Europol Chief Warns About Computer Encryption

An anonymous reader writes The law enforcement lobbying campaign against encryption continues. Today it's Europol director Rob Wainwright, who is trying to make a case against encryption. "It's become perhaps the biggest problem for the police and the security service authorities in dealing with the threats from terrorism," he explained. "It's changed the very nature of counter-terrorist work from one that has been traditionally reliant on having good monitoring capability of communications to one that essentially doesn't provide that anymore." This is the same man who told the European Parliament that Europol is not going to investigate the alleged NSA hacking of the SWIFT (international bank transfer) system. The excuse he gave was not that Europol didn't know about it, because it did. Very much so. It was that there had been no formal complaint from any member state.

Comments

Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Encryption isn't new so why are they crying about it now? It makes no sense unless they are trying to sneak another fast one by the rubes in the general public. Tell your elected officials to stop whining about encryption and embrace it. Also, tell them we're tired of all these invasions to our rights to privacy because of an existential threat.

No, encryption is NOT going away and you're not getting a back door. Eff off and get to work on something useful and stop playing games!

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Encryption isn't new so why are they crying about it now?

Easy there ... watching your horse bolt away over the hill can be very upsetting you know!

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Hadlock]

PGP isn't exactly known for being user friendly. Gmail does not support it out of the box. The average person just can't be expected to understand that kind of cryptography.
 
That said, if you encrypt the device, encrypt the transport method, and the receiving device, that's pretty damn secure in about 98% of situations. WhatsApp just rolled out end to end encryption for their service as well, and they only charge a dollar a year (I think). That's encryption the average person can use. When an 18 year old mother of two in Sao Paulo can review her grocery list with her mother via secure encryption and neither of them know they're even doing it, that's a whole new level of secure. Compare that to the plain text emails I get from my boss about what I might consider vastly more important things at the office.
 
The golden era of unencrypted plaintext email is just about dead, I think, is the problem for intelligence agencies. At least for those people outside of gleaming glass corporate offices.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[SuricouRaven]

Encryption isn't new, but tansparent on-by-default encryption is. Remember just how tech-dumb the average person is - you'd be lucky if you could get them to realise a web browser and the internet are not the same thing. Most governments weren't too worried (US aside) when encryption was something available only to the moderately skilled, especially in communications where the lowest standard has to rule*. After the NSA scandal though, companies are starting to design encryption into their products at a lower level, such that the user benefits without even having to know what encryption is.

*Would you like to explain to your mother how to use gnupg to encrypt emails?

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

When an 18 year old mother of two in Sao Paulo can review her grocery list with her mother via secure encryption and neither of them know they're even doing it, that's a whole new level of secure.

Sounds like the kind of secure you wouldn't notice if it was disabled.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[GNious]

Europol talks about terrorists - I'm not sure they count as average, since they have a vested interest in secure/secret communication.

Simply, that random parent doesn't know, care about or understand encryption, does not mean random terror-group doesn't (and didn't already a decade+ ago).

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[gl4ss]

besides the fuck it's going to do good for anyone if they snoop on everyone all the time anyways if they will not even do anything unless some 3rd party then tells them to do something about the crime.

like with the swift: did they tell the member states about the hack? how the fuck could they complain if they're not told about it.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[aaaaaaargh!]

They are crying now because some companies no longer want to cooperate with them by developing deliberately weak standards (e.g. cell phone encryption) and by providing illegal backdoors for wiretapping without warrant. So they want to be able to force them by law, which means that they need to convince politicians first.

In my pessimistic opinion, the most probable outcome of this debate is that companies will bow (again) to the authorities like they did before and provide the backdoors voluntarily, presumably in the form of vulnerabilities that are not published.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

PGP isn't exactly known for being user friendly. Gmail does not support it out of the box. The average person just can't be expected to understand that kind of cryptography...

And since when does survival include the weakest members of the herd?

Those that figure it out will survive. Those that don't, wouldn't have bothered to learn anyway. Apathy thins the herd nicely.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail, or any webmail service, cannot support it without making PGP pretty much useless, because when the PGP part is done by the webmail service, the webmail service must have all your private keys and then anyone who can put pressure on the webmail service can read your mail.

Use actual e-mail client software if you want to use PGP, or copy paste the cypher-text.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Z00L00K]

I agree - the damage caused by not having encryption will be severe. The criminals will still be able to find ways around it while the average person will be exposed to all kinds of evil.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Pieroxy]

If you've got a keylogger (or any king of process) running locally, no amount of encryption is going to save you. That's how they got some of the ISIS members, by just running a TOR node and sending infected page to everyone that got out through their node. As a result they infected ISIS members using TOR along with everyone else on the TOR network vulnerable to their infection.

Knowing they're inside the firmware of your HDDs, I think they're aware of this.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

They're crying because with encryption, the shit heads actually have to work, as in do detective work and earn their paychecks. Boo hoo.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got a keylogger (or any king of process) running locally, no amount of encryption is going to save you. That's how they got some of the ISIS members, by just running a TOR node and sending infected page to everyone that got out through their node. As a result they infected ISIS members using TOR along with everyone else on the TOR network vulnerable to their infection.

Reference link?

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reference, because that never happened. He doesn't want you to use Tor though.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is in a society everyone is supposed to have the same rights no matter how fit they are for survival. I know it's a pain, but when your encryption skills were not particularly valuable those "weakest links" were keeping you fed and warm.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I am ignorant, what is the problem to wrap in pgp (encrypt&sign) text message and then paste it into gmail editor?

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[jonwil]

There are JavaScript (and other client-side-but-in-the-browser) implementations of all kinds of encryption algorithms out there. The mega.co.nz site does client-side encryption before uploading to the server (so they never get the plaintext)

I see no real reason why you couldn't have a client side/browser extention/JavaScript/whatever implementation of something like PGP/GPG where the private keys never get seen by the web mail provider (it would mean each device you want to send email from has to have its own copy of the private key stored somewhere though)

Google and Yahoo already have in-browser addons in development that are designed to do client-side end-to-end encryption in the browser for their email platforms.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[AmiMoJo]

I'm actually surprised he mentioned communications, although I suppose man chat apps do use encryption now which is probably more of a concern than email. The main issue law enforcement tends to have is with encrypted data on storage devices. In the past once they had your phone or computer they could datarape it effortlessly, nowadays it's often completely impenetrable, or at least as hard to crack as the user's password.

Re: Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint for the under-informed: If you don't know you're using encryption, someone else is managing your keys. If someone else is managing your keys, they can let cops, intelligence agencies, and other kinds of bad actors in without you knowing it.

Better than nothing? Sure. However, a little understanding of what it is and is not good for can go a long way, and that's exactly what must people don't have.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Wootery]

Eff off

Correction: EFF off.

