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Neglecting the Lessons of Cypherpunk History
Nicola Hahn writes Over the course of the Snowden revelations there have been a number of high profile figures who've praised the merits of encryption as a remedy to the quandary of mass interception. Companies like Google and Apple have been quick to publicize their adoption of cryptographic countermeasures in an effort to maintain quarterly earnings. This marketing campaign has even convinced less credulous onlookers like Glenn Greenwald. For example, in a recent Intercept piece, Greenwald claimed:
"It is well-established that, prior to the Snowden reporting, Silicon Valley companies were secret, eager and vital participants in the growing Surveillance State. Once their role was revealed, and they perceived those disclosures threatening to their future profit-making, they instantly adopted a PR tactic of presenting themselves as Guardians of Privacy. Much of that is simply self-serving re-branding, but some of it, as I described last week, are genuine improvements in the technological means of protecting user privacy, such as the encryption products now being offered by Apple and Google, motivated by the belief that, post-Snowden, parading around as privacy protectors is necessary to stay competitive."
So, while he concedes the role of public relations in the ongoing cyber security push, Greenwald concurrently believes encryption is a "genuine" countermeasure. In other words, what we're seeing is mostly marketing hype... except for the part about strong encryption.
With regard to the promise of encryption as a privacy cure-all, history tells a markedly different story. Guarantees of security through encryption have often proven illusory, a magic act. Seeking refuge in a technical quick fix can be hazardous for a number of reasons.
"It is well-established that, prior to the Snowden reporting, Silicon Valley companies were secret, eager and vital participants in the growing Surveillance State. Once their role was revealed, and they perceived those disclosures threatening to their future profit-making, they instantly adopted a PR tactic of presenting themselves as Guardians of Privacy. Much of that is simply self-serving re-branding, but some of it, as I described last week, are genuine improvements in the technological means of protecting user privacy, such as the encryption products now being offered by Apple and Google, motivated by the belief that, post-Snowden, parading around as privacy protectors is necessary to stay competitive."
So, while he concedes the role of public relations in the ongoing cyber security push, Greenwald concurrently believes encryption is a "genuine" countermeasure. In other words, what we're seeing is mostly marketing hype... except for the part about strong encryption.
With regard to the promise of encryption as a privacy cure-all, history tells a markedly different story. Guarantees of security through encryption have often proven illusory, a magic act. Seeking refuge in a technical quick fix can be hazardous for a number of reasons.
Even ROT13 takes some effort to solve, it's better than laying everything out over the wire in plaintext. Will it stop the NSA from reading it if they really want to? No, but it prevents it from being searchable at the press of a button from a massive index of communications.
Crypto everywhere isn't going to stop you specifically being watched, but it will stop strategic dragnet interception, and force a return to tactical decrypts.
A security solution does not have to be 100% perfect to still provide value.
Let's take another example. A workstation requires pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and typing a password to unlock the computer. You might say that it is useless protection because an attacker can just walk away with the hard drive of the computer.
So why is the password still useful? Well, without a password, an attacker might just start locally using the computer and quickly take a look at various secret documents. If he were to grab the hard drive, it would take significantly more time, which would increase the chances of being captured by the security team.
To get back to the topic, by using encryption you are not the lowest hanging fruit out there.
That Damocletian sword of a NSL is the biggest threat to competitiveness of the US data storage providers. On the internet, it does not matter where you store your data. Never before it mattered so little whether your datacenter is next door or in Abu Dhabi.
As a company, would I want to have my data in the hands of a data center where I KNOW it could instantly be forced to hand it over to a government that has a record that borders on that of China when it comes to industrial espionage?
I've been consulting with companies that wanted to outsource their data storage. They all had a list of countries where you may NOT store their data if you want to enter the bidding war, and without fail the US was on that list, along with other pinnacles of freedom like China. Iran was oddly absent from most lists, even.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've upgraded to ROT26 to make it twice as hard for the NSA to read my cookie recipes.
TFA is correct that simply thinking that, because there is a zillion-bit crypto algorithm thrown into the communication stream, that everything is good and security is guaranteed. There are many, many attack channels that do not involve brute-forcing the crypto. Keyloggers, for example.
But this is silly:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a group of encryption mavens known as cypherpunks sought to protect individual privacy by making "strong" encryption available to everyone. To this end they successfully spread their tools far and wide such that there were those in the cypherpunk crowd who declared victory. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know how this story actually turned out. The NSA embarked on a clandestine, industry-spanning, program of mass subversion that weakened protocols and inserted covert backdoors into a myriad of products.
