Slashdot Mirror
Top Democratic Senator Will Seek Legislation To "Pierce" Through Encryption (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) will seek legislation requiring the ability to "pierce" through encryption to allow American law enforcement to read protected communications with a court order. She told the Senate Judiciary committee on Wednesday that she would seek a bill that would give police armed with a warrant based on probable cause the ability to read encrypted data. "I have concern about a PlayStation that my grandchildren might use," she said, "and a predator getting on the other end, and talking to them, and it's all encrypted. I think there really is reason to have the ability, with a court order, to be able to get into that."
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Perhaps the good Senator should reflect upon what King Canute actually intended to say when he made his demonstration about his inability to stop the tide.
Mathematical algorithms, like so many parts of our physical universe, don't give a flying fuck about Congress. It's like trying to pass legislation to make Pi equal to 3.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A.K.A. "will somebody please add backdoors that will eventually get abused by the government and then used by thieves and hackers to do even worst shit."
Because it will rapidly become de rigeur for companies that are serious to use encryption that can't be broken on that basis. US companies can be part of that - or watch as their meal ticket evaporates...
2345 A3DF 5782
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"I have concern about a PlayStation that my grandchildren might use," she said, "and a predator getting on the other end, and talking to them, and it's all encrypted. I think there really is reason to have the ability, with a court order, to be able to get into that."
You could be involved with your kids and *you* be in charge of who they are communicating with via your playstation
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Some republicans are too, but I wonder if there is an area of life that politicians, especially Democrats - don't want to control?
And then everyone will react by sending their encrypted (first level) traffic through a tunnel that performs a second encryption level in a country that laughs at their legal requests. She just doesn't get it. Encryption is here to stay for very good reasons law enforcement has to adapt.
"I have concern about a PlayStation that my grandchildren might use," she said, "and a predator getting on the other end, and talking to them, and it's all encrypted. I think there really is reason to have the ability, with a court order, to be able to get into that."
If you are so worried about a predator talking to your grandchildren through the Playstation network, why are they using it unsupervised?
Take care of your own problems, don't make the government do it for you.
Take this sig and smoke it.
She is all for spying...except if it is on her...
*facepalm*
</thread>
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you have access to the conversation on the children's side, you have ALREADY pierced encryption. The endpoints aren't hidden by encryption in most cases, that's a function of NAT/VPN/tor/etc
The Indiana Legistlature has already tried to legislate on mathematics.
The bad guys are just going to keep using existing software that doesn't have these backdoors (esp open source software that can be vetted). In other words, this legislation will accomplish absolutely nothing but making mainstream communication tools less secure.
That's funny did Dianne Feinstein just imply that she can't trust her own children to raise their children properly?
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein, born Dianne Emiel Goldman[1] (/ËfaÉnstaÉn/; born June 22, 1933), is the senior United States Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992.
Served on the Senate since 1992.
82 years old with no fucking clue what she's talking about.
I have a concern about the IM apps my grandchildren might use and a predator getting in the middle and spoofing messages from their parents. A predator could pierce through encryption and send messages like "mommy won't be able to pick you up from school, but uncle bob will, so do whatever he says."
...I expect Slashdot to thoroughly Savage Diane for her attempts to undermine internet freedom and privacy just as they savaged Trump for merely suggesting what Hillary Suggested.
From TFA:
What did LE do before the internet?? There are all kinds of things that are/were said and done in this world, Mr. FBI, that you did not, will not, and often should not know. Why is that difficult for you to understand? Guy eats breakfast in a diner every morning; two weeks later he kills people. You don't know what was said in that diner, either. Should all diners be required to record all conversations that take place in their establishment, and forward them to the FBI?
Wait, don't answer that, you probably think they should.
Still nothing like a "series of tubes" though.
You're talking about a powerful senator who sits on several defense and intelligence related committees who - on seeing some Code Pink protesters outside her house trying to fly a pink plastic mall kiosk toy helicopter with a 10-inch rotor (and tethered to some string!) later told reporters that she'd had people spying through her windows with a drone, and that all of them should be illegal.
"Series of tubes" is downright informative by comparison to her grasp on technology and her urge to run people's lives.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This represents military industrial complex uber alles with a thin veneer of 2 party psuedo democracy dolloped on a hardened turd of corporate oligarchy.
See, they want to to keep spying on anything and everything, it's how they keep their power.
Can this get any more formulaic?
Is there a handbook on legislative tactics that specifically says, "If you can't get what you want any other way, emphatically shout THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!11eleventy!1!"