Bumper-sticker idea...

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[MitchDev]

The government is our enemy, regardless of what country we live in. Even the so-called "bastions of freedom" have fallen to the police state mentality.
The government SHOULD fear the citizens, not vice versa.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[BrokenHalo]

Those that figure it out will survive.

Hmmm. From a terrorist's point of view, those who bypass encryption entirely will survive, at least for long enough to do what they intend. A one-to-one conversation on a beach or other exposed place is a good way of achieving this, and it would appear that they know it.

Those IS nutjobs seem to have learned that the best way to avoid being trapped in the mesh of surveillance programs is to fragment their operations to the extent that they all operate as lone wolves. It clearly works.

Most people who need to be concerned about excessive and intrusive government surveillance are everyday people who just like to have the bathroom door shut while they're having a dump.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[cold fjord]

... we're tired of all these invasions to our rights to privacy because of an existential threat.

"+5 Insightful"? That's about right for Slashdot on this topic. At present the Darwin Awards are for individual achievement, but I can see the possibility of a day coming when it will become a collective, national, or societal achievement.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Hadlock]

If the target, the target's friends and target's friends friends are all using encryption for 98% of communications, while you can still crack it (presumably?) you have to know what you're looking for in advance, like you would when applying for a warrant. That sort of defeats this huge plaintext scanning system the NSA and English governments have been putting in to place for the last half decade or more. Without all the supplemental background information their job gets exponentially harder and there's more data to decrypt than they have computing resources for.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[jythie]

Encryption is not new, but it is becoming increasingly accessible to non-technical people, so the sheep buffer of people not using it is starting to dwindle.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[karmatic]

This is more a discussion about mobile devices, which (unless you jailbreak them) don't trust the user.

Barring a root exploit (which do exist for a bit, and are patched when found), a keylogger on android is much less of a possibility. With Apple, the crypto is handled in hardware, and a keylogger gets to be near impossible (though phishing is not).

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[jythie]

I too am rather skeptical. While there is always the possibility of parallel construction, the narrative that they used old fashioned 'pretend to be a recruiter and talk with people' technique seems pretty plausible, which does not require any kind of keylogging or breaking Tor.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[deuxm]

Right ... but ignorance is a choice ... it ain't a birth defect. And yes everyone has the right to choose to be ignorant or not.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Gr8Apes]

This is easily possible, but realize who you're talking about - this is Google (G), and G makes its money by scanning your plaintext email and building profiles about you to sell ads and marketing metrics. If gmail goes PGP, then G loses the ability to scan that plaintext email, unless it's doing so via a client side process to send the information its interested in prior to encryption, also possible, but kind of defeats the purpose of encryption in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if GTalk goes away soon, because more people are starting to use OTR supported clients. G only sees encrypted messages, pretty useless for gathering data.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

One fact which these agencies commonly exploit is is that encryption (and anonimity services such as Tor) are popular only among niche users, which means they can (and do) just track all of them. Post-Snowden, many mainstream services are starting to provide proper (end to end) encryption, mainly out of fear that competition will outrun them in that area and steal their users.
Once a mainstream service is encrypted, they can no longer spy on a local weed dealer, not filter out pro criminals/terrorists etc. which would be able to use this stuff and hide away their communication.

In any case, for them the battle is lost because anyone doing a serious drug business (or e.g. ISIS cell and that kind of a thing) have already taken care of going back to the roots (no phones, no doing business online except in places you know you can't be seen or heard.

In fact, many of these people are paranoid enough to suppose these things could've been happening even before Snowden. if it is possible, it can be done. Just that pre-Snowden there was a notion that privacy rights, laws and even slugishness of the administration prevented that from happening. Lesson is that the state wants people to believe that it is a dull organization not capable of putting a bunch of masterminds in one place.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Europol talks about terrorists - I'm not sure they count as average, since they have a vested interest in secure/secret communication.

Which is rather the point. I and a lot of other people believe that Europol and other similar groups are merely talking about terrorists as a smoke screen to justify their spying on average people. As you say, the terrorists are likely already using encryption and no amount of the law will per se change that fact--the cat is out the bag. Even heavily associating encryption with terrorism, trying to reduce the ranks of those who use encryption, and merely focusing on those who use encryption as priori knowledge doesn't work because there too many legitimate uses of encryption and trying to sieve based upon encryption is entirely the wrong approach* to actually locate and deal with terrorists except possibly to vaguely look for areas to begin new intelligence gathering.

Now, I and others could give Europol and other similar groups some benefit of the doubt and presume that pre-terrorist activities may be more likely to be caught if those activities are non-encrypted, but honestly we can also presume that most those activities are either (1) trying to contact extant terrorist groups which itself is a red-flag for investigation or (2) spinning up one's own terrorist group which most likely will produce already suspicious behavior that will itself be a basis for investigation. If neither circumstance arises sufficient for investigation or the investigation turns up fruitless and the net effect is a terrorist attack, that still doesn't justify the pervasive sort of monitoring that seems to the espoused norm of intelligence groups today. Because even then, it's asking to replace the fear of terrorism with the monster of a police state.

So, to that end, it's actually almost better to believe that Europol and others are doing it for more petty, nefarious acts of possibly commercial interest. Of course, the best case scenario would be Europol (and others) to be either dismantled or severely curtailed in its acts, but I'm not too hopeful of that because as much as the average person is unlikely to care or understand encryption, they're unlikely to care or understand why groups like Europol trying to subvert encryption show their malicious intent and illegitimacy.

* As part of a free and just society, the sort of pervasive monitoring that would detect encryption is itself wrong regardless of how successful of an approach it'd be to actually finding terrorists.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Dunbal]

WhatsApp just rolled out end to end encryption for their service as well

Right. And exactly how is WhatsApp supposed to monetize you and data-mine you if your messages are encrypted? I'm of the opinion that this is a marketing gimmick with Whatsapp sitting as the man in the middle.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

it's because they'll have to get off their donut munching asses and do some proper detective work.

degrading or making encryption illegal or otherwise restrictive would just be another way in which the terraristas have won, but they're already making good progress on that with all of the current ridiculously useless restrictions and shenanigans... apparently mostly to make it seem like politicans and bureaucrats are doing something, and secondly to appease the sheepies...

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Herd immunity applies here. Until everyone is encrypted, some of our comms to non-technical friends will be unencrypted.

