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Obama: Gov't Shouldn't Be Hampered By Encrypted Communications
According to an article at The Wall Street Journal, President Obama has sided with British Prime Minister David Cameron in saying that police and government agencies should not be blocked by encryption from viewing the content of cellphone or online communications, making the pro-spying arguments everyone has come to expect:
“If we find evidence of a terrorist plot and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that, that’s a problem,” Obama said. He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.” ... The president on Friday argued there must be a technical way to keep information private, but ensure that police and spies can listen in when a court approves. The Clinton administration fought and lost a similar battle during the 1990s when it pushed for a “clipper chip” that would allow only the government to decrypt scrambled messages.
Never.
I hope that we can soon change to another administration before anything like this comes to pass.
Just ignore that bit about being secure in your papers and possessions! The Government should be able to take what it wants, for your protection!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Regardless of government laws and tactics, hiding your communications is incredibly easy for anyone who isn't an idiot.
What this means is that most terrorists must be incredibly stupid... or the government wants to spy on normal people more easily.
...there must be a technical way to keep information private, but ensure that police and spies can listen in when a court approves.
Simply impossible with the inherent corruption in the system. He's making the same speech as the Supreme Chancellor in front of the senate, and he will get his thunderous applause.
There is nothing left to do but try to keep up and protect our selves as best we can.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
By definition, no communication using a 3rd party as an intermediary has ever been totally secure.
It is much better that this attitude is established by the government in public, rather than our government lying and doing it anyway.
If you want secure communication, don't use a 3rd party.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I dont like the scumbags that shoot up chocolate shops and newspaper offices or crash airplanes into buildings or blow up nightclubs but I would rather see 1000 terrorists go free than to see a single innocent person have their privacy, security, civil liberties or constitutional rights violated.
I am not afraid of terrorists. I am not afraid of religious extremists. I am not afraid of murderers, rapists, drug dealers, drug addicts, carjackers, burglars, home invaders, "active shooters," or copyright violators. No, the biggest threat to my freedom comes from my own government, and that makes me sad.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
... When you abused the trust people put in the Government and the NSA.
Previously... before all this arrogant bullshit... you would have gotten that cooperation either publicly or covertly. But you gave everyone the finger and told them you could do what you want.
You told everyone that Due Process was for suckers and you could just do whatever whenever however. And that has a price.
You're paying it now. The whole country will be paying it.
I don't want to put this all on Obama. It is also on the people that run these agencies and it is of course on the previous administration as well.
None of them have any regard for the constitution. It is a social contract to be obeyed by the letter and the spirit. Not either or neither. Both. You do what it says and if you've come up with a clever way to get around it without breaking the letter of the law... you don't do it.
It isn't just a law. It is a relationship. It is a code. It is what other societies have for a holy writ. You don't break it or the nation cracks.
And that is what has happened. The nation has cracked... and cracked again... and it is starting to break.
Patriotism he says? This would be the patriotism that so many on the political left laugh at and spit upon? Well... why would patriotism shuffle over to the likes of Obama covered in phlegm and do his bidding?
All this anti America garbage has a price as well. How could it not. If you devalue patriotism then patriotism has been devalued. When you call upon it... the check bounces.
Take me... My patriotism is just about used up. It hasn't been honored. It hasn't been replenished. It has been condemned and devalued.
Then Obama presumes to call upon it in the name of what? More unconstitutional spying? He wants to use my love of country which he laughs at to destroy my country?
The man is delusional.
The country needs to be run people that at the very least understand what they're doing. I don't even need someone that is honest. I need someone that knows their job. Obama and the people he's got running the government do not. They don't understand what binds the country together or keeps it running.
I'll take anyone of any political bent so long as they know their jobs and honor their oaths. Beyond that they can do anything at this point. I won't be picky.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
corporations that control the government. They are the ones paying real money to prevent and remedy security breaches. It seems it would be in their best interests to have strong encryption to prevent a lot of expensive problems, yet they seem unusually quiet on the subject.
The terrorists will always find a way to communicate in secret. Eliminating secure encryption will simply raise the cost of secure communication for them. Meanwhile the rest of us will be left with our asses showing.
Here we go again, 911 all over again. ...the ones who get out in the streets right fucking now and REJECT this bullshit spying with every ounce of their soul.
Let me tell you who the REAL PATRIOTS are....
America is a free country of brave independant self sufficient self defending souls, we dont need your fucking nanny state.
