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Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with Re/code recently on a variety of topics relating to technology. The talk included the president's thoughts on encryption, which has been a controversial subject in tech circles lately after government officials (including Obama himself) have publicly complained about default encryption in modern communication tools. In the interview, he says he's a "strong believer in strong encryption," adding, "I lean probably further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement." Obama puts it another way, more bluntly: "There's no scenario in which we don't want really strong encryption." However, the president says the public itself is driving concern for leaving law enforcement a way in: "The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers."
"The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers." - Welcome to leadership Obama. Where sometimes you have to make unpopular/hard choices and live with the consequences.
It's a shame that Snowden did so much damage. Obama could have kept the NSA snooping on everybody and US tech could have continued keeping people in the dark about it. Wait, that's what's going to happen anyway. Keep moving, nothing to see here.
What he has done is something completely different..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I remember when he was a strong believer in transparency too.
People are stupid. Like, really fucking dumb.
Couple that with a 24 hour news cycle nonstop coverage, first time some attack (even 9/11 was utterly minor in terms of life vs, say, annual car accidents) happens, you have these dumb sheep throw the Constitution out the window and yell 'Murica while going full tilt behind a nearly decade long attack on a country that had nothing to do with it.
If you think there is fixing this country, you are severely overestimating the ability of an educational system, any educational system to pound out the stupid. If it could have done so, we wouldn't be still debating evolution and vaccines.
... of HIS data.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Oh, right, you meant that strong encryption is good for ye, but not for me.
What about the other %99 of actual police work that doesn't involved compromising my rights, we just going to toss it?
Yet I want you to give me a copy of the key and trust that it wont fall into the wrong hands or be used illegally against me. See how stupid that sounds Obama?
...is just not paying attention.
I never bought what he was selling, but any democrat who still supported him after he signed an extension of the PATRIOT act is a goddamned hypocrite.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So order the NSA to quit figuring out how to attack us and have them figure out how to protect us.
I hope this doesn't sound too much like the tin-foil hat view of the world, but this whole business of the government's "need" to monitor everyone's phone calls, e-mails, web browsing, smartphone GPS coordinates, travel etc., makes me think of a very significant thing that Noam Chomsky once said, namely that in a free society, where people can do what they like, the government (or the ruling class) has a strong motivation to develop state-of-the-art tools to influence the way people think, whereas in a society where physical actions were controlled by the State, like in the old Soviet Union, the ruling class there didn't develop mind-twisting distortions of reality because with physical control, mind control is unnecessary. And Chomsky identified this as the cause of the total distortion of political language and thinking in the USA in particular, and in physically free countries in general.
Now I'm starting to think that the whole NSA spying thing, and government spying in general, is a direct result of the lack of physical control of the populace. In principal, people in the free countries can think what they want, but only if the government knows what people are thinking at all times. I guess monitoring everyone's thoughts like as if we were all prisoners on parole is a direct consequence of physical freedom. If people are granted the freedom to _do_ what they like, they must give up the right to _think_ what they like, or at least they give up the right to share their thoughts privately with others.
Sounds to me like he is for it when he's not against it.
Its just too bad he isn't as strong a believer in the US Constitution...
"leaving law enforcement a way in"
like a warrant?
"I lean probably further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement."
That's not very encouraging, is it? At least three get-outs there. 1) Only "probably" - does he, or not? Does he know? Are we meant to know? 2) "Some" in law enforcement. Who? Where? One? Many? A majority? 3) "I lean" - which indicates a tendency, for now, unless things change.
David Anderson
You can keep it.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I've got a working model of a new encryption scheme here... I just need protection from the bad side of law enforcement in order to get to work on it.
Does the president know what he's talking about? All he's done is act in a contradictory manner, playing off of people's fears, and upsetting the tech community. He doesn't know what he's talking about, and in the end we have someone whispering in his ear for their own gain.
So, time for asymmetric SSNs?
Watch what he does and appoints. Politician's words have been approaching zero informational content for a long time now.
"Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'"
At least he's made it clear: he's 100% against strong encryption.
if you "leave a way in"
..When I hear this, what my brain sends back to me is "We just struck a deal with Apple and Google to let them have our way into your phones whenever we want."
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
You're not allowed to have those, either.
