FBI: Just Don't Call Them Backdoors (networkworld.com)

sandbagger writes: The FBI still wants backdoors into encrypted communications, it just doesn't want to call them backdoors, and it doesn't want to dictate what they should look like. Tech companies [says FBI Director James Comey] 'need' to change their business models – by selling only communications gear that enables law enforcement to access communications in unencrypted form, he says, rather than products that only the parties participating in the communication can decrypt. He also says tech companies should just accept that they would be selling less secure products.

Comments

Like Microsoft Skype and Hotmail?

[Anonymous Coward]

They want to expand PRISM, remember PRISM?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

The documents show that:

  Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

  The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

  The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

  Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

  In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

  Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas.

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So all the private communications you have well the US grabbed them stuck them in giant databases to be datamined at the whim of the military complex without judicial process.
And all the companies involved knew it, and helped. Microsoft even helping remove the encryption on future version so the NSA could slurp down their data more easily.

So when you want to use Cloud Office Services, remember that your companies documents are directly available within any judicial process to the spys for the military industrial complex.

Re:Like Microsoft Skype and Hotmail?

[swillden]

In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

FWIW, David Drummond, chief legal counsel for Google, denied that Google has ever given access, direct or indirect, to the NSA. Snowden's documents made clear that the NSA was tapping communications links between Google data centers, which may have been the basis for the "direct access" claim. Google quickly moved to encrypt all of those communications links, though, so if that was the "direct access", it's been shut off.

key escrow

[Orgasmatron]

Maybe we could call this new scheme "key escrow". That way we can run our side of the debate just by recycling posts from ~20 years ago.

Re:The ridiculousness is appaling

[WaffleMonster]

Are American citizens so lost that they do not see how ridiculous that sounds ?

24x7 media propaganda works. People are scared out their minds.

Re:That aside

[Zontar The Mindless]

All you need is to look at what happened with those TSA master keys for your luggage.

Not going to post the link again because I've already done so twice in the last few days and I'm not looking to be a karma whore, but just search for something along the lines of "TSA Keys Schneier Security" and you'll find the story quickly enough.

Re:Dear Mr FBI

[swillden]

Google is an advertising company. Add companies are their customers, and the people using their software are the product to be sold. The purpose of a corporation is to make money, selling our communications makes them money.

Google does make money from advertising. It does not sell your communications. To the degree it makes money from your communications, it does that by scanning your communications to decide what ads would most likely be of interest to you, and then showing you those ads.