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Obama Administration To Offer Full Position On Encryption By End of Year
blottsie writes with this story from The Daily Dot that the President met with encryption advocates on Thursday and is expected to make a statement on his official stance before the end of the year. From the story: "The Obama administration plans to clarify its stance on strong encryption before Washington shuts down for the holidays. Administration officials met Thursday with the civil-society groups behind a petition urging the White House to back strong, end-to-end encryption over the objections of some law-enforcement and intelligence professionals. Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute and the coalition's organizer, told the Daily Dot that it was a 'very hopeful meeting.'"
Does it matter what his position is? Its not like he can outlaw it and enforce it, its not like Congress is going to work with him after all the name calling he has directed at them over the years. Even if he does come up with something "reasonable" why would anyone else care at this point? His administration lies constantly and he has shown the NSA can't be trusted.
I can't think of a policy position on anything that will have less impact than this will.
Trust us to not misuse the data.
Trust us to act according to the Constitution, even though there is absolutely no oversight to make us.
Trust us to secure the data so it can't be hacked.
Trust us to never use any of it as evidence against you, since it was obtained without a warrant.
Trust us to never use it to blackmail you.
Trust us, we're your government.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Terrorist attacks not stopped by mass internet surveillance:
Boston Bombers. Downloaded a terrorist publication containing bomb plans from the Internet, tweeted about upcoming attacks in coded language.
Anders Breivik: Discussed violent extremist leanings online
November 2015 France attackers: Spoke freely about their plans in plaintext SMS
2015 San Bernadino Shooters: Met and discussed jihadist leanings through various social media.
Even if you put the horrendous privacy issues aside, this shit clearly doesn't work. Shut it down.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Will it make a difference? The horse has already bolted. Encryption exists.
Not that it's needed, I can say "The fish is in the wolf" on national TV and the FBI won't know when the attack will happen.
Nope. This is just about not letting encryption happen by default on all our messaging. It's espionage, it's political control, it's subversion of democracy.
(ie. the people in power know what's trending after last night's presidential speech, the opposition doesn't).
No sig today...
When you talk about the president needing Congress to pass laws, you're thinking of the old system, the Constitutional process. The Constitution is now just "an old piece of paper".
This president has already unilaterally changed immigration law after Congress denied his request and the news today is that he plans to issue new gun laws within the next few days.
Even before he was elected president, he pointed out that a law was unconstitutional- just before he voted to pass it. Meaning he knowingly, intentionally voted to pass a law that he knew to be unconstitutional. The Constitution is meaningless under this administration.
If the NSA controls the chain of cryptographic certificates (eg. Verisign) then they don't need to crack anything. Nothing can be authenticated. They can simply impersonate people and perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Most of the world's encryption is wide open to them.
Do they control that certification chain? You can be pretty sure they do. It's such an obvious target.
No sig today...
Whatever - if Obama was to declare that Christmas falls in December, there would be a storm of protests from so-called freedom advocates. He could probably push through a complete ban on encryption by declaring that it is a human right to encrypt things.
Nonsense. Whoever is president 14 months from now will have exactly the same position on encryption. And the same position on the Middle East and the same position on Afghanistan and Iraq and "free trade" and...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I find that my own positions on encryption mirror a lot of NRA positions on guns. A vast majority of encryption users are responsible and utilize technology for self defense from crime, as do a majority of gun users. On the other hand, guns can be used to commit crimes, as can encryption. Finally, both guns and encryption make it more difficult for an oppressive government to subjugate the population. Guns are more immediately dangerous, but on the other hand they protect people from getting murdered, not just from getting p0wned.
I sincerely believe that benefits of encryption to society outweigh the action of a few lunatics. Therefore I support citizens right to encryption, including military grade encryption with no limits on key size. I certainly do not want a federal database of encryption users.
Yet similar arguments ring hollow coming from NRA. I am not sure what to make of it. On one hand, I could be missing valid perspective of people living in rural or high crime areas, just like encryption opponents do not fully understand how widespread cyber crime and state espionage are.
On the other hand, perhaps I should support common sense legislation to keep strong crypto out of the hands of children and criminals. If you are a convicted pedophile, law can not keep you from encrypting your phone. But if we catch you with an encrypting phone, your parole can be revoked and whatever you are trying to hide stopped.
Or for children's devices, parents should have an escrow key to see if the kids are up to no good, are getting dangerously bullied on Facebook or are contacted by drug dealers/pedophiles. But leave a big banner describing that the device has been accessed, and which apps were used to discourage abuse BY parents.
According to the Snowdon leaks, they're tapped into just about everything. They've also probably gotten into Intel chips to weaken the RNG, etc. (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/surreptitiously.html)
They've got the budget to waste time/resources. You only have to crack a communications system once, after that you can read ALL the messages with no manpower needed.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but there's just too much evidence to think they aren't doing anything they can possibly do to set up a spying network. What do they use it for? I dunno, but it's definitely there.
No sig today...