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U.S. Gov't Grapples With Clash Between Privacy, Security
schwit1 writes:
WaPo: "For months, federal law enforcement agencies and industry have been deadlocked on a highly contentious issue: Should tech companies be obliged to guarantee U.S. government access to encrypted data on smartphones and other digital devices, and is that even possible without compromising the security of law-abiding customers?"
NSA director Adm. Michael S. Rogers wants to require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it. But progress is nonexistent:
"The odds of passing a new law appear slim, given a divided Congress and the increased attention to privacy in the aftermath of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. There are bills pending to ban government back doors into communications devices. So far, there is no legislation proposed by the government or lawmakers to require Internet and tech firms to make their services and devices wiretap-ready."
NSA director Adm. Michael S. Rogers wants to require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it. But progress is nonexistent:
"The odds of passing a new law appear slim, given a divided Congress and the increased attention to privacy in the aftermath of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. There are bills pending to ban government back doors into communications devices. So far, there is no legislation proposed by the government or lawmakers to require Internet and tech firms to make their services and devices wiretap-ready."
So what's the acceptable limit?
Should they be allowed to watch you urinate?
Should they be allowed to watch you defecate?
Is it okay if they do this with a device that has an "Internet of Things" sticker on it?
An example of how to do cryptographically secure secret sharing:
Shamir's secret sharing.
There are other secret sharing schemes there, follow the link to the main article.
NSA director Adm. Michael S. Rogers wants to require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it. But progress is nonexistent:
Sure. I totally believe that you're going to do that. I mean, it's not like you scum have a history of blatantly lying to the American people and doing the complete opposite of what you say you will, right?
How about no. Just fuck off and stop invading my privacy. You have absolutely no right there, whether you split that responsibility with other criminal--I mean, government-- organizations or not (not that I believe you'd even do that much).
One should also remember that government employees with privileged access are people, and people can misuse the access they have.
We should recognize that the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution was created to prevent this exact scenario. Law abiding people encrypt sensitive information to protect it from misuse by criminals, but the information can be misused by ANYONE with access.
Dividing a backdoor key between multiple parties simply creates a requirement that all parties agree to access the information before it can be accessed. It doesn't guarantee that the access will be lawful.
So... what makes the NSA think that anyone could actually keep these ultimate "keys to the kingdom" secret? I mean, just about everything else of theirs that was secret has leaked out thanks to a single contractor. Can you imagine how valuable these keys are, and how much money could be made by selling them? Hell, the US couldn't even keep our nuclear weapon plans under wraps.
And what's awesome about this scheme is that once the secret is out, every single smartphone in the US is compromised all at once. Whee!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it.
Exactly how do they intend to split a key; by piling layers of encryption atop each other or by splitting the RSA public key modulo's factors into multiple authorities?
Given the option of piling layers of encryption on top of each other, it would seem that private keys would need to be divulged to create this encrypted comm. system
The modulo is a semiprime number, so it has only 2 factors. I think he wants a Threshold cryptosystem, where m out of n parties need to use their keys for it to work.
There's no such thing as a secret law in the USA... it's either in Lexis or it never existed.
No matter how many US agencies you distribute the key over, one thing is absolute certain: If you require US companies to make any and all contents on mobile devices available to US government (and, considering who owns it, US corporations), absolutely NO non-US company could sensibly buy anything anymore from a US tech company.
Hell, the chance to not be spied on would be bigger if you bought Chinese crap!
Quite seriously, why should anyone trust a country that has a worse record when it comes to industrial spying than China?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But there are secret interpretations of the law, where the gov't basically does lawyer-shopping, going from one lawyer to the next [whom they hire], to write a legal opinion about something, and they just keep going through lawyers until they get the 'opinion' they want, and then use it as a legal justification for doing something.
You would think they would at least have to run it by a judge, but no. It only gets looked at by a judge:
-if someone finds out about it [hard to do when it is classified as top secret]
-you have standing to challenge it [good luck with this, given how much leeway judges are giving the gov't in most cases]
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Does this only apply to cellphones which are regulated telecommunications devices? Or would it also apply to tablets, which are really personal computing devices? And if it applies to tablets, would it apply to other personal computing devices such as laptops and desktop PCs? And if so, does it only apply to encryption software sold with the device, or also to third-party supplied encryption software? And if it does apply to 3rd party software, does it only apply to commercial software, or free open source software as well? Are there 1st Amendment issues involved in regulating the distribution of free software, and if so do they apply only to compiled machine code, or to source code as well? The devil is in the details and I'm not really sure where dividing lines would be drawn.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
They can have a back door to my phone - as soon as they give me the key to all THEIR systems (up to and including the President and IRS etc) so that when WE have the right to data, they can't say "we lost it". What? Its only fair - they watch me, I watch them
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
There's no clash. The law is perfectly clear on that subject. Only the government is choosing to ignore it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dr. Petrov: [Ramius has taken the Political officers Missile key and kept it] Sir! The reason for having two keys is so that no one man may...