So go ahead Obama and congress and lawmen gone bad politics and all you other state terrorists and control freaks and plain old ragheaded terrists... you just try to take away americans freedom and slave us to your game.
Go ahead, wind that clock closer to 1770's again...
We'll show you who the REAL PATRIOTS are.
The next step is thought police.
Or does he intentionally want to bankrupt Silicon Valley?
No-one in their right mind wants anything to do with US software products any more, because we've no idea how many backdoors they've built in, and can't trust them an inch.
Snail mail and land line phones were never secure, all it took was a search warrant/court order (really easy to get) and the police had it. Email is no different. All the ranting about the NSA and government intrusion just diverts from the fact that; 1) if you don't want anyone to hear what you say, don't say it. 2) if you don't want anyone to read what you write, don't write it down. The USA founding fathers lived with the knowledge that they would be held accountable for what they said and wrote, and today it's no different.
The technology required is the "warrant" - issued by a judge on probable cause. I believe the technology has been around for several hundred years.
I mean, Obama couldn't possibly have been referring to intercepting communications without a lawful warrant, and certainly not without cause, right?
By definition, no communication using a 3rd party as an intermediary has ever been totally secure.
But with strong crypto it's secure enough that the 3rd party can see (or alter) your communications. Obama and Cameron and (undoubtedly) all other future leaders want to strip away this protection using the force of law to change how crypto products are designed. You will live your life under the state microscope and, as always, the proper prerogatives of government will be twisted to cover up incompetence and serve the powerful few instead of protecting the dignity of the individual.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Doesn't the precedence of the clipper chip fiasco in the 90s already dictate this can't be done? Or am I misunderstanding?
They try again and again to implement the same bad ideas, knowing that defeats don't matter, understanding that they only need to score a single victory and their maladaptive proposals will be forever enshrined in law, never to be repealed. These are people who play chess and as such they learned to take a long view of things, realizing that most Americans have incredibly short memories and are only considering the here and now.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Let's get real.
It is all down to matters of principle. So lets extend out the argument that encryption obstructs police activity and should be banned. Clothing allows people to hide dangerous items that could threaten the life of police, so let's ban it and require people to be naked at all times so they can not hide dangerous items on their person. People can run from the police and get away, so lets require that everyone must wear leg irons so that they can not run away. It's a great meme, let's add to it.
It is not the job of the citizen to surrender their liberty and privacy to make it easier for the people they employ to assist those citizens in the upholding of the law. I will not be naked and in chains because it makes it easier for law enforcement to control and abuse me, neither would I accept a leash around my neck or that I require permission from law enforcement before I do anything at all.
So fuck the autocrats, we 'EMPLOY' them to make out lives better not so they can fucking control them, be that politicians or police officers. Seriously 'What The Fuck' is going on?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Right, so we'll have an American Backdoor for the Americans, but they don't just anyone accessing their data so they won't share it with everyone, which means we'll also need a German Backdoor for the Germans and a French Backdoor for the French and obviously multiple law-enforcement agencies in each of those countries will need access and frankly even assuming that by some miracle none of the agencies in any of the countries have anyone on staff who is either corrupt or incompetent there's somewhere around a 100% chance that other people with (more) malicious intents will gain access to said backdoors.
Meanwhile these supposed terrorists that these backdoors are designed to stop are either a) already too stupid to properly secure their communications or b) smart enough to "manually" encrypt the message itself and not simply the envelope, which means all this is for naught anyway.
I will debate any statist on any argument whatsoever, and I will destroy them (the argument that is!), and what is more, I will do so not only with real actual logic but as and when warranted with facts and references. And what is more I will be polite and will not resort to name calling or personal attacks at all, but will of course expect that same consideration in return. And I will win the argument, always, and completely. There is no argument for big government statism that can defeat me - because I am right and you are wrong.
Statists generally prefer one-to-many broadcast methods like the evening news to spread their (largely emotional, fear-based) propaganda. This way they know there will be no equal airtime given to someone who logically questions their proposals and looks at them with a critical view. They are too welcome in too many other, much more convenient forums to actually take up your challenge on anything like a level playing field.