Of course, this being Slashdot, 'friends' may not be a valid use case.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

If that means they have to do manual work per individual device or do some careful selection of targets for some other reason, half of the battle is already won.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you would though. You'd notice the next time you go to the ATM and all your account balances are -$500, your stock portfolio has vanished, and your 401k wrote a check out to Florida. Everyone harps on about how encryption makes finding the terrorist harder, but no-one wants to offer a solution to make the average person safer from cybercrime. They're taking away our digital guns because bad guys have them. Well, no shit. Of course the bad guys have them. The bad guys have anything that would construct a 'defense'...against 'anything'. Bad guys defend themselves. Film at 11. What's more is that making the encryption illegal won't stop them using it either. Remember, they're criminals. Taking away the guns won't make us safer. Taking away the drugs won't make us safer. Take away anything that people want and you create a black-market and organized crime. That makes *everyone* less safe. This is nothing but a mandate to turn us all into even bigger targets.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[chuckugly]

Like mailvelope I guess?

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

When an 18 year old mother of two in Sao Paulo can review her grocery list with her mother via secure encryption and neither of them know they're even doing it, that's a whole new level of secure.

Sounds like the kind of secure you wouldn't notice if it was disabled.

Just have a different text bubble color. Works well for iMessage.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[datavirtue]

That, and people (terrorists?) generally trusted that their SSL/TLS certs were protecting their communications. I have to assume the NSA got hold of those and forged a man-in-the-middle relationship. Even if they didn't I still have to assume they did and go through extra measures to protect my communications.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

When an 18 year old mother of twelve in Yakima, WA can review her alimony list with her parole officer via secure encryption and neither of them know they're even doing it, that's a whole new level of secure.

There, FTFY.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

WhatsApp just rolled out end to end encryption for their service as well, and they only charge a dollar a year (I think).

I can not possibly think of a cheaper, easier way to capture 'encrypted' data. If I were an off the grid, deep cover security organisation looking for ways to get hooks into the population's encrypted data, I would do this. I would pay what ever or who ever it takes to make this happen. Then I would complain about encryption even louder to bring attention to it.

Just sayin...

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like some moderators are OK with winning Darwin Awards as a group.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[hackwrench]

Yeah, exactly. I don't see why the surveillance community doesn't get that if you ban encryption then anyone, not just them can see your unencrypted things and won't keep encryption out of the hands of the bad guys. Maybe they think if encryption is only used by the bad guys it will be detectable and they can arrest the bad guys simply for using encryption.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[JimFive]

WhatsApp isn't the man in the middle, they are at both ends.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Pieroxy]

Not quite exactly what I was talking about, but close: http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on.

Google Corp has released lot's of new software, hardware & services over the past 2 years. Yet they still haven't officially launched encrypted email. Like this multi-billion dollar behemoth couldn't make client-side email encryption available within *months* if it really wanted to.l

I'm certain they're dragging their feet on this for the exact reasons you mention above.

Don't be evil ... my arse.

Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

You say "existential". I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re: Oh For Crying Out Loud

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't fix stupid. You can only protect yourself (and your family, if you're the IT guy).

Europol is not investigative

[Anonymous Coward]

Europol not investigating is not strange. That is not their job. Cross border investigations are handled by the police in the memberstates, but with coordination from europol.

Whatever people believe, europol is not an european fbi. Although, it would probably improve things if they did become one...

Re:Europol is not investigative

[Pi1grim]

If they uncover criminal activity isn't it their duty to inform the victim?

Re: Europol is not investigative

[Anonymous Coward]

No. If anything, it would be their duty to inform the police in the victim's country. They're an administrative organisation, not a police force.

Re: Europol is not investigative

[Anonymous Coward]

100% overhead, high levels of authority, 0% responsibility. From years of experience and the accumulation of wisdom that tells me if Europol disappeared tomorrow there would be no increase in world dangers and a dramatic decrease in corruption. This news story merely confirms that their self-driven purpose is clearly not their stated purpose.

Citizens are not to be trusted.

[pspahn]

As Tom Waits wondered, what's he building in there?

Re:Citizens are not to be trusted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Waits' song is pure genius for this phobic and neurotic world. On the subject, they have been building user friendly encryption packages for many years already.

Your Fault

[Bob9113]

"It's changed the very nature of counter-terrorist work from one that has been traditionally reliant on having good monitoring capability of communications to one that essentially doesn't provide that anymore."

You backed us into a corner by monitoring non-suspects.

It's your fault.

Dickhead.

Re:Your Fault

[Bob9113]

I'm gonna pretend you're actually interested in the answer, but let's face it, we're really talking past each other, to our fellow Slashdotters. Thank you for smoking.

The reason for the mass move to encryption -- like Wikipedia and Google moving to default HTTPS, and people like me working on making encryption more approachable by the masses -- was the revelation that non-suspects were being monitored. That is why there is now a haystack within which to hide the needles, and that is why the encryption is now too strong for the intelligence agencies to break when we really want them to be able to.

Moreover, while I'm here, and since I want terrorists to get caught, let me add this: The solution is not increasing the level of distrust between citizens and government. The solution is restoring the reasonable, moderated, level of trust that we used to have in the executive branch. That starts with the ones who created the rift, and that is not the people who were sending all their traffic in the clear; it is the assholes who recorded it all and denied they were doing it.

Re:Your Fault

[Dutch Gun]

The solution is restoring the reasonable, moderated...

And so naturally he gets modded "Flamebait"

Re:Your Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

He was asking to be moderated.

Re:Your Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is not increasing the level of distrust between citizens and government.

This part should be stressed a bit more.
The government already had eyes everywhere with a control system known as the general public.
A citizen that trusts the government and law enforcement reports suspect activity.
If reporting suspect activity lands you in trouble of doesn't lead to anything then citizens stop reporting crimes.
That is why some areas you can get mugged and the response will be "Why did you venture into that part of town, is there something wrong with you?"
People there do not trust law enforcement and do not report crimes.

The surveillance state is leading to a situation where the entire country distrusts the government.

Re:Your Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The cat is out of the bag - if people think they are taped, they will act differently - well some anyway most or all of the time.

In Australia, even the monitoring of everything was passed with barely any objection. Never liked peeping toms.
In reality, parking fines, rates and child support became national security, as well as say reconstructing legally privileged information.

Encryption is not a problem, because traditional surveillance should be used in addition to - it is not -one or the other. The problem is the level of public distrust. The next move will be cyber static, and full encryption of all packets, sanitizing packet headers -so that deep level stateful packet inspection will just have to record everything, adding TV series downloads and adult stuff..

So we will put VPN on top of Foreign VPN and mix and match it with a few Raspberry Pi dongles with more encryption.
The crime here is the extra CO2 global warming in electricity for scrambling bits and bytes, and triple logging them, multiplied by some proportion of the world population.

Re:Your Fault

[AmiMoJo]

He should just come out and say what he really means, to show that he is at least honest about what he wants us to submit to. He wants to violate our privacy. He wants to take away privacy in exchange for some small amount of security.

Say that, and at least some people will respect you.