Or is this tactic really that effective, so people continue to use it over and over?
Why doesn't Feinstein also add to her bill a clause giving the cops the power to fly and invulnerability? That is just as possible as legislating that cops will have the ability to break encryption.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Math is hard.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Don't get all caught up and just focus on her stupid statements. Focus on the real issue: A never ending struggle to screw you and me. And our kids. Forever and ever.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
she deserved no less. she's an embarrassment to the state of California and the United States. (No, I did not vote for her or her "friend" Boxer.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
She OK with them talking to predators if it is not encrypted?!?
child abuse!
Don't give your cause a bad name by misrepresenting the 4th amendment. It asserts the right of people to be secure in their stuff against _unreasonable_ searches and seizures, and say that warrants are permissible with probable cause.
Whatever reasonable objections you have, this isn't one of them. The 4th doesn't protect anyone's stuff when the government has probable cause to search that particular stuff, including communications.
It's really concerning that we're seeing this trend all over the world. Even though most of these dinosaur-age politicians barely have a clue about encryption and technology in general they are now in a position to cause a lot of harm. Some of it may be unwittingly, perhaps the NSA folks are saying that they can't stop the terrorists without this.
Consider that so many businesses and people have centralized their information into "the cloud" and more are moving everyday. Centralizing puts us all in a much weaker position since the cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, etc.) will have to follow these potential laws.
In contrast, before this cloud centralization millions of servers would have to be updated all over the country and at a minimum it would take much longer to implement something like this. People and companies would also have more options and control over their data.
In any case, it's disappointing to me that this is happening in the United States. It reminds me of why my father risked his life fleeing from the communist country I was born in.
Lastly, it's not going to matter anyway. The criminals will still break the law and probably move to even more encrypted/secured services.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
she doesnt mean well,. that woman has NEVER meant well
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This bill would require a court order before the encryption can be "pierced".
Well, if you have a court order, you don't need to pierce the encryption - if the suspect fails to give you access to the messages in question, you can lock him up for failure to comply with a court order! And you can keep him there indefinitely until he complies! THE GRANDKIDS ARE SAFE!!
#DeleteChrome
... force you to decrypt any encrypted document with a court order. In fact, the law is so broad that if you go into court and the judge says "please give these nice officers the encryption keys for your hard drive" and you say "no", they can say "OK, I'll just put you in jail for contempt of court, without bail, until you do." Which can literally be forever. There are no limits that I know of for jail time for contempt of court for an ongoing refusal to comply with a court order. So it can literally be life not even in prison, in JAIL, until you do.
If th issue is terrorism, the powers are even broader and can involve you being sent to a concentration ca -- I mean "federal jail on a remote island" until you cough up a lot more than just the keys.
What they want is the power to read dynamical communication streams in real-time, because decrypting them is often too difficult even for the NSA and because a lot of them are encrypted with one-time or digitally saved keys so that a user CAN'T just cough them up. If my ssh private keys went away, do you think I have them memorized? NOBODY could decrypt my old network traffic, not even me!
Now we just have to wait a bit for the legislative branch to realize that a) we lack the theorems needed to make their nifty idea work; and b) any end user can trivially work around it by simply exchanging keys for one of the known secure algorithms; c) it isn't necessary for any saved, recorded data; and d) it isn't constitutional. It's exactly like trying to pass legislature that would require all house keys to be "registered" and constructed in such a way that a master key in the possession of the police would open them. Good luck with that one.
Besides, they already can. The key is called a "brute force", and if they use it, yeah, they have to go up against the effort the householder put in to stopping brute force entry. If their "house" is a repurposed bomb shelter with six foot thick concrete walls, good luck to them.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
82 years old with no fucking clue what she's talking about.
I don't buy the ignorance gag for a minute. Politicians can hear both sides of every argument, and generally do. They are all well educated, and have well educated staff around them all the time. When it's convenient for them to look dumb, they play their role and look dumb. And the asinine measure that people pushed back against becomes an incremental step toward their agenda, and in extreme cases Black Projects that the citizens don't know about for decades.
For nearly half a century I have seen people believe the idiot gag and remain amazed at how far down the shitter we have gone in so little time. Meanwhile, a few people said what I just did.. and they have predicted correctly.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So, is she proposing that the authorities have the tool / keys to do this, but must pinky swear not to use it without permission?
