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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.
^This
I'd like a "rear entry portal" into the Capitol Building, just so I can know how they operate behind closed doors. It should be legal because (a) my tax dollars pay their salary and (b) they're suppossedly not committing any crimes!
This is all of course in line with the FBI's thought process.
It provides great opportunity for foreign companies to produce similar products, but better and cheaper as they don't have to add this insecurity.
Thanks to the FBI, Chinese-built software may very well become the more secure choice over US-built software.
And that's before the keys to the FBI-mandated back doors are leaked or cracked or whatever making them available to the world at large...
Remember how, back in the days, we used to download PGP from Finland because of US export restrictions? These days are coming again, with resulting renewed public interest in free software and sideloading apps outside the walled garden. As well, it's a chance for a developing country to establish an alternative Silicon Valley exporting truly secure software, even PC and mobile operating systems, worldwide. Hopefully I can move there and live like a king.
You mean like putting the split in between the NSA and FBI? The one Bush removed?*
Removing that split allowed the "Parallel Construction" path, with NSA handing evidence it obtained illegally (or perhaps faked) while getting the DEA & FBI to cover up the true evidence trail from the courts.
And it also allowed FBI to turn NSLs into mass surveillance devices. FBI turns up with an NSL, insists on putting in a box on the network to only capture 'meta data', the box is run by the NSA, slurps down all the passwords SSL keys and data. NSA hands back to FBI only the meta data it can legally have. Or like they did with Lavabit, demand Lavabit provide the SSL keys so they could decrypt all traffic perhaps? Again only to collect metadata.. honest.... except is the NSA that taps all the networks, so the NSA would get all the keys and all the data.
The problem here is the FBI which would be required to keep the NSA in check on behalf of Congress and the Judicial branch, has instead become a co-conspirator in many of the NSAs illegal schemes. When NSA pisses all over the constitution who exactly is supposed to march in and raid them? The boy scouts?
*Bush's company Arbusto Energy was rescued by Saudi Binladin Group. (Yes that Bin Laden). So of course he wouldn't do his job and let FBI and NSA co-operate on stopping 9/11. Of course he refused to act when CIA demanded an emergency meeting, they shouldn't have named their memo "Bin Laden determined to attack the US", as soon as he saw Bin Laden, I bet the memo went in the bin.
You can add pretty much the entirety of eligible Mainers to that list. You no longer need a permit to conceal carry in Maine provided it is lawful for you to own a firearm. Yup... You may still want a permit if you travel (I do and have mine) because this doesn't extend to other states as of yet. Strangely enough, we don't have a whole bunch of crime, firearm violence, or any need to keep track of who has what in their waistband.
No, no don't move there. It's terrible and the people are mean. It's cold and nobody will like you. It's remote and the taxes are too high. It's an awful place and you wouldn't want to live there - not even for the forward thinking with private property ownership rights. You're better off in California or New York, of course. You'd never want to live in Maine.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Then you get labeled as a pedo, or more likely a terrorist -- and then it doesn't really matter if they convict you of anything, your life is over.