust your correspondent. The protocol is designed on purpose to not have provable authenticity. You can ephemerally secure an on-going discussion with Socialist Millionaire. But nothing afterward could be used as proof as any log could have been tampered with).
The historical era closest to this isn't the "wax seal" but the lock (with a self destuction anti-tamper mecanism built in). No one but the person having the key could do anything. With a suffisently complex lock and self-destruct system, it could even thrwat the most advanced locksmists of their time. It would require a lockpick that isn't available yet. (Modern day equivalent: with a secure enough crypto and a long enough key, it's not possible to brute force before the heat death of the universe with the current knowledge of mathematics and physics. It would require some advance in science like the mythical quantum computer, or new breakthrough in cryptanalysis though the latter seems less probable as crypto technologies advance). Even if the government decided not to follow its promises it wouldn't do anything. (Whereas a wax seal could be broken. End point would notice the tamper, but not be able to prevent it).
Over time the technology changed, but the guarantees held. They hold to this day.
Again, you must make the distinction between a system that relies on guarantees (I trust that the post isn't going to open my letters vs. my letters are based on a technology that is not technically breakable in the current state of knowledge in the current universe).
Today we need the same guarantees for email, that a security service needs a court order, and that you can detect non-deliver or opening.
The problem is that the fundamental technology behind e-mail is AS SECURE AS a POST-CARD.
Even if everyone along the chain guaranteed to uphold promises of not peeking in unlawfully, there's still ton of risks of spilling out sensitive data just by accident.
What if the post card fell on the ground and was seen before the postman manage to pick the post-card back (What if any data packets end up where it shouldn't?)
The only way to be secure is using modern trusted crypto.
The only way to be able to trust your crypto is if the trusted end-point (you and your correspondant) are in charge of it.
You encrypt your information locally, on a machine you trust, using a piece of crypto that you trust.
Then send it with whichever technology you want, even if it's an unsecure one (like e-mail) or an untrusted one.
Your correspondant take that message, and then decrypts it on a trusted machine using trusted crypto.
The end-point are in charge of the security. Nobody inbetween needs to be trusted.
Hence end-to-end crypto.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When will common people realize that invading privacy is a crime? Instead there seems to be an acceptance of it being just collateral damage in the war against child porn and terrorists.
Then take the things into your own hands. The technology is already here, it's called "Cryptography".
Well designed end-to-end cryptography make so you don't even need to trust your government or anyone else.
And using ephermal key negociation (like DHE or ECDHE) means that there are no key to be handed over in case someone would like to obtain key through coertion.
Then you don't need to count on government realizing anything about privacy. They can still think whatever they want, they might think that mass surveillance is the golden bullet against the "Evil Pedo-Terrorist-Pirates of Communism", your privacy won't be invaded.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why? who the fuck wants to terrorize Australia? This global war on terror is complete bullshit and it's about taking the last remaining rights the regular joe has. It never ends, those with money and power will always want control(slavery) to feed their ego's or fetishes. When a government fails to be for and by the people it's no longer legit it's a criminal organization, or mafia. Monarchy systems, dictatorships, feudal systems are all criminal organizations and these ideological systems seems to slowly leak into our current governments.
but the fact that the court can order you to disclose your password, and put you in jail if claim you don't remember it, kind of makes me think they'll just say "fuck it" and you'll be sitting in prison indefinitely.
Then use modern day crypto like OTR.
OTR use ephemeral keys (in this case it's DHE), so there's no permanent key to begin with that could be disclosed (also no retro-active decryption possible. There doesn't exist any piece of information following whose disclosure, law enforcement could suddenly retro-actively decrypt all the intercepted communication that they have logged during the past years).
OTR use a key-less authentication system (Socialist millionaire), so there's not even an authetication key, and also no retro-active possible authentication proof (They can't prove that the intercepted communication from the past years is yours. It could be forged, and that's provable by design).
So the court can't order you to disclose a password.
It's not a matter of "Oh my gosh I happen to have forgotten the password that you want".
It's a matter of "There doesn't exist any password. That provable by the design of the thing itself".
DHE and ECDHE (at least, as long as you use a secure curve for the latter) don't have passwords and by design can't retro-actively be decrypted.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why not develop and use technology that protects political engagement and democratic paricipation?
You mean, like modern-day cryptography ?
Specially things like OTR ?
That have perfect foward secrecy, thanks to DHE ? (i.e.: there's no key that could be disclosed to enable decryption of past intercepted communication) ?
That use authentication through Socialist Millionaire (which is keyless, meaning that there's no way to proof that past intercepted communication is authentic) ?
Which simply functions as an overlay, meaning that you can use it as up today above any chat system that you currently already have (Google Talk for example, huh no sorry "Google+ Hangouts" is the name now) so you don't need to sign-up a new chat and ask all your contacts to move to a new service?
Which already available out-of-the-box in a big number of software (like jitsi, adium) or as a plugin in others (like pidgin) ?