Although, a favorite trick of some flavors of statist is to invite dissenters to call into the show. The host will mute the caller, talk over them, refuse to answer inconvenient questions, and usually entirely take over the asking of questions, respond to complex and nuanced issues by badgering the caller with a series of yes/no questions designed to lead to a predetermined conclusion (an abuse of the Socratic method), changing the subject ("We had no justification to be in Iraq." "Saddam was a dictator! Do you support dictators?!"), and use other propaganda techniques designed to appear legitimate. This will convince the naive that any debate is happening, and that no one can successfully get the host to admit fault because the host is always right.
In summary, you're not going to get an honest debate because these people are afraid of honest debate and go to great lengths to avoid it. With a mere five corporations controlling every major newspaper, broadcast TV news service, radio news service, cable news service, and online news outlets, there simply isn't enough diversity to allow for anything in the mainstream other than an echo chamber. It comes in two flavors: "left" and "right", which are two slightly different methods of reaching the same conclusion that the solution to our problems is to concentrate more wealth and power into fewer hands.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It seems like this might be one part "make the Republicans look like terrorist-loving pedophiles by mindlessly opposing me," and one part "make sure even the stupids want encryption."
Also, if encrypted information is required to convict someone? The prosecutor is either REALLY bad (and then the person should go free anyway), or the law under which that person is being prosecuted is unconstitutional. Encryption takes speech and makes it secret. We have very few exceptions to free speech, and all of them involve generating eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. A competent prosecutor could make a case without it.
Or hide in your anonymity and know you are a coward
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17, 2015 @05:09PM (#48840971)
WAHHHHHH!
All government and police can stuff it in their pie holes. It is because of your over reach and out of control officers why I made sure everything is encrypted.
How about you start putting NSA,FBI and LEO assholes in JAIL that violate the constitution as a good will gesture to the Citizens before you start whining about encryption.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Makes no difference - I don't understand the process by which these things happen but I'm assuming that the feedback loop involving the public has a zero weighting.
Requiem for the American Dream
I can't speak to the UK, but the US doesn't have that problem at the legislative level. At the executive level, so much of the government is a black box. We don't really know what they're doing and they have been caught lying to congress. So... the conspiracy theories are going to run wild. Why try to stop them.
Price of lying to congress which is a thing the NSA was caught red handed doing.
Of course, the IRS also recently lied to congress.
And the head of the new ACA or Obama care system just resigned mostly for lying to congress as well.
So... it is a thing. The executive is lying a lot. Congress really needs to get a spine and gut the executive.
The legislature is our most democratic body. The executive should fear them. But they don't. They see the legislature as a joke they can control. Largely at this point because it is full of so many useful idiots.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Incorrect, I'm fairly sure lots of Americans can remember all the contestants from the first season of American Idol.
Don't diss yourselves bro.
Requiem for the American Dream
I for one am tired of the government from being slowed by locks whenever they need to find a terrorist suspect, I think the government needs a master key that can open any lock, and everyone combination lock needs to have a master unlock code to unlock it.
Since the master keys would only be available to a few thousand (ok, maybe a few hundred thousand) law enforcement personnel, I fail to see how the "bad guys" would ever get access to them. The government has our best interests at heart, and they carefully screen employees to ensure that none of them are the "bad guys".
ensure that police and spies can listen in when a court approves
The US Government is willing to break their own constitution so they can secretly spy and kill people.
They need to demonstrate that there is effectual oversight to their abuse of power, and that the courts are capable of operating independently before they can be trusted.
I'm not here to defend obama (I'm not american), but british news sites are saying that actually he and UK prime minister cameron showed disagreement on encryption in friday's joint press conference. The WSJ reported an ambiguous statement, but the tone of the press conference sounded quite different to those who were there. Here some paragraphs from a Daily Mail's article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... ...But behind the smiles there remains sharp differences over Mr Cameron's call for US web firms to do more to open up encrypted messages to security services in the wake of the atrocities in Paris last week. ...
However, as the press conference progressed it became clear that differences remain over the extent to which security agencies should be able to snoop on encrypted messages and social media like WhatsApp, SnapChat and Facebook.
The IRS targeting of political opponents killed any chance this will ever happen.
I do point out that the IRS is supposed to deny tax-free status for political organizations. That's their job. Political advocacy groups aren't tax exempt. And shouldn't be.
The IRS failed if they did not investigate some political groups that were "favored" ideologies. (I don't know whether they did or didn't, actually.)
The IRS targeting 'scandal' is still lacking in evidence that might confirm intent or systematic bias. Without this, there is little substantial to the accusations. It may simply be that one end of the political spectrum is more prone to pushing the limits of non-profit status.