Re:Your Fault

[Gr8Apes]

The surveillance state is leading to a situation where the entire country distrusts the government.

Umm, that boat sailed a couple of years ago. I don't believe anyone really trusts the gov at this point, and that's not a good state of affairs.

Because obviously..

[Altrag]

Of course, terrorists are well known as the most law abiding citizens on the planet.

Or maybe this guy thinks the universe will just make prime numbers and whatnot stop working because he doesn't like what they can do.

Both are equally likely to produce useful counter-terrorism results.

Re:Because obviously..

[davester666]

Hey, these guys didn't go into policework because they were experts at math...

Re:Because obviously..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Both are equally likely to produce useful counter-terrorism results.

The most effective thing to do for counter-terrorism is to keep blowing up families in the Middle East and occupying "holy lands". Keep bombing villages until democracy emerges.

To do so, we need ever-stronger Nation States, and giving them the ability to monitor all of their subjects' domestic communications is a good rung up on that ladder.

Also, Facebook is the real danger to world peace - so be very upset about their ad network and don't bother encrypting your traffic.

Re:Because obviously..

[RyoShin]

Of course, terrorists are well known as the most law abiding citizens on the planet.

To play devil's advocate: By outlawing encryption, the amount of "law-abiding citizens" that use it will drop precipitously. Then, when the NSA intercepts an encrypted signal, it becomes far more likely that both ends are $BOOGEYMAN, and their resources won't be spread as thin. Even if both ends are decidedly not $BOOGEYMAN, they are either foreigners, citizens with little regard for the law, or a combination of the two, and so need to go on one of the myriad of watchlists anyway.

So even though outlawing encryption won't end encryption, it will make the NSA/FBI/Europol/etc.'s job of getting leads much easier.

When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[MindPrison]

...then we have a problem with government.

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[Zocalo]

I suspect that's actually the underlying problem for the security & intelligence services. It's not so much the fact that regular citizens are starting to use encryption that they have a problem with so much as through the use of encryption by default they're losing the ability to find the more interesting chatter by simply looking for people that are even using encryption in the first place. When your entire haystack is made out of needles, finding the few you are actually interested in becomes that many orders of magnitude harder.

Well, screw that. What they are basically saying is "make our jobs easier for us", but what they are failing to point out is that by doing so they are also leaving people exposed to everyone else that might want to eavesdrop on random communications, and in particular all those people/organizations/countries that they are meant to be securing each other against. If *you* have access to it, then so do your opponents - so the real question, and the one that really needs to be addressed, is which is the lesser of the two evils - having your nation secure from outsiders, or making the job of securing your nation against internal threats slightly easier? Given the complete failure of the security & intelligence services to demonstrate they can achieve the latter even before encryption become a big issue I'd say that's a complete no brainer.

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

...then we have a problem with governments.

ftfy

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[UnknownSoldier]

/Oblg. "Government: Terrorists who extorts its citizens to prevent another group of terrorists from taking over its job."

Re: When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly we have a problem with law enforcement. It doesn't help that to many individual behaviors (and not enough corporate ones) are criminal acts these days either.

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[Jason Levine]

What they are basically saying is "make our jobs easier for us"

We've been seeing a lot of this recently. From the RIAA/MPAA who would like the ability to get the personal information on multiple people on the flimsiest of evidence of copyright infringement (because actually gathering evidence on each one and suing each person in the appropriate district is too hard) to the government law enforcement agencies who feel that asking a court for a warrant - even when said court never turns them down - is too much effort.

It's one thing to be power-hungry. It's quite another to be power-hungry AND lazy!

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

"make our jobs easier for us",

This is a fundamental sticking point that I haven't heard any cop talk about.

The US Constitution purposely makes it hard to go after someone. This is not a bug in the system, but a feature. When cops argue (in effect) "you're making it just too hard" realize that they're bashing the Constitution. Maybe they feel times have changed enough the Constitution should be changed, but while it's around, you follow it. Just like us normal folks have to follow laws we may not like.

Re:When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not every citizen. Just the arabs and paki's.

We used to believe that, then the NSA started watching white people's packets and phone logs. It's every citizen now.

Re: When every citizen is a potential terrorist...

[dcollins117]

Our own government doesn't obey the law, why should we? This is standard Pisoner's Dilemna. Once the other side defects, you must too. Continue to cooperate and you lose. Badly.

He thinks it is bad now?

[Karmashock]

Given the arrogance of the NSA and other national security agencies, they can expect encryption to increase radically. This is a natural consequence of their refusal to abide by due process as well as generally doing whatever the hell they want because they "can".

That attitude is a double edged sword. And they are just now feeling the bite of the other edge as the global community responds to their behavior.

Not only will the sophistication of encryption spread by it will go from being an option to being a default status quo. In the not too distant future, if they want access to data, they will need to get the cooperation of the owner of that data... or get nothing at all.

Re:He thinks it is bad now?

[Anonymous Coward]

For most of its history, the Fourth Amendment has never been about protecting privacy, but rather protecting against using the state's power to disrupt innocent people's lives.

The SCOTUS decision of Katz v. United States counters that assertion, particularly in the realm of wiretapping.

Besides, how do you know that an ongoing unreasonable warrantless dragnet over the entire country isn't a disruption? It's insidious, even more so when the public wasn't aware of it.

To use the mandatory Slashdot car analogy, if a police officer asked you first, how often would you grant permission for him to pull you over, regardless of your speed?

To lawfully pull you over, the police officer must have probable cause to do so - to do otherwise is proscribed by the Fourth Amendment. It may be as trivial as a broken taillight, but probable cause nonetheless.

By conducting indiscriminate monitoring of the speed of vehicles, he's probing your vehicle's status, and that's invading your privacy.

With some exceptions (see United States v. Jones), you generally do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy on public roads.

Re:He thinks it is bad now?

[N1AK]

Rather, what actually happened is that the spy agencies watched everybody, and by and large didn't care about people who weren't throwing up red flags. If it weren't for Snowden and the Internet-fueled rage he spurred, you'd never know that you'd been investigated at all.

And if you never found the camera your neighbour installed in your bathroom you'd never know he'd been watching you and your family naked, but that probably wouldn't stop you being pretty pissed about it when you found out.

When your government begins using mass surveillance on the entire population, and does so in secret and against the protections your government tells you that you have, it should be a pretty obvious sign that you can't trust them.

Re:He thinks it is bad now?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you never found the camera your neighbour installed in your bathroom you'd never know he'd been watching you and your family naked, but that probably wouldn't stop you being pretty pissed about it when you found out.

Unless by "neighbor" you mean "Google", and they offered a drone to fly out some drain cleaner 30 seconds after you need it... then it'd be kinda cool.

Re:He thinks it is bad now?