And there are numerous other technologies for also protecting e-mail (GPG is an often mentioned example), for protecting voice/video communication (the above mentioned jitsi implements them too), etc.
The tools are there. Some have very easy forms. You just need to get the users used to them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Extra note:
One of the things that don't work with Facebook and the new Google Hangout's, namely lack of history, doesn't make that much sens with OTR anyway.
OTR use ephermeral encryption. There's no permanent key.
If you access old encrypted history (what would be contained in GMail and visible in the full blown Hangout+ app, for example) there's no way to decypher it, the information doesn't exist anymore.
(That's the whole point of Diffie-Hellman used in OTR and the whole Perfect Forward Secrecy: there doesn't exist any piece of information that make it possible to decipher past stored encrypted information).
So you aren't losing much from that point of view.
Now the other things (lack of sever-2-server protocol support, meaning that Google+ Hangouts and Facebook chat are basically isolated islands) is still a sad problem.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It'd be really nice if we could respond to these various laws that keep getting proposed and shot down by passing a preemptive rejection of all future laws in the same vein, requiring say a supermajority vote to pass any legislation containing rejected provisions. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would mostly shut down the "maybe we can buy enough votes *this* year" folks, as well as the "let's sneak a surveillance provision in as a rider on this agricultural bill" shenanigans.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
that will only give the court a reason to add a "destruction of evidence" charge on top of "refusing to reveal keys".
It is clearly provable that the required key DO NOT EXIST in PFS (like DHE or ECDHE).
What you mention would be recieving a court order requiring you to bring a *pink unicorn* in court, and get subsequently jailed for "destruction of evidence" when you claim that no pink unicorn exist.
Just like no pink unicorn doesn't exist, it's simply provable by math and crypto science that no key exist that you could reveal (that the whole point of this class of algorithms).
It's not that the law is unjust, it's that it can be scientifically proved that the law is impossible to follow.
Jailing for "destuction of evidence" make exactly as much sense as jailing for "failing to bring the required pink unicorn".
NO PINK UNICORN EXIST, NEITHER DO EXIST ANY PERMANENT DISCLOSABLE KEY IN P.F.S (as proved by math and crypto science)
Any defense attorney worth its salary should be able to defend this in court.
But, as I've said above and as the previous poster said:
it works right up to the moment when it is a crime if you use non-government approved encryption methods.
The Australian government could make a future law making mandatory to use special forms of crypto, that DO use keys (say bye-bye to DHE/ECDHE or at least ECDHE with a secure elliptic curve) and that require the key to be deposited in a government-accessible escrow (like requiring the password to be transmitted crypted with a government-own public key, or requiring ECDHE with government-compromised curve).
The australian government just needs to make perfect forward secrecy illegal.
And then, they can jail you on the ground that you've been using a crypto that doesn't involve key and that can't be court-ordered into revealing. End of problem for them. Start of immigration to a better country for you.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I long to see they efforts with PGP/GPG
and with OTR, and with ZRTP, etc.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I quite agree, the technology changed, and we need to both change with it, and take advantage of it to create stronger guarantees.
And my point of view is that by using decent, suddenly we don't rely on anything else.
I actually think we need a defence in depth. Guarantees offered by an arms-length postal service, technical means of testing the protections, legal protection from the law where the guarantees are breached, and enforcement of the law by independent, arms-lengths police under the oversight of a string court system. Add to that a technology that makes it impractical for a middleman to leak one's information, and protection against a security service demanding your keys without laying a 20-page "information to obtain" before a non-trusting judge.
And all this is unneeded in case of good crypto.
All this would require long pollitical adventure until its finally accepted in law and enacted.
Meanwhile crypto works as of tofay in the current environment.
To take again a metaphor: imagine that you want to protect your car against act of vandalism from the government.
You could either push for the acceptance for a legislation forbiden the government to behave as vandals, and that exception to this need thorough justification filed with a judge (asking for guarnatee in law).
Or you could just lock your car into your garage (just use crypto). That's something you can already do today, and that's already efficient even if there's a law that makes it mandatory for the government to trash any car that they happen to encounter on the public road (= the current state of mass surveillance).
We're not just protecting ourselves against the watchmen: we're also protecting against plain ordinary villains, ones who will snatch your letter out of your hand and go belting off down the street with the "Bow Street Runners" in hot pursuit!
That's why I'm not so much in favor of legal guarantee.
Although government could be forced to comply by law (i.e.: guarantee not to do mass surveillance), criminal won't abide the law and they would still try to violate your privacy even if it's illegal.
Meanwhile, by using technical means, not only government is prevented (even if current law would have allowed them to. it's just not technically possible for them) but criminals to (no matter if do or don't follow law forbiding them. It's just plain not technically possible).
At the same time, we don't want to depend on a single point of failure.
