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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.
Please think of the children!
The issue is the balance between public safety and personal privacy. Denying the citizen of any democracy the right to encryption of their personal communication is not an appropriate response to the perceived threat to public safety that same encryption would bring.
More like help protect us from the prying eyes of big brother.
just that simple, Director.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You don't deserve privacy because criminals don't deserve privacy.
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.
I suspect, he is right — it will hurt public safety.
But it will improve individual privacy and America has always valued the cantankerous Individual above the glorious Collective, that other cultures prefer...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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
Choice #1: my smartphone isn't encrypted, the FBI "protects" my safety
Choice #2: my smartphone is encrypted, the FBI can't get to my data.
I choose #2 thank you very much.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It is not our job to make his job easier or effortless.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Our phones and computers are the modern day equivalent of "papers and effects".
Encryption affords us the security promised by this amendment.
Does this make the collection of data by various "letter agency" and police law enforcement departments tougher? YEP!
Does it raise the possibility of criminals "slipping through the system"? YEP!
I, for one, REFUSE to be pre-criminalized , simply because I don't choose to automatically drop trou whenever someone demands to see "ze papers". The only appropriate answer for this sort of thing is "Fuck you. Get a warrant."
I also refuse to abrogate my rights and privileges due to an idiotic appeal to emotion (think of the CHILDREN!)
*I* am not victimizing children. But, the way law enforcement wants to set things up, EVERYONE gets lumped in as would-be rapists, molesters and murderers.
Jim Comey needs to be told to shut the hell up, do his job *RIGHT* and be a good little soldier.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
To effectively violate the 4th amendment as it is. I have a great deal of trouble believing his concerns are legitimate and complete.
What's more the greatest problem with a full on surveillance state that can and does relentlessly bring the full weight of the state against people without the means to properly defend themselves is the number of false positives can easily exceed the number of actual criminals.That would be actual crimes, not the simple fact the complexity of our legal system renders most people guilty of something.
Seriously. By a large margin I am most likely to die due to an age related illness.Somewhere after that are non-age related illnesses. Then accidents.Then Suicide. Being killed by "bad people" is WAY down the list. Why on earth should I give up my rights to protect myself from a tiny chance of death?
Obviously people in power would like more control over me, but why should I agree to it?
No, the modern day equivalent of "papers and effects" are... your papers and effects. If you want protection to be applied to technology that didn't exist in the Founding Father's time, then do the honest thing and press for e.g. a constitutional amendment. Trying to stretch the Founding Fathers' words of over two centuries ago to your pet cause in 2014 is a can of worms that no one should want to open.
It's like you don't understand what "effects" are.
Our phones and computers are the modern day equivalent of "papers and effects".
No, the modern day equivalent of "papers and effects" are... your papers and effects. If you want protection to be applied to technology that didn't exist in the Founding Father's time, then do the honest thing and press for e.g. a constitutional amendment. Trying to stretch the Founding Fathers' words of over two centuries ago to your pet cause in 2014 is a can of worms that no one should want to open.
"papers and effects"
Your personal effects include your smartphone. If the government wants to peek at it or seize it, they need to get a warrant.
Also, they want people to NOT use encryption at the same time that they're warning companies of the attacks by Chinese cyber-hackers. Someone needs to tell this guy "You can't have it both ways, dude."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
FBI / NSA: Dude, you're becoming a monster.
Citizen: You made me this way...
All encryption does is protect the individual from self incrimination and prevent them from using illegally captured traffic and metadata to do parallel construction a.k.a. lying about the source of evidence.
In addition to the other responses, have you never heard of the spirit of the constitution? There is more to the constitution than just interpreting everything 100% literally; you can take intent into account.
between banning encryption and banning banks, safes, and safety deposit boxes?
Things on your person can be searched based upon probable cause without the need for a warrant.
I guess you're not aware of this year's Supreme Court decision, Riley vs. California, in which they determined that police require a warrant to search your phone. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...
Why?