If they were in earnest about the need for a warrant / oversight, then they should have no reservation about agreeing for it to actually be impossible for the authorities to "pierce" communication without being first granted specific, targeted keys to do so. This would be a one-time expiring key pairing between the communications provider and the Court, which is handed to the authorities.
I suspect they would decline this solution, because it isn't a carte blanche opportunity to monitor at their own discretion.
More interesting is the First Amendment right to speak, encrypted, as encrypted speech is itself speech.
I like fighting this on the grounds of the pocketbook, it harming US companies bound by it, and the eventual and inevitable failure of government to keep escrow keys secret. Fight it there before gets back to the Supreme Court.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Less secure means that security conscious users will try to circumvent the restrictions, too.
I'll bet most parents don't know what their kids are sending and receiving right now in all our devices. Kids either get proper training early on from parents or not.
Even if you "force" the bad guys to get new computing devices (LOL), the brainless legislator doesn't realize that there are images which look normal and are viewable by anyone to have embedded proprietary information that only the sender and recipient know of and whether secret messages exist or not. There is NO ENCRYPTION for viewing the image itself.
Bad guys are always going to be able to create ways to pass secret messages.
"The barbecue is set for September 22. Tell Ahmed to bring the burgers and Moe the chips."
Sir, it's some kind of code. Call up AT&T and find out what "burgers" stands for and what "chips" stand for. You'll need a warrant. Judge LeRoy is a dependable rubber stamp.
she doesnt mean well,. that woman has NEVER meant well
Exactly! She and Chuck Schumer are two rats in the same nest.
FineSwine is more accurately described as a bottom-feeding scumbag.
The great tragedy of Harvey Milk's assassination is that FineSwine was able to milk it to get a senate nomination.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
... and her granddaughter is 26, which raises the question of why she's monitoring her Playstation usage.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
- C.S. Lewis
If a moderate candidate runs on the GOP ticket, the Democrats will just take out ads questioning his "Republicanism" and the Republicans will vote for his opponent, just like they did when Gray Davis took out ads against Richard Riordan.
California Republicans tend to be gullible. They can't pick a viable candidate to save their lives.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
I didn't; I live in California I've been voting against both of our left-wing loonie Senators for decades, for exactly this reason, plus the fact that they're both anti-gun hypocrites with concealed-carry permits.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The path towards a police state justified by terrorism and the always reliable pedophilia. What surprises me most about this miserable waste of skin is that she's from supposed progressive California.
This is the EXACT definition of "progressive". More and more powerful government. In every area of *citizens* lives. Literally the only freedom that progressives acknowledge is abortion. Nothing else. I'm all for a woman's right to make that choice, but damn, it's not the be all and end all of liberty.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For being a jew she sure is a fucking nazi.
Really? You haven't been paying much attention...
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) after the San Bernadino shootings -- "Sensible gun laws work! We've proven it in California." link She is apparently unaware of what state San Bernadino is in.
Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with the debt spiraling upwards at close to $1.25T per year and insurance premiums are jumping as much as 50% per year - "ObamaCare is lowering costs and the deficit." link
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.” – in a nation with 307 million people.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) -- “We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds, and yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.". Apparently, she doesn't know that it's illegal to hunt humans with any number of rounds.
She (Feinstein) also believes that allowing people to make calls from an airplane will result in uncontrollable brawling amongst the passengers. link
Or, her (Feinstein's) fine opinion of our Veterans: "All vets are mentally ill in some way and government should prevent them from owning firearms." link
Not to mention Feinstein's flip-flopping on this very issue [encryption]. In October, she said, "Millions of personal records and hundreds of billions of dollars fall victim to cyber-attacks every year, and we’ve done little to stem the tide." In other words, calling for enhanced cyber-security, yet only a month ago, "I can say this. [FBI] Director [James Comey] and, I think John Brennan, would agree, that the Achilles Heel in the internet is encryption. Because there are now... it's a black web! And there's no way of piercing it. And this is even in commercial products!"link
“Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.” – Sen. Barbara Boxer
“It [marijuana] will still be legal under federal law.” Senator Dianne Feinstein claiming that marijuana is legal
And. of course, the all-time grandaddy of a Nancy Pelosi quote, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
That was from less than 2 minutes of searching. You should really pay more attention.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Republican Party in California is broken. Feinstein's reelection was so assured that they didn't bother to nominate a real candidate to run against her. And Boxer's most recent opponent was that horrible person, Carly Fiorina. The real problem is binary partisanship, a natural outcome of the winner-takes-all voting system. When both parties agree on all the structural issues, the American voters have no real choice.
Have a nice time.