Slashdot Mirror
FBI Slammed On Capitol Hill For "Stupid" Ideas About Encryption
blottsie writes: At a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the FBI endured outright hostility as both technical experts and members of Congress from both parties roundly criticized the law enforcement agency's desire to place so-called back doors into encryption technology. "Creating a technological backdoor just for good guys is technologically stupid," said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a Stanford University computer science graduate. "That's just stupid. Our founders understood that an Orwellian overreaching government is one of the most dangerous things this world could have," Lieu said.
At the risk of being down-modded: ... it is the people that allow them to get away with this stupid shit in the first place.
Sure would be nice if this were the new climate in D.C. instead of their current 1984 theme.
How stupid must your plan be if politicians actually call it stupid?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The term was Orwellian, which constitutes a few things..
"Orwellian" is an adjective describing the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" – a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practised by modern repressive governments. Often, this includes the circumstances depicted in his novels, particularly 1984.
While I don't think our founding fathers understood the concept of an "unperson" or manipulating the past, they did understand how Colonial rule worked which by all accounts came close to being Orwellian.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
That's kinda just restating what he was saying . . .
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
No, the founding fathers had seen some pretty bad behavior from kings and tyrants, and were people who understood the big picture.
They certainly didn't anticipate everything, but they sure as hell tried to lay the groundwork for trying to formulate how to prevent this crap.
And then people got all scared and lost their shot and decided "oh, fuck all those constitutional protections, we're scared".
The problem with the FBI is they moronically believe that if they poke holes in crypto that it would still have any value. Because they're too fucking concerned about getting this information they can't stop to think that if there are holes for them, there's holes for anybody else to use.
What the FBI et al are basically saying amounts to "everybody should leave their house unlocked in case we need to go in, and we will go 'la la la' and pretend that nobody else will do this".
The FBI are either collectively too fucking stupid, or too fucking fascist to comprehend that crypto only really works if you don't punch holes in it.
But, hey, between law enforcement hiding how often they use that Stingray thing, and the "manaul of institutional perjury" which is parallel construction -- maybe it's time we stopped treating them as anything but a corrupt organization which needs a serious culling?
Fire 'em, arrest 'em, hang 'em -- it doesn't matter. These clowns have decided the law doesn't apply to them, so they don't deserve to be treated like the good guys.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You mean the "special...brand of forensic science" - like DNA and hair analysis - that has proven to be outright fakery?
Access to a time machine would explain why y'all think the founding fathers are prescient I guess.
Or Orwell read the founding fathers, among others who had similar concerns. And Orwell more concisely portrayed the problem to the public and so the phrase Orwellian gets attached. No time machine necessary. :-)
This is what I was going to say. "Is there some sign that says 'good guys only' that stops bad guys from using it too?"
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
That's kinda just restating what he was saying . . .
Perhaps I should have included Lieu's next sentence: "That's just stupid. Our founders understood that an Orwellian overreaching government is one of the most dangerous things this world could have,"
Bad guys have to set the evil bit; the software checks whether or not it's set. Really people, we've thought this through.
from TFA, on "a back door just for the good guys": "Our founders understood that an Orwellian overreaching government is one of the most dangerous things this world could have"
Yes, agreed. But besides that, having the back-doors only available "for the good guys" is problematic for a number of other reasons, including:
a) "the good guys" in this administration may be replaced by "less than good guys" in the next administration
b) It only takes one "not so good guy" in the organization to take advantage of a back door for nefarious purposes (perhaps with the best of intentions)
c) The existence of a back door "just for the good guys" assumes that there is no exploit that anyone could figure out with today's technology up to the technology available up to the retirement of the last piece of equipment that contained that particular back door (which might be decades). When you design a system, do you take into account the technology that will become available to break into it 20 or 30 years in the future?
d) That the "keys" for such a universal back door would be so valuable that they would inevitably be sold by someone with access to the highest bidder, or because of political or religious motivations.
The FBI might be better served by just being better at cyber break-ins than anyone else. This would allow them to do the monitoring they desire, and have the added benefits of making them work for access, rather than just go fetch passwords out of a safe, and develop some in-house expertise that could be used against real cyber criminals.
