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Manhattan DA Pressures Google and Apple To Kill Zero Knowledge Encryption (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a speech to the 6th Annual Financial Crimes and Cybersecurity Symposium, New York County District Attorney for Manhattan Cyrus Vance Jr. has appealed to the tech community — specifically citing Google and Apple — to "do the right thing" and end zero-knowledge encryption in mobile operating systems. Vance Jr. praised FBI director James Comey for his 'outspoken' and 'fearless' advocacy against zero knowledge encryption, and uses the recent attacks on Paris as further justification for returning encryption keys to the cloud, so that communications providers can once again comply with court orders.
In a time when leaders are getting more stupid the issues are getting super complex. And that scares the shit out of me.
This particular anti-encryption movement isn't putting a gun to our economy's foot, it's putting a gun to our economy's head.
but the terrorists in Paris seems to have used plain old unencrypted SMS, in French no less.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Irrelevent. Terrorism is the boogyman the government has forever linked to their justification for unlimited access to our private communications. It doesn't matter whether they use it or not, the government wants everyone to be scared into giving up more of their freedoms. Facts just get in the way of that.
If governments urge you not use a specific type of encryption, then you know you are using it right.
Freedom for safety... what could go wrong?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Zero-knowledge encryption? Sounds like they're trying to invent some new buzzword to try to make something almost no one could argue against, secured communications and records for banking, conversations & confidential information (medical records, personal matters, etc). It should also be noted that there is a really good reason for this move to decentralized encryption, the feds simply couldn't keep their hands out of the cookie jar. That and there are no indications that allowing the government full access to communications has any effect on terrorist activity, its pretty obvious that they were hoovering information before 9/11 and it didn't stop that, they've created massive data centers and tied in with ISPs throughout the globe and they didn't stop Paris, Metrojet Flight 9268, Boston or any of the other major attacks. I find it disturbing they can argue for ever increasing levels of surveillance when the massive levels they are already spending tens of billions of dollars and not stopping a few nuts chatting over text messages.
While I'm ambivalent about Zero Knowledge Encryption, the above factoid - they used SMS - is tangential to the point in question. Yeah, the French Jihadis used SMS, but Jihadis everywhere else have been using whatever's out there - not just SMS.
I do oppose any attempts to ban this, since there is nothing stopping Jihadis from developing their own encryption codes and going totally dark on the authorities everywhere.
since there is nothing stopping Jihadis from developing their own encryption codes and going totally dark on the authorities everywhere.
This is what they want to achieve, as when encryption is backdoored anywhere, its much easier to argue that everybody who uses non-backdoored encryption is a has something to hide and is a criminal suspect.
Considering that unbreakable encryption that can be done by hand and used over any medium has been around forever. It's cumbersome to well.
Denying the public effective encryption does nothing to stop a terrorists from communicating it just lets the government pry into average citizens lives.
No sir I dont like it.
They aren't actually after the terrorists. They're after everyone.
Still, the governments of the world have been asking us to give up on having any level of privacy so that they can "catch terrorists". I think they need to demonstrate some things before I can even think about accepting that idea.
1) There's oversight over the collection and storage of the data that guarantees that it's being used for that purpose. There's no possibility that it can be used for other law enforcement operations, for blackmail, or for looking at dick pics (thank you, John Oliver).
2) The program is effective. If you're collecting my SMS messages so that you can stop terrorist attacks, show me that you're catching terrorists that way. Don't collect SMS messages preemptively and then go, "Well after the fact, we found that the terrorists used SMS and we just didn't catch it. But after we caught people who were involved and found their cell phones, we thought it was kind of helpful to see those SMS messages."
3) Explain why the terrorists won't just change their methods. People say things like, "When guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns," and then the same people say, "We need to make it illegal to send encrypted messages that we can't break." It doesn't make sense.
That's just to start. I'll think about more questions when those can be answered.
What we really need is fewer Zero Knowledge DAs.
Pre-broken encryption is as bad as it sounds.
They appear to be under the impression that the only reason one would have something to hide is because one has done something wrong.
Of course, nearly everyone has something to hide... and it is not because there is anything necessarily wrong. Does one wear clothes in public for example? Is there something wrong with their bodies that they feel they must do this, or do they do so simply because their bodies are private? Having something that you may feel is private or even something that you might feel somewhat embarrassed by if it were to be public does not mean that anything is amiss... it means you are human.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In other news law enforcement magically found multiple cells of terrorists in the aftermath of the Paris shootings. Yet they could not find these three suspects before they committed mayhem in the city? The government sat on intelligence hoping to be led to bigger fish instead of arresting the Paris shooters. I do not believe a damn thing the government says or the media reports. While Obama and Hollande twiddled their thumbs at least Putin struck back decisively against ISIS/ISIL in Syria.
This. This. A THOUSAND times This!
Meanwhile, we get "treated" to more and more Security Theater.
If the gummints would aggressively go after each and every of the credible leads they OBVIOUSLY have, the life of the Terrist on the ground would be seen as less and less "glamorous", and sooner, rather than later, the likes of ISIS/ISIL would start having "attrition" numbers, and lack of new recruits, that would start putting a severe damper on their plans for world domination.
And no, I don't believe that the "Martyr Effect" would work in their favor.
That is terrorism by definition.
Send him strait to Gitmo NOW!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
> but having access to the phone contents reportedly did allow investigators to make headway in France
So, we have access to encryption (aka real encryption, aka zero knowledge encryption), and the terrorists were not using it. This then becomes an argument against real encryption. Of course, if the terrorists WERE using it, it would ALSO be a an argument against real encryption.
The story so far: Terrorists communicate without using Bibles, or encryption. Terrorists kill a bunch of people without using Bibles, or encryption. Later investigators find phones without Bibles, or encryption.
Nothing in this story involves Bibles, or encryption- if either one is inserted, it's because someone wants to take your Bible. Or more likely, your encryption.