"the best encryption is computers that crash without backups at the IRS, making it impossible to prove I am a felon!"
The US/UK governments got shot down trying to outright take crypto.
So now they spin to claim it's the people that don't want it.
You guys are buying all this BULLSHIT right up.
Lol.
It sounds like he's caught between a rock and hard place. He might, personally, believe in strong encryption and privacy. But, the series of events since 9/11 have made a stance which prevents the collection of information to prevent another attack a difficult one to sell to the public.
Strong encryption can protect secrets and privacy. The secrets and privacy of the common man is worth protecting. The same technology can also enable our enemies to operate in stealth. Should we have another 9/11 experience and the suspected perpetrator used strong encryption to protect their plans, the public will scream that not enough was done to prevent the attack. How should the president respond?
I am an advocate of strong encryption having started a business in the 90's to provide secure email and file transfer. I also remember the advent of the Clipper chip and the reasons behind it subsequent defeat. We liked to believe our privacy was not being infringed and then Snowden revealed how our intelligence community was violating our rights. At the same time, we haven't had another terrorist attack on our soil lending credence to their methods (valid or not). Snowden, however, also released information on other data and intelligence collection methods. That disclosure allowed our enemies to operate with more impunity through the use of strong encryption and by adjusting their methods to avoid detection.
Sadly, that protection strong encryption provided in order to protect our privacy and rights now becomes a marker of potential threats with other intel methods compromised. Weakened encryption or strong encryption with a backdoor would, theoretically, permit the gov't to pierce the veil when other intel might have put the focus on an innocent citizen and users of strong encryption would be marked as threats.
We, as a nation, have allowed the events of 9/11 to shatter our society and live in a world where our believe of privacy through ignorance was shattered by Snowden's revelations.
The revelations that Snowden provided on the intelligence collection programs aimed at our own citizens, supposedly for our protection, were necessary. However, the disclosures of other techniques and operations on the international front has given our enemy insight and tactics to be able to circumvent critical intelligence collection methods. In that regard, he has done tremendous harm. And, with the shutdown of those programs, the fight is now over when and how strong encryption will be permitted.
Obama is a hypocrypt (okay I was trying to be clever). Obama claiming "There’s No Scenario in Which We Don’t Want Really Strong Encryption" when just last month he told the Wall Street Journal that "The Government shouldn't be hampered by encryption" tells me he is just talking to make noise. You can't have really strong encryption when it is full of government back doors.
There has not been a single instance where encryption has stymied law enforcement. In 2013 there were nine cases where encryption caused a problem for law enforcement. However, all those cases were prosecuted normally. Unfortunately the cops were forced to do actual police work (and get actual warrants) instead of sitting in an office reading a suspects Facebook pages all day (Oh NO!).
In other news...
Someone has worked out a fast way to find the prime factors of a large number.
Welcome to leadership Obama. Where sometimes you have to make unpopular/hard choices and live with the consequences.
And I suppose you're unhappy with Obama for implementing health care...
Or maybe you're unhappy with him for releasing "prisoners" from Guantanamo...
Or maybe you're unhappy with him for murdering innocent civilians (including children) with drone strikes around the world.
Or maybe you're unhappy with him because the US foreign policy of bombing and deploying troops without declaring war, is one of the biggests threads to world peace, up there with Mr Putin...
For whatever reason you don't like him. Let's just agree that he certainly has made unpopular decisions.
And he lives with the consequences, such as republicans unwilling to make any deals with him, or get anything done.
(the quick reader will notice from my wording that I don't think all of his decisions were good).
...that he will be strongly in favor of whatever the audience is in favor of in whatever venue he's speaking (because he won't really talk to Republicans anyway, so in that sense self-selecting).
-Styopa
I voted for the fucker, but the immigration "amnesty" has been the last straw
for me.
Obama has let his position swell his ego and is making decisions he
HAS NO LEGAL RIGHT TO MAKE.
The judge in Texas made the right call. I'd buy the guy a drink if I could.
The US will not have another black president in the next 50 years, mark my words.
We need strong encryption for use by law-abiding citizens, and weak encryption for use by criminals.
The public is not driving a "demand" for law enforcement to have a way past people's strong encryption. They're driving a navel-gazing demand that everyone else's strong encryption be breakable, but not theirs.