Papers... and effects. Do you know what "effects" are? Here's a quick google search that turns up an answer right in the search results, no further linking needed. And it's right there, under noun, definition 3. That's the one the constitution meant. It says:
So a phone or computer is quite literally (and I mean "literally" in the literal sense) an effect.
Warrant or GTFO.
For that, you'll have to talk to Motorola and the FCC.
Most p25 traffic isn't encrypted anyway. There is no need and some definite disadvantages to p25 as well. And there are cryptographic weaknesses.
Apple's leverage of open source encryption concepts will always be a few years more advanced, if not decades more, than embedded p25-compliant radios.
The long, long history of American jurisprudence has determined that your effects are materials held at home.
Judges are often complicit in the crimes against the American people.
Also, why are we so hung up on "papers"? I'm pretty sure our founding fathers didn't care about dead tree pulp and were more concerned about protecting the information on the paper. In that light, why would it matter what medium the information is contained on? Be it chiseled stone, carved wood, or a cellphone?
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.
In Alabama every drug warrant has article "G" attached to it that gives the officers the right to search all files and computers, for drug records. If you keep your records in, let's say French, then the police can take them to a translator. If you keep your papers in some kind of "encrypted" scheme that requires some mechanism to decrypt, then it's evidence enough that you deal drugs. I hope encryption on phones doesn't have the same effect.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
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 government can be the bad guy. It often is, in fact.
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).
I think this is a good thing, as it causes them to focus on the most important cases and protects you from rubberstamped warrants.
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?
The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not a blacklist of things it can't. So of course it does.
I'd be a little more sympathetic to his position if it were not for the massive abuses of various govt. agencies which were recently revealed.
Others have pointed out that your interpretation is wrong and explain why. However, even if your argument was correct, you reach the wrong conclusion because the Framers of the Constitution addressed the issue of technology that did not yet exist in the 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, if the Constitution did not explicitly grant the federal government the power, that power is denied to the federal government.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The actual question "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?"
Also, governments don't have rights; they have powers. The government cannot stop you from using a tool merely because it makes getting information from you hard/impossible if it gets a warrant; it simply has no such power.
So, open season on the homeless. Good to know.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Had the goobernmint not let the NSA run roughshod over the constitution and the rights of people both foreign and domestic, the general public would not be baying for the means to keep them out.
The goobernmint brought this upon themselves through their abuses.
Screw 'em.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
Of course its right to use technical means to stop the government accessing your files. It always has been like that, you could always write you documents in code, or hide them and you where under no obligation to reveal the code or location, you have the right to remain silent.
The government has the ability to watch us more than it ever has in history, but it will never be enough.
I think it is less about allowing encryption on cell phones as opposed to having it on by default. Most people will not bother (mainly because they don't understand how easy it is to monitor someone) so it is an indicator to look further if your phone is encrypted, once everyone has encryption turned on it will no longer be an indicator.
Really its the spy agencies own fault they overstepped their bounds, by issuing secret warrants to companies and monitoring everyone, now they get the backlash.
When something you had is taken away it feels much worse than if you never had it in the first place.
A long history of jurisprudence that existed long before the internet was invented or even widely adopted. When that happens I think instead of trying to force modern technology to conform with outdated laws we should instead look at why our founding fathers fought a bloody revolution.
The government having the ability to unreasonably search your information of any kind allows them to build a narrative about your behavior using cherry picked evidence. At the drop of a hat your entire history, and every little mistake along the way can be used to demonize even the greatest saint. It was by using tactics like this that corrupt governments would silence dissent. Kings would craft a narrative to discredit opposition and lock them away never to be seen again.
This is the behavior that our country has engaged in, and regardless of whether your "papers and effects" are emails, downloads, or letters the consequences of a government spying on those communications are the same: that the government can use your entire life to criminalize you when you are not in fact a criminal. That is what you should be looking at, not jurisprudence from judges that are mostly tech illiterate or that predated the technology that it is being used as precedent to rule on.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"