[srmalloy]

Besides, how do you know that an ongoing unreasonable warrantless dragnet over the entire country isn't a disruption? It's insidious, even more so when the public wasn't aware of it.

Exactly. Where, from the outside, can you tell the difference between "We're collecting all this phone traffic, but we're only looking at it when it touches the specific individuals we already suspect of criminal activity and are investigating" and "We're collecting all this phone traffic; let's run the pattern-recognition software over all of it to see if we can turn up any criminal activity we can use to boost our arrest numbers"?

Re:He thinks it is bad now?

[Karmashock]

In regards to natural responses... do the windows of people that live in bad neighborhoods have bars on them?

Yes they do.

Why is that?

Natural response.

People respond to threats.

Action leads to reaction. Invade people's privacy, show that you unbound by due process, that you'll do whatever you can do, and that the limits of your power are literally whatever anyone allows you to do... then you have created a situation where everyone does what they can to limit your capabilities by locking down the encryption and otherwise increasing the security.

The NSA will continue to do whatever it "can" but what it can do will shrink over time because it simply won't be possible for them to gain access without consent.

That will continue until such time as the NSA starts abiding by some rules. Until that happens, the security is going to ramp up until everyone is pretty sure the NSA can't get in.

How many people called it here?

[Thanshin]

Someone should make a query that extracts the Slashdot commentaries that have predicted this exact situation for a decade.

The prediction goes like this : "If you keep doing stupid shit like that, people will start encrypting their computers and communications to protect themselves from your unimportant shit and this will help the very few people who encrypt their computers and communications to hide serious crimes."

The more you turn everyone into a criminal, the harder it will be to find the actual criminals.

It's time to decriminalize the population, so people become once again able to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.

Re:How many people called it here?

[Pi1grim]

But the point is not to catch real criminals, the point is to dig up dirt on anyone and everyone, so when the time is right - you could use it to your advantage.

"Don't you see it's for your own protection, and for your children, protecting all of your from pedophiles, terrorists and the scary monster in your closet. And if you don't buy this argument, then obviously you are an enemy of the state, because if you don't have anything to hide - you have nothing to fear. Oh, and don't forget - arbeit macht frei."

Snooping agencies will fight tooth and nail to keep their snooping powers because they don't give a rat's behind about the read bad muthus out there - because that's entirely different playing field, you can't go after them directly, they are well protected and shifting balance includes a lot of political play, but the smaller fishes can be caught with a wider net, and to get leverage all you need is a right to snoop on anyone at any point in time. It's too convenient to give up.

Re:How many people called it here?

[Thanshin]

Snooping agencies will fight tooth and nail to keep their snooping powers

The problem with fighting tooth and nail is that it's strategically stupid to fight directly against a larger and stronger army.

The privacy arms race benefits the people, only a false feeling of safety and anonymity stops the people from making it practically impossible (or impossibly impractical) to spy on the general population.

A front attack, however strong it may be, will fail.

Some of us are accusing the agencies of being intrusive, but this is a different problem. This is about having been intrusive in a strategically unintelligent way.

Re:How many people called it here?

[CloudDrakken]

Awesome comment.

Re:How many people called it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

..The more you turn everyone into a criminal, the harder it will be to find the actual criminals.

So, what you're saying that you trust their judgement on the matter of who is a criminal so long as *you're* not being tagged as one?

Re:How many people called it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the point is not to catch real criminals, the point is to dig up dirt on anyone and everyone, so when the time is right - you could use it to your advantage.

>

An apt synopsis of Bill C-51 currently before the House of Commons in Canada. When this legislation passes, and it will pass given the majority government, Canadians can expect to be on at least one watch-list considering the wording in this proposed legislation. Merely visiting a Government of Canada website is already subject to monitoring and surveillance by the Communications and Security Establishment of Canada.

Re:How many people called it here?

[Anonymous Coward]

When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will encrypt.

Ignorance

[Futurepower(R)]

Most government leaders are profoundly ignorant about technology.

For those of us who work with technology, it is difficult to understand how ignorant the leaders are, and what we could do to fix the problems ignorant leaders cause.

Re:Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Most government leaders are profoundly ignorant about technology.

They are no different than the general population...

Re:Ignorance

[Pi1grim]

They are not so much ignorant, as they are pursuing their own agenda. Don't think for a second that they don't have an army of tech-savy advisors and specialists that are at their beck and call, should they need a detailed explanation about how it works. But they benefit from pretending they don't know and targeting the general public that doesn't know either in order to pursue their own goals.

Spies vs Comm Monitoring

[BoRegardless]

Sun Tzu almost 3000 years ago said he'd rather have 1 good spy than 10,000 good soldiers.

So what yields better results, spies you hire or machines who take no pay? Yeah, I know, spies are difficult, messy, and must be paid in cash.

My guess is what you catch with machines is bad guy wannabees. Real terrorists are probably already using unbreakable steganography. The chance of getting 500 bytes of info out of a 500 KB image, if you can figure out which image has hidden data in it, is next to none.

Re:Spies vs Comm Monitoring

[John Allsup]

He will win who knows when to fight or not to fight. These law enforcement idiots are fighting a battle for control that they shouldn't and our friend Sun Tzu tells us they will lose the war. Pity those fellows.

Re:Spies vs Comm Monitoring

[SuricouRaven]

There is one thing that Sun Tzu stressed above all else in The Art of War: War is very, very expensive. Only start a war if you are confident not only of victory, but of a rapid victory - for if you win after ten years of fighting, you'll have emptied the treasury and destroyed your own economy. A lot of his instruction isn't about how to fight, but about when not to fight.

It's only going to get worse.

[John Allsup]

People haven't figured out the half of it. The Theoretical Computer Scientists are still trying to figure out if P equals NP, when there is both an easy solution (I've tried to submit one version of it, and have written another), and that when conditions of physical plausibility are introduced, it turns out to be the wrong problem anyway. Hard problems arise as soon as you need one more peek at a pile of data than you have. Then you have to guess, and you are at the mercy of the guess. If it is a genuine binary guess and nobody is in a position to force your random number source (and this is totally unrealistic) then you only have a 50% chance of being totally wrong. Things go downhill pretty fast from there.  Trust me, my sanity has survived by playing these games in my head for the last decade or so, and there is only one sensible strategy, and it is built fundamentally on sensibly chooing friends you trust. Things then either turn into a lovely blissful world of total cooperation (and I'm still dreaming here), or else devolve into a downward spiral of ever decreasing trust, ever increasing suspicion, and total failure to justify that distrust given that when one determined person want to screw things up, he or she happens to be the 1/1000 that you didn't decide to label a 'madman' and lock up. The law enforcement systems they are demanding don't work even in dreams. They face too many decision processes, can't improve matters by adding more decision processes (and this is the mess that using computers to aid they really gets them), and they are demanding that their task is made artificially simple. Doesn't bloody work that way in our universe. Sorry. We live according to the laws of mathematics and physics, and if you find yourself on the wrong side of them, complaining to lawmakers won't make the problems go away, but can screw up a large number of lives in the attempt.