In actuality, the crypto implementations promoted by cypherpunks were exactly those that made it difficult or impossible for such a program of mass subversion to take place. Remember that the height of the cypherpunk movement was when the Clinton administration was pushing hard, really hard, for the NSA-sponsored Clipper Chip, which was, in a nutshell, crypto subverted by design and mandated by law. We now know that when the spooks found that was politically impossible, they went ahead and did it anyway, in secret. But the cypherpunk tools, most notably PGP (and later GPG, when PGP sold out and went corporate). Hell, even look at /dev/random: when it was revealed that the NSA had actually, and pretty amazingly, undermined hardware random number generators on widely available chips, /dev/random was still just fine, because it treats all sources of entropy as potentially untrustworthy, including the chip.
The first lesson we should learn from the history of the cypherpunks is that trusting your crypto to a closed product is always, always a bad idea. That was the lesson then, and it is still the lesson now.
The second lesson is that crypto, like any security, is all about the threat model. In that light, should we reject the widespread adoption of end-to-end crypto in commercial products? Of course not. If Apple and Google implement crypto by default, it will make efforts to dragnet information exponentially harder, even if the crypto is imperfect. This is why the spooks are beating the drum against it: it closes off that one particular threat model, which they have come to rely on. It doesn't close off other kinds of attack, but so what?
The third lesson is that crypto, by itself, is not a panacea. Nobody ever said it was. The cypherpunk message was not that we can write PGP, declare victory, and walk away. The message was that privacy changes the relationship between the citizen and the state in beneficial ways, and that, in a technological society, we need to embrace technological means of increasing our privacy, in ways that cannot be controlled by the state.
There is no indication PGP/GnuPG can be broken if used right (some minimal care needed, e.g. verifying that you have the right keys for the people you communicate with). Things like BitLocker or current Phone encryption do not deserve much trust though.
You statement is far to generic to resemble the truth in this area. However there has been a consistent push behind your view from some quarters that can only be interpreted as a "don't use encryption, it does not help anyways" disinformation campaign. This is a rather strong indicator that even known-bad encryption like SSL makes things at least more difficult for the surveillance-fascists.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Wrong. NSLs are "after the fact". Encryption is before. An NSL is also a _legal_ measure, while encryption is a _mathematical_ one. Guess what has more power to influence reality. If Apple and Google cannot break their encryption, then they cannot break their encryption, and no number of NSLs is going to change that. At the same time they cannot be forced to put backdoors into their products as that decreases product quality. The analogy to Lavabit is faulty, as Lavabit had the keys and could break its encryption.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In the current political environment, encryption is not the answer. If you've been paying attention, there have been a number cases where a person was ordered to unlock the contents of a laptop or other device under the threat of being put in prison if they refuse. And that is the real problem. If you create some super-duper-encryption that is impossible to break, the various corrupt government agencies will simply declare you to be a terrorist, who can't possibly have any legitimate need for that encryption, and you will be ordered to decrypt or go to prison, and nobody will even know you are in prison thanks to secret laws enforced by secret courts.
Until THAT issue is addressed, encryption truly is just snake oil and feel-good public relations.
The author says that "cryptography is underhanded", but you will look in vain to find any technical meaning of that phrase anywhere in the article. What he really means is that the major corporations (Google, Apple, et al.) are underhanded because they are working with state spies to cripple algorithms and put in back doors, etc.
But trying to cripple cryptography this is something we already are aware of, and there are ways to shore up the technology to make it much, much harder for government to spy on us in bulk. Even using weak, crippled cryptography forces the spies to expend computing resources. Cryptography is all about raising the cost of spying, when dealing with government, not with preventing spying.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Re "True, there are numerous ways to hide things, but if you intend to make it secure and you do understand the system because you designed it, it is quite possible to make it secure"
The device and the network has origins with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Trying to build a better app over that voice, text and network logging ready system is interesting.
An app can encrypt but the data has to be entered?
Get the plain text as it is entered? Then the new app can be as powerful as it wants and totally tested. The plain text is still ready on any network.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I am far from being an expert on encryption, but the danger is not that PGP will be broken; it's that there are weaknesses in the entire "ecosystem" that allow for side-channel attacks. That's part of what that NSA paper, linked to in the article, is discussing. If there is something that can be exploited in the user's operating system or in the hardware, then that becomes the weak link in the chain.
Then, there is the whole issue that you touch on: namely, the caveat of encryption's efficacy "if used right." The same is true of condoms and even oral contraceptives. Sadly, human beings are very bad at scrupulously adhering to the injunction to "use as directed."
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.