Worse, law enforcement is ignoring the fact that they're supposed to get warrants to access people's information, and are bitching to high hell that people are taking steps to stop their illegal snooping.
Too bad, fuzzballs. You, the NSA, CSEC, GCHQ, and everyone else who thinks their "need" to spy is greater than my need for information security can take a spin on a sharp pole.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
50 years?
Try never again.
Next time democrats will nominate a former (or active) ISIS member and all the teens and libtards will praise it as 'progress'.
Obama puts it another way, more bluntly: "There's no scenario in which we don't want really strong encryption." However, the president says the public itself is driving concern for leaving criminals no way in: "The first time that an attack takes place on millions of bank accounts in which it turns out that we could have prevented it with encryption, the public's going to demand answers."
Still demanding answers for 9/11. Please release the full document.
Dear Mr. President,
Back in 1997 a group of leading experts wrote a paper about "leaving law enforcement a way in". From that paper's Executive Summary:
The deployment of key-recovery-based encryption infrastructures to meet law enforcement's stated specifications will result in substantial sacrifices in security and greatly increased costs to the end user. Building the secure computer-communication infrastructures necessary to provide adequate technological underpinnings demanded by these requirements would be enormously complex and is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field. Even if such infrastructures could be built, the risks and costs of such an operating environment may ultimately prove unacceptable. In addition, these infrastructures would generally require extraordinary levels of human trustworthiness.
Remember: when he ran for President in 2008 he said he was a Christian who believed strongly in the traditional definition of marriage. After he was in office, he "evolved", now claiming to be a strong supporter of gay marriage. His old buddy Axelrod has admitted in his new book that this was all a lie and that Obama was always for gay marriage. Before the 2014 election, Obama went around the country telling Hispanics they needed to vote for Democrats in order to get any amnesty because he (supposedly a Constitutional law professor (he was NOT a professor, but most of the public has been mislead to believe he was)) lacked the legal authority to make an amnesty play. He repeatedly said that only Congress coulf do it. After the November election when the Democrats lost the Senate, suddenly Mr Obama began to assert that he does indeed have the power to provide amnesty (apparently using the little-known Constitutional "my way or the highway clause" which allows Presidents to ignore congress and do whatever they want when the congress does not do what they wish it did (a clause all previous presidents have wished for but none has ever found)).
Far too many politicians lie about lots of small stuff to curry favorable feelings from groups of supporters and this behaviour USED to raise eyebrows if it got too significant policy-wise, but the current occupant of 1600 Penn had taken this to the steroid level - he seems supremely confident that none of the mainstream media will nail him on any of it even though there's plenty of video. Give the behavior of the press over the past 6 years, his confidence is quite understandable.
So, Obama doesn't really want strong encryption, he just wants to sound like he does. He's given use the same double-speak on extrajudicial killings, NSA spying, and handouts to banks, Wall Street, and big corporations. Obama is just a windbag.
There's no such thing as strong encryption with a backdoor. That backdoor will be exploited.
The solution really is allow whatever you want in transit but require companies to store the raw thing... which then leads to data breaches.. So just give up.
It's like when he says that he "believes" in the right to keep and bear arms. There's an asterisk in there somewhere.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's a trap!
PGP has been out since '91. How does he plan to put that genie back in the bottle?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
One would think so, but our Government has gone way overboard in trying to spy on everyone all the time. This insanity goes way back, you probably know about the Clipper Chip. It's not new, and no they have not learned. The NSA has done some great things with Linux and Auditd, but at the same time completely broken public encryption on more than one occasion. CISPA (a slightly modified version) is back on the agenda and a few politicians are trying to fast track them.
No, they have not learned a thing. It is the same people in political offices over and over, which explains why they refuse to learn. They don't want to learn, they want more power and control.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's still better than the pre-Obamacare system.
The only other cheaper option would have been a single-payer system. But we live in a country where regulatory capture is extremely common. And Medicare isn't exactly cheap, precisely because the price of a single payer system like Medicare is profit padding. Compound that by a universal single-payer system and the possible profit padding could be immense.
Plus, a single-payer system would have never passed. Plenty of Democrats wouldn't have voted for a single payer system, and no Republican would have.