Re:It's only going to get worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem isn't not having enough peeks at the data; it's wanting more or having fewer peeks than does your neighbor.

Re:It's only going to get worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

>We live according to the laws of mathematics and physics

Nope. Laws of nature/universe. Maths and physics only (try to) describe those.

Re:It's only going to get worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

People haven't figured out the half of it. The Theoretical Computer Scientists are still trying to figure out if P equals NP, when there is both an easy solution (I've tried to submit one version of it, and have written another)
[...]
Trust me, my sanity has survived by playing these games in my head for the last decade or so

Said the man claiming to have trivially (dis?)proven P=NP...?

letters i won't encrypt ;D

[CloudDrakken]

"Lobbying" ... it's just some dude saying stuff. Yeah, encryption makes it hard for people to read messages, that is the whole point. I agree it's kinda ridiculous but they're trying to say "hey, we can better help you if we can read all your data." First off: anybody using encryption with unwholesome motives is probably not going to heed to your "public appeal" >(Second %) [To my dated field-knowledge] Encryption has yet to find a way that is time-proof. With enough hints and enough computing power, all is possible, saideth the lord unto his peoples of siliconia. And there was much rejoycing, yei. (Although, elliptic curve cryptography [still] seems to be the best solution.) Dear European Law Enforcement: Communication is a part of freespeech. Just because tools have become a fundamental aspect of our lifestyles does not mean we want everything scrutinized for "safety" We would rather curb the likelihood that everything we do becomes the digital equivalent of "shouting from rooftop to rooftop" Basically, "any organization that has zero oversight or transparency becomes a risk" is your argument. Not at all Ironic? Encryption ain't going away, and people are going to turn it on. That's what happens in the digital age. All communication should be safe end-to-end. We should strive more on bringing the human element back to the digital era by being better people. All our actions ring out into the universe, so whatever you do, do it for the love of humanity.

boo hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

You are more likely to die by crossing the street, falling down the stairs, heart attack, or cancer than by terrorism.

Re:boo hoo

[emj]

You are basically saying that to die of old age is more common that terrorism, war/terror kills people of all ages that's why it's so scary. There are 1000x more 70+ who die common types of heart failure like ischemia than 30 year olds

Re:boo hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

You are also more likely to b shot by a policeman. (or be struck by lightning)

Re:boo hoo

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Or, to put a different spin on what you said, is the money spent on counter-terrorism the most cost effective way of minimizing death of any kind? Could the spending be deployed in different endeavours that would outweigh the lives saved from terrorism? (Not that we have a lot of proof it saves any lives at all from terrorism).

Re:boo hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point. You are more likely to live an average lifespan and die of common cause than to die in a terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks are scary because they are rare spectacles.

He's right

[hcs_$reboot]

[encryption] has become perhaps the biggest problem for the police (...)

He is right. Eavesdropping everyone everywhere in all possible ways without any ethical limit made everyone aware of
- the privacy intrusion risks posed by non encrypted communication
- the privacy intrusion risks posed by weakly encrypted communication
- the privacy intrusion risks depending on the communication media being utilized.

Shut uuuuup

[wonkey_monkey]

Maybe if law enforcement types didn't keep banging on about how useful encryption is for terrorists, fewer terrorists would actually hear about it in the first place.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[Sarten-X]

I seem to recall discussion of encryption-using terrorists in the 80s and 90s. It's not a new concept.

What is a new concept is having nearly-unbreakable encryption available for $2 at an electronics shop in the nearest major village, ready to be deployed to an untrained operative, and available in a large enough quantity to be sure that every message the organization sends is secure.

That's what's spooked the spooks.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what's spooked the spooks.

If only that were true.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, encryption has always existed, but even among people that want to do bad things, generally people don't start talking about things in an encrypted fashion, people with crazy ideas have to meet somehow. The number of people that want to do bad things and do even routine "Hi, mom!" messages with encryption is quite small, and you probably can't stop them anyway (despite what some people seem to think).

Back in the 90s the idea that was frightening to law enforcement was that cell phones provided a level of encryption that was easier to use than radios were before (compare the radios used in Die Hard versus the extensive discussion of cell phone use by terrorists in one of the Clancy novels... I forget which one). Over time, they were able to get around the encryption used by cell phones.

Now, the NSA and friends can tap into the "backbone" of the internet and scrape what they like, but if even companies internal communications are encrypted, this becomes much harder once again.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[Anonymous Coward]

The spooks job is then to infiltrate said major village and look for suspicious types looking for computer components.
Sorry spooks, but Remote Desktop doesn't mean you get to skip time in the Field.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[gweihir]

Terrorists do not use encryption for communication. With encryption, you can still determine sources and destinations and that gets people drone-killed on the mere suspicion of being terrorists. Of course, those that survive have become smarter, as part of an ordinary evolutionary process under predator pressure.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[gweihir]

No, it is not. What spooks them is ordinary citizens being able to talk without them being able to listen in. These people are pathological paranoids and very, very afraid of the general population. Terrorists are not even using email or cellphones these days, the US drone-kill "strategy" made sure of that.

Re:Shut uuuuup

[currently_awake]

Terrorists have a simple way to figure out the safe way to do their business: try stuff and see who dies or gets caught. This is basically how disease becomes immune to anti-biotics.

But Encrypted Consumer Goods should flourish

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers must obviously not be allowed any secrets because, well, think of the children.

Our corporate overlords are OTOH _encouraged_ to lock down every piece of equipment so that consumers should be relieved of the temptation to use it for anything but, well, sit still consuming.

mmm encryption is bad

[MrKaos]

'mkay!

So, let me get this right

[vikingpower]

If yours truly and another law-abiding citizen encrypt communication, how is that going to hamper counter-terrorist work ? I pay my tax, he pays his tax, and the worst we do is getting drunk in his or my home on saturday evening, or screwing the occasional whore. Could it that Europol has been touched by the arrogance that comes from wielding too much unchecked, or at least badly checked, power for too long ?

Re:So, let me get this right

[Jason Levine]

If you didn't encrypt your conversation, they could listen in to it, determine you two weren't terrorists, and move on to the next unencrypted conversation or focus on the small number of encrypted ones.

If more people encrypt conversations, though, the government won't be able to rule out that you are a terrorist since they won't be able to listen in on you.