Captain Ramius: May what, Doctor?
Dr. Petrov: Arm the missiles Captain.
Captain Ramius: Mmm, thank you for your concern Doctor
Have gnu, will travel.
There's not supposed to be, but there are. Every time a secret court like FISA makes a secret decision, new secret law is created on the fly. Secret precedent.
And by the way, there's also supposed to be no such thing as anonymous local police in the USA, but they take off their ID and pull balaclavas over their faces at the sight of three black people walking down the street with a protest sign.
There are a lot of things in the USA that are not supposed to exist. Secret laws, secret courts, secret trade agreements. Secret police. Secret police blacksites. Secret "crowd control" weapons for the secret police to use domestically. Torture. Rendition. Off-shore prisons. Extrajudicial assassination.
And secret donors, of course. That's what it's all for. There was a secret coup in the US decades ago, and we were collateral damage.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If a backdoor key exists, then the company that created it must by law give it to any lawful government authority that requests it. For example, if a company does business in Saudi Arabia, and a backdoor key exists, they may be compelled under Saudi law to give that key to the Saudi's. If a company does business in Russia, they may be compelled by the Russian government to give them the key. That's the nature of a backdoor. You can't just give it to only one entity. And let's not forget about Gemalto. They have cellphone encryption keys for the SIM cards they produced, which were held on their servers so that law enforcement agencies could obtain backdoor access to cellular communications via the legal process. However, the NSA broke into their servers and stole all of their secret keys, and then used them to mass decrypt cellular traffic. That's a real example of key escrow in action, and it completely failed to protect anyone.
And you war-obsessed, money-blinded, overly-religious conservatives are saying what, exactly, about the current president? That he's some kind of angel of sunlight? No. You guys are currently calling him the worst president ever, claiming he's gonna make himself dictator (despite the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution), comparing his administration to ... well let's not Godwin this. Notice I did NOT single out any current or past US political party.
Here's a newsflash: since before this country was founded, the person currently holding the highest office in most any country has been called every nasty name or epithet in [the then current version of] the book by his or her opposition, while that person's supporters of course use "softer" words when criticizing him or her, with variances of course depending on the country.
And yeah, I meant every word of that opening sentence. Why? Because I am a moderate, and would like to think I can see *both* sides of the current political climate, and conservatives today are just as bad as they were 50, 100, 200 years ago. The noises you make are the same, only the reasons and target of that noise have changed.
How's the phrase go? "Reality leans liberal" or something like that? Maybe it does, but only if you compare it to "conservative" as the terms are measured in the US. Compare it to the rest of the civilized world, and reality is (and should be) a lot closer to center/moderate.
Steering this back on topic, that means we keep our privacy, security, strong encryption without ANYONE else holding the keys but us), and so on, and the government goes and dunks its collective heads in the toilet. They don't need our data to make us any safer, and we don't need to BE any "safer" anyway.
It is in the interest of anybody to help in providing the best possible encryption because "Whatever govs can do, crooks will do better". It not only helps the industry or privacy. It also protects itself as it is likely that such mandatory back doors will be technically outdated and hacked quickly after put in place. Weak Encryption has decided the fate of Mary Queen, the deciphering of the Zimmerman telegram a hundred ago played a role in the outcome of WWI and weaknesses in the use of the enigma cryptology was important in WW2. Since then, technology has exploded and become more important everywhere. Any government proposing to weaken its own communication infrastructure by mandatory crippling their own industries will be in a disadvantage. The dream is of course that high up, secure systems are going to be used. As they will not have been well tested, they are likely to be hacked even faster than a device for the masses with a backdoor which has withstood standard attacks and gone through peer review by hackers. And if some really sweet military grade encryption will remain to be safe, it will be a goldmine for a company selling devices with such additions abroad.
We all know how it is _supposed_ to work. We also know how it _actually_ works.
For example: GWB used secret legal memos to get around the due process clause when locking people up in Gitmo. Obama used secret legal memos to get around the due process clause when executing people. And the courts were less than useless in doing anything about it, bowing out over litigant's standing.
So ultimately, the law is basically whatever the President says it is. Yep -- that's authoritarian and fails to fit our mythical concept of America.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good