Realize the selective forces at work in politics.
The job is most attractive to power-hungry sociopaths. It is *also* attractive to true selfless statesmen, but such people are rare. Most of the applicants lean on the power-hungry sociopath side.
Furthermore, the sociopaths have a political advantage over the statesmen: lack of principles. The sociopaths can lie, cheat, doublecross, bait-and-switch, and pull all sorts of underhanded tricks in order to defeat the statesmen.
On the extremely rare chance that a true statesman gains any degree of power at all, he very quickly learns that the *only* means by which he can garner support for his political agenda is to sell out to other political factions (the original intent of this system had something to do with cooperation, but the net effect is a need to pander to one's political rivals and neutrals in order to get anything done). Before too long, the statesman is transformed into a liar and panderer, just like his sociopathic contemporaries.
Therefore, there is never, and never will be, a president that is not a power-hungry liar. This is true for all members of government. The only forces that drive them to do anything good are: public accountability (which only matters when enough people are aware and concerned enough to impact polls), many policies that are in the best interest of the wealthy upper class are also in the best interest of the greater good.
That is *it*. All else is bullshit.
Politicians never tell you what they REALLY believe. They only tell you what they think will make you believe what they want you to believe.
Obama has been nothing but one of the most overrated and negligent presidents of our time. He will say anything, stand before any teleprompter, and pander to the lowest denominator for attention. Truly a product of our modern times...
It is a different time now so while you can blame the Democrats then for opposing privacy, now after 9/11, you can't blame them.
Seriously, is there anyone left on Earth who still thinks this guy has any credibility whatsoever?
He is also a strong believer in
-closing Guantanamo
-transparent government
-closing corporate tax loopholes
-elimination of no-bid contracts
-Santa Claus
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this discussion, but I would like to take this opportunity to affirm my loyal and unwavering support to our democratically-elected government and especially to our President Barack Hussein Obama. I am awed by the great and hard job they are doing to keep up safe and to restory security and prosperiti to this great Nation, and understand they only have our best interests at heart, and know what's best for us. I wish them all the best and will keep on supporting our government. That is all I wanted to say. Thank you.
If the public is demanding an answer, give them the answer. Encryption keeps our data safe. That's the point of encryption. It is important.to both our financial system and democracy, and [insert scary scenario] is a lesser concern than those.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...the president says the public itself is driving concern for leaving law enforcement a way in: "The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers."
LOL. Who would know you had a lead, to be upset about it, if you could not decrypt that lead? I honestly do not see/hear the public demanding a back door, I hear that only from the government. That answer was tooled specifically to gull the stupid. One COULD stretch it and pretend he meant "we had a lead but could not decrypt it until after a critical event made it useless" well, we would not want strong encryption so much if only our government would stick to warrant only search/seizure.
"The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers" - The first time? How many times has this already happened and no action was taken.
Benghazi - The government had plenty of intel on the impending attack and yet did nothing. People died as a result of this inaction.
9/11 - Again, plenty of advance warning and no action.
Mortgage meltdown/Lehman Brothers collapse - Nobody died here but The Fed, in concert with the Federal government, precipitated the mortgage meltdown by insisting on keeping interest rates artificially low and fueling risky sub prime loans. The government pressured the Fed to keep the rates low. The Fed, which is charged with regulating banking activity, stood by and allowed banks to engage in risky activity (CDO's, etc).
BP oil spill - Government inspectors failed to uncover the substandard materials and workmanship that led to the spill - despite numerous inspections.
The common thread here is that the government had the information and yet failed to take the proper action. Why should we believe that allowing back doors to encryption will yield a different result?
Public, I already have your answer. You problem is that back around 1789 you moved to America. If you wanted the needs of a police state to come before your freedom, you could have lived pretty much anywhere else. And you still have a lot of options, if you're simply convinced that America is a bad idea.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"I never said I didn't like X, I'm strongly in favor of X. But I think it's important that X not by used by Y to defeat America. Therefore, I think it's extremely important that we ban X because Z" where: X = anything Y = terrorists / criminals Z = reasons
.. to defend their own freedom it seems. Most certainly know dickshit about encryption. Most have been taught to be fearful and have no balls, handing over their privacy as if it had no value to corporates and governments alike. You have more chance of being killed crossing the road than you have of dying in a terrorist attack. You have no sense of perspective and allow yourselves to be exploited by these assholes that you put in charge. Doors without locks, or doors through which the government can walk into your life at any time, were a flashpoint in the American Revolution. How short your memories are, Americans.