In short, you're guilty until proven innocent and you're making it hard for them to prove you innocent. [mock outrage] How DARE you do that! [/mock outrage]

Re:So, let me get this right

[gweihir]

While this sounds convincing on the surface, it is utterly false in reality. You cannot determine from the contents of communication whether some people communicating are terrorists if they have at least minimal OpSec. You can, to a degree, identify groups when you have one member, but that works regardless of encryption.

These days there are only two kinds of terrorists (disregarding the ones created by the FBI): The dead ones and those with good OpSec. Of course, there are not many of either, and the whole thing is completely blown out of proportion. By "Qui bono?" is also becomes clear why it is being blown out of all proportion: It means more money and power for various police, state security and other anti-freedom organizations. These people are habitually lying to us these days and milking the fear for all its worth.

Re:So, let me get this right

[Jason Levine]

FYI, I wasn't being serious in my comment. (Probably should have used Sarcasm tags to make that clearer.)

Re:So, let me get this right

[gweihir]

I halfway though so, but a lot of people may not notice that what you propose is actually not going to work, hence my comment.

So?

[bytesex]

The cat is out of the bag. Crypto and its application is an academic subject now, with plenty of companies and open-source projects using the fruit of the work. That is to say, for another ten-fifteen years or so. Then, quantum will start taking it all apart. The amateurs will not have the resources to follow there.

Re:So?

[Thanshin]

The cat is out of the bag. Crypto and its application is an academic subject now, with plenty of companies and open-source projects using the fruit of the work. That is to say, for another ten-fifteen years or so. Then, quantum will start taking it all apart. The amateurs will not have the resources to follow there.

So, basically, the cat is either out of the bag, or dead, and we won't know for another ten-fifteen years, time at which the cat wave collapses.

Re:So?

[Jason Levine]

The cat is out of the bag. Crypto and its application is an academic subject now, with plenty of companies and open-source projects using the fruit of the work. That is to say, for another ten-fifteen years or so. Then, quantum will start taking it all apart. The amateurs will not have the resources to follow there.

So, basically, the cat is either out of the bag, or dead, and we won't know for another ten-fifteen years, time at which the cat wave collapses.

Great. Now those terrorists are attacking Schrodinger's cat... or not attacking it. I can't tell since I haven't observed the system yet.

Deport all muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

But that would be too easy. After all, the majority of the white population took to the streets fifty years ago, demanding that we open our borders and allow in the dregs of humanity, right?

Re:When every ?! is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, "when every citizen is a potential terrorist then we have a problem with government", proven mainly in the socialist/communist Europe - BUT... your correct generalized statement can be improved if specialized as: "when every European MUSLIM citizen -or illegal immigrant- is a potential terrorist but those under oppression are the people who specialize correct statements... then we have a problem with government"!
* I am Greek - my statement is illegal in Greece and most of Europe...

Reference:

[emj]

Ischemia deaths in Sweden by age you can compare that to the graph for traffic accidents with stationary objects

An easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a solution which is equally as sane as the one being proposed by law enforcement. On average, 3% of people have criminal tendencies and/or may be terrorists (see that number there, the one I just pulled out of my ass??) Therefore, when someone does something bad we should randomly select 3% of people and have them killed. When everyone is dead the problem is solved.

Crying about encryption just another symptom

[einar.petersen]

Watching the police state encroach deeper and deeper and the sheeple doing nothing but watching their reality shows and empty journalists blabbering the agenda on the evening news attempting to marginalize anyone with half a brain discussing the deeper implications regarding the slide towards totalitarian rule is a sad sad reality for someone who has seen the Berlin wall fall and who remembers the horror stories about STASI an organization that pales in comparison to the evils of intelligence services operating in todays so called free democracies. When will the people rise and object against the tyrannical powers laying their claws upon every soul walking this earth...

Re:Crying about encryption just another symptom

[currently_awake]

The real lesson is that investigative journalism is dead. The media is so deeply in the pockets of big business that they can't see the hole anymore.

Re:When every ?! is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Greek

You're also a moron.

Re:When every ?! is a potential terrorist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Greek

You're also a moron.

You have a point... more than i have - currently your comment has "Score:1" (even if you are an Anonymous Coward, as i -the Greek- am also)!
You choose the part from my comment where i state that i am a Greek to answer me that i am a moron, and your comment pleased the Slashdot moderators while mine displeased them:

True, "when every citizen is a potential terrorist then we have a problem with government", proven mainly in the socialist/communist Europe - BUT... your correct generalized statement can be improved if specialized as: "when every European MUSLIM citizen -or illegal immigrant- is a potential terrorist but those under oppression are the people who specialize correct statements... then we have a problem with government"!
* I am Greek - my statement is illegal in Greece and most of Europe...

Slashdot...

Willing to kill but respect a ban on encryption?

[xenobyte]

How incredibly likely... You are a fanatic willing to kill scores of innocents but won't use encryption because it's illegal? This has to be the most stupid idea in a long time!

BANNING ENCRYPTION WILL NOT PREVENT TERRORISTS FROM USING IT !!!
Sorry for shouting but it's so bleeding obvious!

The only people that will respect such a ban would be normal law-abiding people and they are not likely to be interesting to Europol and similar.

unintended consequenses on extreme measures

[bitflusher]

Extreme measures have extreme disadvantages. After 9/11 pilots were given the ability to lock their cabin to prevent terrorists from taking a plane. The Germanwings incident show this locks out the good people as well. Preventing encryption will be celebrated by terrorists, they could gain much more knowledge from plain data in transmissions.

No encryption == full employment for police

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Because without good encryption, commerce will be WIDE OPEN to fraud as criminals acquire information required to steal money from people, like bank account numbers, passwords, locations of money, etc.

If we can't use encryption to protect our information from criminals itching to use it for fraud, then fraud will explode and we'll need LOTS of cops to track down all the criminals.

We should tell them to take a hike, because:
1) Cops will never catch fraud before it happens
2) Cops will never recover all the money stolen
3) Trust in banking will falter
4) Trust in using the internet for commerce will falter

Also, "key escrow" won't work.
I'm sorry, but if the US Government couldn't keep the HYDROGEN BOMB secret, how am I to trust ANY government to keep secrets WORTH TRILLIONS? (I.e., their escrowed keys secret from the criminal element?)

--PeterM

Re:No encryption == full employment for police

[Jason Levine]

That was my first reaction also. The government likes to speak about terrorism, but ID theft, credit card fraud, and other types of financial crimes are a whole lot more prevalent. Now imagine if encryption were to disappear tomorrow. All those personal details whizzing about the Internet unencrypted? Financial crimes would skyrocket. Either that, or nobody would do business online and a huge sector of the economy would collapse overnight. Even *IF* banning encryption meant all terrorism was stopped the financial cost alone would make it a non-viable option.