Now that I think of that last part, if we really want the FBI to understand about cyber security, it's important from an evolutionary point to never give them easy access to anything.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Bad guys have to set the evil bit; the software checks whether or not it's set. Really people, we've thought this through.
Relevant RFC
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
That's like the "do not track" thing in my browser, right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Its the fucking clipper chip fiasco all over again. Doomed to repeat the past....
Oh, I think that they understood the concept very well. It's not exactly new; the Romans used it as did the Greeks in a few cases.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The best part about legislating what kinds of technology people can use is that only legal entities must abide by the law.
So, the "good companies" or "good individuals" who agree with you are now penalized by having back-doors while anyone "bad" is "free" to use solid and effective tools.
Bullet, meet foot.
And that is exactly the problem. Let's even assume for a moment that they actually are the good guys.
Wanting a backdoor for the "good guys" means wanting a backdoor for everyone. By definition. A backdoor in encryption is what everyone who tries to spy on someone else wants. The FBI wants it to spy on their enemies. Corporations want it to spy on other corporations. And I'm pretty sure China and Iran would love to use it to take a peek into some US government information.
Access to such a backdoor is hard to control. Mostly because the entity that COULD control it, the one where the backdoor is installed, is not supposed to even know it exists. In other words, such a backdoor will not stay secret for long. The relevant people will be bribed, bullied or forced. We're talking about nations here, not some petty hacker groups.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
People do enjoy saying that; but that doesn't seem to change the more or less total absence of any repressive measures, activities, or persons being literally shot down. Maybe whoever pinged a few rounds off the NSA's windows deserves some credit for effort; but he's pretty lonely. Hell, the last person to even unnerve the DC area was probably the beltway sniper, and he was some shithead gunning for his ex wife or something. Seriously guys, let's see some blood of patriots and tyrants, or the admission that guns are a fun hobby; but spare us the empty chest-beating nonsense.
I'd like to see them slammed for their down-syndrome-level comment about Polish collaboration with the NAZIs. Von Braun anyone? They should be renamed the Federal Bureau of Manipulation.
Bravo for Representative Lieu, but he misses the whole point. The encryption doesn't matter if a Government is so big will harm you even when it is trying to do good. The problem is not the backdoors, it is the elephant in the room - a Government that is just to big and increasingly centralized. More Government power **necessarily** means citizens lose liberty. And the Democrats and Establishment Republicans are both bad at growing Government (and the associated debt).
Power needs to be devolved back to States, municipalities and citizens. The Internet makes this possible. We don't need a centralized government that is appropriate for 20th Century industrialism when a 21st Century de-centralized system acts more responsively and less wastefully to local needs (and local Government is small enough it cannot harm you to the same degree the Feds can).
This story reminds me that it's time to go throw the EFF another $20.
https://www.eff.org/
You are welcome on my lawn.
Did you not see the recent scandal about the FBI forensic lab techs who lied on the stand? One guy's hair was matched to a fucking dog.
what was the lesson of FREAK ???
I smell hope :)
Please tell me this is the most subtle and nuanced ironic post ever posted on slashdot. Because almost every sentence in it seems to be a carefully crafted opposite of reality.
You can actually find plenty of 'unpersons' in the Egyptian pharaohs carving out any references of some of their disliked predecessors out of all the monuments they could find. Leading to plenty of perplexing datation problems for historians.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The founding fathers are more enlightened than big brother, they loved us all and foresaw all eventualities, yes I love the founding fathers.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
The noise you hear overhead is the sound a joke makes while traveling at high speed through a gaseous medium.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mandatory encryption backdoors pretty much means we become a backwards island as nobody else will willingly use our crypto. It's already become a valid concern over networking gear from US companies since the NSA has been shown to subvert them, when people are buying chinese gear because it's a better option security wise than US gear you have a serious image issue.
No sir I dont like it.
I am a sub-contractor for a project that burns data onto encrypted FIPS compliant hard drives. If the FBI gets their way that puts us in breach of contract with another government agency.