...well, we could add an extra legal layer, as long as the technical (cryptographic) layer is here.
our email system is at least as horrible as post-cards, and perhaps even worse
At least post-cards aren't as trivial to duplicate as digital data like e-mails. And at least handwritting gives some minor form of identification and tamper-proofing. :-D )
(And the writing of some MDs like me should straigh go into the "undecipherable crypto" category
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Two words: network effect. {...} I installed an XMPP daemon on a home server and made it as easy as I could to get everyone going.
Baby steps. Having them use an existing facility like XMPP interface to GoogleTalk/Google+Hangouts, or the XMPP interface into Facebook would have been a smaller jump, or the SIP provider to their home telephony (if they use a combined "Internet + IPTV + VoIP" package).
(Though some would have complained that facebook sticker don't work currently over XMPP)
Then start handling separately the cryptographic issue.
(Once everyone is used to have Adium on their Mac to chat with Google Talk and Facebook contacts, its easier to "just turn on" crypto).
"If this is so secure, what's this certificate warning about?"
Oh, common. Do some effort on your side. It's not that difficult to use a free CA like CACert.org.
It's even a recognized certificate in some browsers.
"Why do I have to do this?"
"What's wrong with Skype?"
"Oh, you're so paranoid!"
Big thanks to Snowden for making this a tiny bit more obvious to the avrage sheeple.
Until it "just works", nothing is going to change.
In their defense, Jitsi (the only client with OTR and ZRTP, as far as I know) is pretty buggy.
Yup, we need more efforts to have a wider choice of crypto-enabled clients.
Adium and Pidgin are nice alternative (but only support OTR, and only support Skype through some extra 3rd party plugin).
Tor is working into adding Instant Bird (XUL powered) with OTR to their bundle.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And unlike you, we DO have snow here around.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's like two shops, one with a video camera running and one without. The shop with the video camera must hand recordings over to the police if there was a crime in front of the camera. The shop without the video camera doesn't need to do anything, and doesn't have to install a camera just in case someone gets stabbed in front of the shop.
Yup, nice image. The second doesn't have any record to disclose if ordered by the court. There just don't exist any recording that they could hand over. There security relies on some completely different scheme (say, a heavily armed bouncer/guard) which doesn't involve any camera nor any recording.
OTR relies on a completely different form of encryption (perfect forward secrecy, powered by ephemeral diffie-hellman) that doesn't involve permanently stored passwords.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Using software that explicitly makes it impossible for you to comply with the law is not defense against the law.
It's not that the software doesn't comply with the law. It's just that the things that your are asked to provide in the first place simply DOESN'T EXIST (provably, per math and crypto science).
Like said by gnasher719 somewhere else among the comments on this /. entry :
It's like two shops, one with a video camera running and one without. The shop with the video camera must hand recordings over to the police if there was a crime in front of the camera. The shop without the video camera doesn't need to do anything, and doesn't have to install a camera just in case someone gets stabbed in front of the shop.
The second doesn't have any record to disclose if ordered by the court. There just don't exist any recording that they could hand over. There security relies on some completely different scheme (say, a heavily armed bouncer/guard) which doesn't involve any camera nor any recording that could be handed over.
OTR relies on a completely different form of encryption (perfect forward secrecy, powered by ephemeral diffie-hellman) that doesn't involve permanently stored passwords. So there's nothing that you could hand over, even if asked by court.
It can potentially be defense against revealing your secrets in the face of "rubber-hose" decryption attempts, but unless your secrets are *really* important you're unlikely to appreciate being unable to reveal them under duress.
The goons who are going to beat you, to obtain a password, even if no password exists, are probably going the same goons who are beating you into revealing a password to get access to your huge stash of monney, even if you're actually broke. You know, just beat you in case there's a slight chance to get some money. Don't listen that you don't have a password, or that you don't have money. Maybe they should beat you a bit more. You know, in case you're bluffin and you actually have a password, or actually have money (hidden by another password that you haven't caugh up yet). Or maybe you gave them money, and they'll beat a bit more just to see if you don't have more of it. Who knows what they are going to get if they keep beating you? More money? Or plain more fun while beating you ?
There's no point of anything. Brutal goons who have decided to beat are going to beat your poor soul out, no matter what. Either you have a password or not. Either you already gave a couple of passwords or not. Either you have money or not. Either you already gave some money or not. They'll make you miserable even a bit more just in case.
Cryptography is only a defence against lawful individual. Who follow law and have to follow due process. They can't require you to provide something that provably doesn't exist. And modern day cryptography helps you bring irrefutable proof that the password doesn't exist.
(gnasher719's camera doesn't exist, so you provably don't have any records to bring to court).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm an Australian and I'd be really pissed off if the government opened, read, copied and kept a record of all my mail as it passed through the post office. I'd be just as pissed off if the elite political class did the same to my phone and internet communications. Of course, we can fight back with encryption, steganography etc., but life's tedious enough already.
paleoflatus
Noooooo!!! Malcolm Turnbull is a bloody inept cunt!! Muh torrents! ~ Perth