No encryption = advantage criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

At the root of the law enforcement / state security argument seems to be one glaring fallacy that the only reason for using encryption is to hide wrong doing from the government. i.e. "If you are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide." The reason we use encryption is overwhelmingly to hide our personal information from cyber criminals, identity thieves, cyber-stalkers, paedophiles, bullies, deranged lunatics and any other number of unsavoury characters and criminal organizations.

Their argument is analogous to saying that we must leave all doors unlocked so police can not be thwarted from raiding criminals... meanwhile the reason we have locks is to keep us from being victims of those very criminals.

Re:No encryption = advantage criminals

[Godwin O'Hitler]

To be fair, the only reason I would use encryption on my own initiative is "keep your fucking noses out of my private life and my reasons for that are none of your concern."

Re:No encryption = advantage criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what a terrorist would say, /me eyes you knowingly.

Really?

[nospam007]

What happened? Did he order an expensive full attack on an encrypted container with dozens of people and they got a shopping list after 2 years?

The terrorists win

[GeekWithAKnife]

IF we cannot body scan you
IF we cannot read your emails
IF we cannot read your medical records
IF we cannot detect your location
IF we cannot determine your political beliefs
then one day that will become
The terrorists win IF we cannot read your mind


Because if you're innocent why would you want to hide anything right? because data collection agencies, corporations and the government have done such a stellar job making sure that information is handled ethically and protected privacy in an adequate manner, right?

How is that load of bullshit working so far? -when will draconian security measure applied without cause or reason be seen for what they are?

There is always be those that use violence to influence, no amount of snooping and big brother shit will ever change that.

I'm sorry what?

[koan]

If we use encryption your job is pointless?

Re:I'm sorry what?

[Jason Levine]

No, if you use encryption, their job becomes hard. This is bad (as defined by them, not me) because:

A) They want the power to look at everyone anytime they want to make sure you're not a terrorist (or some other criminal). Encryption prevents this.

B) They don't want to have to actually work hard to do their job. Why do research and obtain warrants and deal with privacy-protection measures when you can just trample over everyone to get what you want? The quickest path between point a and point b is a straight line - even if it takes them through your house,

Poor you, your job is difficult.

[BVis]

"It's become perhaps the biggest problem for the police and the security service authorities in dealing with the threats from terrorism," he explained.

Tough shit. Nobody said it would be easy.

There's an old saying....

[BravoZuluM]

When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption. And the government, but then I'm being redundant.

This is his job

[dave420]

His job is to point out things which cause them problems. If those things are valued by constitutions and lawmakers, they will not be listened to, and Europol (in this case) has to change its game to deal with it. If he kept quiet about every headache they deal with, he should be removed from his position. Instead, he does his job, and the technically literate people who can't understand what his job actually entails start moaning about how infeasible it is or how it tramples basic human rights.

Every post here complaining about this guy pointing out how bad encryption is for them has missed the point entirely, and is engaging in a knee-jerk moanfest. The people to get angry with are any politicians who try to enact this guy's suggestions.

Re:This is his job

[Anonymous Coward]

By this logic, a thief's job is to point out things that are not secured. The people to get angry with are the people who don't lock up their valuables.

FIGHT EU NOW OR FOVERVER BE SILENT...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is OBVIOUS to the European population the REAL REASONS for CREATING A SOVIET STYLE POLICE STATE have NOTHINH TO DO WITH TERRORISM AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH DOMINATING THE MASSES !!!

The EU IS A LOBBY DOMINATED, BIG BUSINESS CONTROLLED DISGRACE much more alien to the COMMON PEOPLE than Washington, as in EU YOU HAVE NO DIRECT REPRESENTATION, only "party choosen" proxies are ever allowed to be "electable" by a FARCE of a voting system.

UNLESS THE EUROPEAN PEOPLE WANT TO WAKE UP ONE DAY IN A NAZI-SOVIET STYLE SUPERSTATE TGEY MUST REJECT ANY CALLS TO LIMIT INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM BY SO CALLED "EUROPEAN LAW ENFORCEMENT".

How did they ever catch criminals before phones?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I always hear that we can't catch anyone if phones are encrypted, or computers are encrypted. Evidently there were no police techniques available before 1995, and all criminals got off easy. All those police shows where people gathered non-cell-phone based evidence must have been something like science fiction, but for cops.

They abused the privilege, now they pay

[msobkow]

They abused the privilege, now they pay the price. I've no sympathy for any of the intel agencies out there who've claimed they're only interested in identifying endpoints and sessions, yet now are crying about the traffic content being encrypted. Encryption simply limits CSEC, GCHQ, NSA, et. al. to the endpoint identification they said they want.

It's too late to change your mind. I use RSA2048 exchange of AES256 keys, hard coded into all my applications. If you don't have the Java export-strength encryption enabled, I don't want to bother supporting your code. You're just begging to be intercepted without export-strength encryption.

I'm tired of being snooped on. I'll take my right to privacy seriously, thanks. I don't even trust pre-generated keys for the RSA2048 server encryption -- I generate them on the fly at server startup so that even the person running the server doesn't know what the keys are.

Too bad soo sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments are funny, they think they can just lay back sipping their slurpees while slurping down worlds data from room 641A. Even funnier they believe they are entitled to the current status quo for all of time. When people wise up and they are denied capability they pout and whine like two year olds about "going dark" all the while intrusive private and public data collection regimes continue to proliferate unbounded.

If you don't like the proliferation of encryption technology maybe you should have thought about that BEFORE you collectively gave the world reason to care.

Let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

All these various people in positions of authority relating to security want everyone to leave themselves open to the possiblity that every bad guy out there can intercept their communications, in order that the good guys can intercept the communications as well, in order to figure out who the bad guys are?

Why does everything have to be so goddamned complicated?

Similarly ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Europol Chief Warns About Door Locks and Window Shades.

The problem goes beyond encryption

[TsuruchiBrian]

We need to ban, not only digital computers, but also math. One can multiply big prime numbers and keep them secret using pen and paper.

Lie. If caught, lie more.

[gweihir]

As far as we know, not a single terrorist attack would have ever been averted if encryption had been breakable. This person is either terminally stupid or exceptionally dishonest. In either case he is a serious threat to society and should be removed from his position immediately.

How could they know?

[Futurepower(R)]

"Don't think for a second that they don't have an army of tech-savy advisors and specialists..."

How would someone who isn't technically knowledgeable know if someone IS technically knowledgeable? In fact, a lot of incompetent people want high-paying jobs. Incompetent people may sound wonderful to a manager.

After years of postcards, the envelope is invented

[eric_harris_76]

After years of people communicating by postcards, someone invents the envelope, and the cops get all scared that they won't be able to fight crime any more. Or so they say.