Where Do the Presidential Candidates Stand On Encryption? (windowsitpro.com)

v3rgEz writes: In a divided election year, encryption brings parties together — against technology. That's the sobering finding based on transcripts from the remaining presidential candidates, all of whom came out against cryptography and for government backdoors to varying degrees. It's a testament to the post-Snowden era (and Apple's fight against a court order to backdoor an iPhone) that every candidate has been asked about the issue multiple times, but only one candidate even acknowledged that backdoors cause great security concerns for the public.

Comments

We have no idea

[DoofusOfDeath]

Most if not all presidential candidates who make it this far in the race will say whatever they thing will get them elected.

Perhaps I'm just unskilled at it, but I'm unable to predict what any President will actually do in office, based on his/her stated positions leading up to the election.

Reads like a total NSA/PRISM failure

[wvmarle]

The comments of those candidates show a total failure of all the intrusions by NSA with their PRISM project. Supposedly the NSA recorded all meta-data (who talks to who), yet the main argument of the presidential candidates on having back doors is not "what were they talking about" but "who were they talking to" - exactly the kind of information that PRISM was supposedly recording.

Several candidates mention this specifically. Who were they talking to? Who knew about this? What were the contacts of these criminals? What was their network? All these questions the NSA is supposed to be able to answer, if Snowden's revelations are anything to go by. Now I don't doubt Snowden's claims at all, so this all points to a terrible failure of the NSA of doing anything with the massive amount of information on phone calls and e-mail traffic they recorded.

Of course finding out about crimes or terrorist type attacks in the planning stage based on this kind of data may be incredibly hard; figuring out who these people had contact with after the fact should be much easier as at least they now have a very clear starting point.

So if there's one thing these pro-back door arguments point at, it's an epic failure of law enforcement. Not only did these agencies totally overstep their legal and moral boundaries, they did nothing to prevent this attack, and can not even provide any help or information after the fact. Maybe they should go back to good old policing: keeping personal contacts with the neighbourhoods, keeping good relations with the people, and actually get useful information directly out of the community the old fashioned way. It'll make lots of people a lot happier (if only because of the increased local security and social situation).

Re:Better question

[PopeRatzo]

Apple has a point in not wanting to do this wholesale, but law enforcement has an actual warrant, and that how the Fourth Amendment is supposed to work.

I don't know how much you know about warrants and the Fourth Amendment, but they can't compel anyone to actually work for the government. Apple is being told that the warrant requires them to develop software on the government's behalf.

The Fourth Amendment is about search and seizure. The warrant in question doesn't apply to either. The government can't force you to search my house for evidence, for example.