I'm surprised we aren't hearing more from the big corporations that control the government.
You're surprised because you misunderstand the situation, because you've dramatically oversimplified it. Big corporations have influence but they do not "control" the government. They do attempt to influence its actions, particularly whenever government interferes with their business operations and sometimes when they think they can get government to interfere with the operations of their competitors, and they meet with some degree of success.
However, politicians still understand that corporations can't vote, and that they can't even contribute anywhere near as much money as private citizens can, assuming said citizens choose to make the effort. This anti-terrorist agenda is not a corporate agenda, by and large. Oh, there are a few corporations in the military-industrial complex who like the military side of it because it enables them to sell lots of expensive gear. But the spying, insofar as it works (which it mostly doesn't), reduces their business opportunities.
No, the anti-terrorist agenda is driven by masses of fearful individual citizens. Few of them hang out on slashdot, or work in IT organizations, so they don't have a loud voice here, but there are a lot of them, as is clearly evidenced by the utter lack of major political figures campaigning loudly for putting the NSA out of business. Said political figures understand where their votes come from, and aren't going to rock that boat. Now, if major corporate lobbying dollars started pushing one side or another of this agenda, they might do something, but outside of a few tech companies which are being hurt by their users' fear of spying (especially overseas), the corporate world doesn't care.
They are the ones paying real money to prevent and remedy security breaches
True, but irrelevant. Spying or the lack thereof has no effect on their security problems, which are mostly about their failure to properly secure information needed to do business with their customers. Communications encryption wouldn't have any impact on them, because this is data that you voluntarily give them in order to do business with them anyway. It's entirely unrelated to the question of government spying. Again, the only ones who care are the tech companies, and they by themselves simply don't have enough pull to override the politicians' healthy regard for the fears of their voting constituencies.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
TFS points out that Clinton tried essentially the same thing, but weaker. I see Obama is using the same argument as Clinton. I'm pretty sure Obama was quoting Clinton when he said "despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we canâ(TM)t penetrate that, thatâ(TM)s a problem".
4th Amendment
5th Amendment
Obama can f**k off. This is simply intolerable. Civil disobedience must prevail should his drivel actually succeed in becoming law. Not a world I want my kids growing up in. I was born free. So were they. This is unjust and sickening. We used to deride Nazi Germany for the Stasi and Gestapo. What the hell are they doing?
This is not sane. This is not a slippery slope. This is a cliff. Nothing good will come of this.
You cannot say that with any certainty. You want that to be true but it may not come to pass. She could meet someone like me who gets her strung out on meth so I can donkey fuck her tight pink asshole. You concede khasim's point regarding terrorists because you know he's right. You aren't afraid of terrorists- you're afraid of people like me...as you should be.
Before making such idiotic statements? Pretty please? It needn't be me (actually, it sure as FUCK wouldn't be me!) but hire someone who has at least half a clue before making yourself look like a total Cameron to someone who knows even a little bit about security.
A "government backdoor" is NEVER EVER a "government ONLY backdoor". There is no such thing as "government only" when it comes to something where it is impossible to detect if it is being used. If you create a "VIPs only" door to a club and you cannot put a watchman there to guard it and you can't even monitor the entrance to see who goes in or out, how long do you think it will take for people to know that this entrance exists (no matter how well you camouflage it and write "Jehova's Witness recruitment center" over the entrance), notice that it's the easy way into a club and simply USE it, knowing that there won't be anyone who will find out?
And no, requiring some superspecialawesome Goverment-only key doesn't do diddly jack. Because since some government goon with half a day of training has to be able to use it, anyone who knows his way around doors will be able to forge it. And no matter what you say, I simply cannot imagine this being the one awesome exception to the rule of government accepting any half assed job as "a-ok" because they themselves have no idea how to gauge the quality of the work and will accept anything because nobody gives a shit.
No. Sorry. Government-only backdoors do not exist. They're by definition public. At the very least, they are public enough that every OTHER government will have the keys to it, too. One way or another.
And now let's ponder for a moment whether we want the Iran to have backdoors to computers at, say, Lockheed Martin.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A backdoor/vulnerability/weakness that the government can exploit is one that a bad actor can exploit. Digital data of many sorts *requires* integrity and confidentiality. To allow an opening for surveillance is to allow an opening for hackers. It is simply not tenable to the economic functioning of the planet to allow communications and storage that are other than secure.