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18th Century Law Dredged Up To Force Decryption of Devices
Cognitive Dissident writes The Register has a story about federal prosecutors using a law signed by George Washington to force manufacturers to help law enforcement access encrypted data on devices they manufacture. The All Writs Act is a broad statute simply authorizing courts to issue any order necessary to obtain information within their jurisdiction. Quoting the Register article: "Last month, New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used to force an unnamed smartphone manufacturer to help unlock a phone allegedly used in a credit card fraud case. The judge ordered the manufacturer to offer 'reasonable technical assistance' to make the phone's contents available." What will happen when this collides with Apple and Google deliberately creating encryption that they themselves cannot break?
Really, as long as only "reasonable technical assistance" is required, there is no danger. Good encryption is designed to be (practically) unbreakable unless the key is known, hence expecting somebody to break it without the key is not "reasonable" at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What will happen when this collides with Apple and Google deliberately creating encryption that they themselves cannot break?
That is answered by the former quote:
The judge ordered the manufacturer to offer 'reasonable technical assistance' to make the phone's contents available.
Breaking encryption that is not breakable does not fall under any sense of the word "reasonable".
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used"
The law was not sunset-ed, the law was not stricken down by another law, the law itself was not repelled on its own, the law was not stricken down by the supreme court.
So what is the problem ? Until a repell/strick down , ALL those law are still valid. Cue the shooting down welsh with a bow, but this is the basis of our judiciary process. just because a law is old does not make it invalid.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Not when the Feds say it isn't.
You seem to be under the illusion that we are a nation of laws, not a nation of men. We haven't been a nation of laws since the PATRIOT Act was signed, and many would argue that we've been a nation of men since a long time before that.
The Bill of Rights is comparably ancient. So what? Old does not mean "wrong" (unless you are a teenager in the rebellious phase)...
Makes sense to me. In fact, seems like a good — forward-compatible — law indeed...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Is it reasonable for Google to push an update to the phone in question that decrypts the phone the next time the password is entered?
This just goes to show that "shredding the Constitution" has been going on for a very long time. The feds pretty much started as soon as they possibly could.
There's always some idiot that thinks a small dose of tyranny will be OK.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This tells us that the cryptography is working and that they're only able to access data with legal power rather than some unknown height of technical prowess.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The egg. Eggs had existed for millions of years before the first dinosaurs, let alone before the first birds, let alone before the first chickens.
Nothing. The law requires people to give reasonable assistance to law enforcement. It does not require them to architect systems so that such reasonable assistance is fruitful. Safe manufacturers are not required to know the combinations to their devices.
Of course they can. Google and Apple absolutely have ways in. Anyone believing otherwise is a fool.
There's always some idiot that thinks a small dose of tyranny will be OK.
And you're thinking that George Washington was one of those idiots who thought a little tyranny would work out well? I don't see how this law contradicts the Constitution. It doesn't say what jurisdiction a court has, just that a court is allowed to issue orders to obtain information that is already within its jurisdiction.
...which authorizes the United States federal courts to "issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law."
Which part of that is "the feds" "shredding the Constitution"?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Still having faith in the constitution? That same one that gets raped on a daily basis? I think you need a new strategy.
The constitution? Actually, yes.
The way it's currently being followed? Not so much.
The constitution isn't going to climb out from under that bullet proof glass in Washington and right wrongs like Batman. It takes diligence and sometimes sacrifice on the behalf of citizens to keep the country in line with the principles on which it was founded. We get the government we deserve, through out inaction, or through voting for free stuff rather than principles.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is a "chicken egg" an egg that could hatch a chicken? Or an egg laid by a chicken? Is an unfertilized egg laid by a chicken a "chicken egg" - that would seem to favor the second case, in which the chicken came first....
This, interestingly, runs into the paradox of the heap. 10 grains of rice are not a heap. 11 grains of rice are not a heap. 12 grains of rice are not a heap... and adding grains of rice one by one is never going to end up in a case where X grains of rice are not a heap but X+1 grains of rice are. But now we have a problem, because 1000 grains of rice clearly are a heap! There must have been a switch somewhere from not-heap to heap, but it's somehow untraceable to any particular instance of rice adding.
The chicken is similar. The archaeopteryx clearly is not a chicken. Slowly, over the millennia, mutation by mutation, we eventually ended up with creatures that clearly are chickens. But when was the first time a non-chicken gave birth to a chicken? Just like in the case of the heap, we can't tell. What's more, not only can't we tell, there may not even be a fact of the matter; that is, it may be fundamentally unknowable.
Really, as long as only "reasonable technical assistance" is required, there is no danger. Good encryption
The Justice Department feels that having an embedded back door into the devices' crypto is very "reasonable" and has been pushing for just that. Now they need a judge to rule on their version of the word and the corporations will fall in line.
Throw in a Patriot Act gag order and some import/export barriers vis-a-vis patent wars, and let's make a bet about how many 2015 backdoors will be discovered in 2018.
This is the kind of government the voters support.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What if an ancient-(possibly)-mutant-not-chicken that normally gave live birth to young developed an embryo with a harder shell, and the shell of the egg stayed with the young until birth, cracking as it exited the birth canal, creating a simultaneous birth of both chicken and egg?
XDInd
America's modern left often argues that portions of the US Constitution can be safely ignored because it's old and was written by white dudes. Here's a (fairly calm) piece that explores that argument. (Also look up "constitution living document".)
Thomas Jefferson was concerned greatly about the "Tyranny of the Dead" -- that the laws and debts of dead elder generations will inhibit progress in younger generations that are facing entirely new types of problems not envisioned by the older generations. He wanted the Constitution (or at least federal law) to be effectively completely rewritten every generation -- every 18-20 years or so. You can read about it in his letters.
I would say that probably the results of that poll are not people being "stupid" and "forgetting" that the Constitution is important, but rather, evidence of a yearning that the current system is not entirely working and it needs modification. Just like we have done so 27 times in the history of the US (i.e., the Amendments). It's not relevant today, but we Amend it to be more relevant. For example, the move to get a 28th amendment that strikes down the Citizens United ruling and makes more free and fair elections (see any number of organizations: Move to Amend, WolfPAC, etc.). We know there's money in politics, and here's one proposed solution to it. Not by ignoring the constitution or laws, but actually, working the way the constitution is supposed to work! The people can call for an amendment if our national leaders do not.
I don't think I've heard anyone make the argument that they can ignore laws because old white dudes wrote them. I *have* heard that we need to change laws because they are stupid and we want to make a more perfect union, though. Don't let people like the ones that wrote the article in your link trick you into think their opinion is public opinion (its easy to spot because of the use of words like "The Left thinks blah" and "The Right does blah" -- there is no Left and Right as one huge bloc, but a spectrum of smaller groups with differing opinions, and even if it was one big bloc, who is this author to be able to speak for half the country? I've never heard of him.).
I'm not that worried. I think when our current leaders that have been in office for 30+ years finally retire or are voted out as the younger generation comes up, we will see laws and constitutional amendments that fix problems. Not ignored, fixed.