Slashdot Mirror
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.
Yes they did - but the message the Paris investigators found which led them to perform the raid on Wednesday was recovered from an unencrypted phone and not from traffic capture.
Don't get me wrong, I support zero knowledge encryption where possible, but having access to the phone contents reportedly did allow investigators to make headway in France.
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.
In this case, it's being used by Apple and Google (and likely others) to say "we have zero knowledge of how to decrypt this because we haven't given it to ourselves".
This is them trying to wash their hands of it and say "we can't help you, you need to get subpoenas and contact the user", but leave us out of this.
And why do you say that like it's a bad thing? They're explicitly saying "since we have zero knowledge of how to decrypt it, it is safe for those things".
Isn't this what we want?
The DA wants "zero-knowledge" encryption to go away. Apple et al are saying "we don't want to do that". Are you arguing that Apple and Google are wrong here?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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?"
Exactly! Now they have emergency law active, which allows them to search houses without any warrant or cause.
When you are allowed to dry the whole pond, any idiot can catch some fish.