The public is not "going to demand answers" over strong encryption. Plus, can We drop the notion being "further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement" means you are a "strong believer in strong encryption". You can be the thinnest Kid at fat camp and still be fat.
Rubber hoses are weak. You never get threatened with a rubber hose or a $5 wrench, without knowing it happened and your enemy revealing himself. It takes irrevocable commitment and admission of guilt on their part, and therefore risk of consequences, to take things to that level.
When they bring that stuff out, comply. Sing like a bird. They get the data they want, and then you call the media and your lawyer (or the cops, if your adversary with the hose/wrench doesn't happen to be the cops), and the TRUE bitchslapping (to whatever degree is possible, at least) may then commence.
Crypto is good. Sure, you can still find some bad things within that scenario: your privacy was still violated rather than protected. Maybe they're going to "disappear" you so that you never get to tell anyone about the threat or torture. Maybe they're going to torture you anyway after you give up your keys. But all those possibilities also exist in the plaintext scenario too! If they want to murder you, they'll do it. If they want to torture you, they'll do it. Psychopaths are going to do whatever they're going to to. But they slip up and get caught sometimes, and if you confront them with crypto, there's also the chance they'll do what many other criminals usually do: pick an easier target.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Ever notice that the president is limited to two terms, but Congress is not? Isn't it rather convenient that for the consistently bad ratings Congress gets, it always seems to be Obamas or Bushes who get the blame and the ire? I suspect that if not by design, that dynamic is now essentially relied on by the Congress.
there is a wing of the GOP that is either Honor Bound or Genetically Programmed to take the opposite side.
One of these days, he's going to come out Against Russian Roulette. And 1/6 of the ones that own revolvers are going to shoot themselves in the head. 100% of the ones that own Glocks.
"If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan."
"If you like your plan you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor..." Jonathan Gruber proved that was a deliberate, sit-around-the-table-and-make-it-pretty LIE he used for YEARS, while he KNEW all the while Obamacare would do no such thing for the majority of the country, and that it was PLANNED that way. Why believe him on this? When will people learn a liar lies?
It apparently never occurred to you that it is HE who is taking the opposite side of everything THEY support. The Current GOP is to the left of 1980's Jimmy Carter (though nowhere NEAR as left as the modern Jimmy) and yet even though the beltway GOP supports lots of crap that the Democrats used to be firmly committed to, Obama has not been able to compromise with them on ANYTHING. He always SAYS things like "I'm happy to talk with them if they have any better ideas" but of course since he believes that they are wrong on EVERYTHING (and has repeatedly said so) that means they never have any "better ideas" and he has therefore never listened to them on anything.
Before some dope brings up that ONE paper from ONE GOP-related think tank that inspired the mandate in Obamacare (a policy most of the GOP NEVER endorsed or were even aware of) and tried to blame all of Obamacare on some imaginary grand compromise with the GOP, let me point out that the Democrats never negotiated on Obamacare - THEY PHYSICALLY LOCKED THE DOORS TO THE ROOM to keep the Republicans out of all the drafting and negotiating. That mandate was NOT a compromise with the GOP, it was a deal with the insurance company lobbyists (who WERE allowed through those otherwise-locked doors and who also influenced that infamous think tank); it was a crony capitalist play by "big insurance" which was launched (like all such corruption) at politicians in BOTH parties, always with the supreme confidence that the most evil guys in both parties will do the bidding of the lobbyists in exchange for bribes ... errrr... "campaign contributions"
You're living in a world devoid from reality if you believe what politicians are SAYING instead of finding out what they're really DOING.
Casteism
"Obama tells lie and forgets to care."
News at 12:
"Politicians will say whatever the fuck they think you want to hear and you will vote for them because of it, and that's why we're all hosed."
This is your fault, America. I say "your" because I don't buy into this shit; unfortunately, thanks to the rest of you, we're ALL stuck with it. Good work.