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FBI Director Continues His Campaign Against Encryption
apexcp writes Following the announcements that Apple and Google would make full disk encryption the default option on their smartphones, FBI director James Comey has made encryption a key issue of his tenure. His blitz continues today with a speech that says encryption will hurt public safety.
Anyone wanna bet that they have no trouble breaking this encryption, or they have secret backdoors? This is just a big advertising campaign to get people to think they can't break it.
It would help his position if the FBI were to go after Federal agencies (e.g. the NSA) for their illegal violation of citizen's privacy rights, and make it perfectly clear that the only searches of cell phones the FBI is interested in would be supported by probable cause and warrants from legitimate courts.
But I somehow think his reasoning is more on par with "we don't like people protecting their rights, because it makes it harder for us to violate them."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Kids these days... encryption didn't just arrive with the latest iPhone release, you know.
The Founding Fathers were well versed in ciphers. If they did not outlaw encryption of personal effects and they did not grant special powers for the state to force you decode them, one has to conclude that they had their reasons.
I'd like to know how Jim Comey reconciles his position on encryption with the requirements set for in the CJIS Security Policy
Because he isn't saying people can't encrypt, he is saying the keys must be available such that the government can get in if needed, even if the owner would like to block the access. The CJIS Policy allows for escrow as well.
What he doesn't seem to get (though I bet he actually does), and where some of the arguments here are missing the mark, is that if someone else holds a key that will grant access, even if the holder is the government, that provides a path for a bad guy to abuse the ability to access. The bad guy(s) can be hackers/attackers from down the street, on the other side of the planet, employees of our government, etc.
And the issue regarding the 4th amendment is somewhat misleading because he is saying a REASONABLE search is what is being prevented, namely one where conditions like a valid warrant exist or an imminent physical threat is present (I am not going to argue the problem here about anything can be claimed as an imminent threat). So the question is does the Constitution allow a person to use technical means to prevent the government access to data even when a valid warrant is presented? Many here obviously believe the answer is yes, mostly for reasons like those I gave above, but understand that this doesn't appear to be a protected right under the 4th since the 4th only says you and your effects are secure until a warrant is issued, not after.
Why not "Obama Admin Continues Its Campaign Against Encryption"? If the Obama admin was against it, they'd fire him. Obama or Bush, the result is the same, the government does not want encryption.