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Top FBI Attorney Worried About WhatsApp Encryption (usnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on USNews:WhatsApp on Tuesday announced that all types of messages on the latest version of its app are now automatically protected by end-to-end encryption, and the FBI's top attorney is worried some of the platform's more than 1 billion global users will take advantage of the move to hide their crime- or terrorism-related communications. FBI General Counsel James Baker said in Washington on Tuesday that the decision by the Facebook-owned messaging platform to encrypt its global offerings "presents us with a significant problem" because criminals and terrorists could "get ideas." "If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out," he said. "It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?"Maybe the government shouldn't have imposed so many surveillance programs on its citizens -- and kept quiet about it for years -- that they now feel the need to use sophisticated security technologies.
Good. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
The problem is user may attempt to take advantage of the move to hide their perfectly legal and private endeavors which in no way break the law.
As usual, FBI General Counsel James Baker and his kind are outright lying, and asserting you do not have a legal right to do things anonymously or without your government knowing, and that many of those people don't give a fuck what the FBI wants because our rights are not defined by assholes who feel we should have no right to privacy if it impedes the ability of government spy on us.
Why, FBI General Counsel James Baker and his entire family need to be sure their entire lives are made public so that we can be assured he is not misusing his office to conduct illegal business.
The short version of this is: too fucking bad, there are legally valid reasons to have encryption, the world isn't subject to this asshole's definition of "valid", and he doesn't get to decide without oversight or process that he is entitled to any of this data.
But like all these modern fascists, he wants the right to see everything we do, and then decide if it's legal.
Fuck that. I think the entire rest of the world should start using real, hardened encryption the US has no access, and send a big "fuck off" and say it's none of your damned business.
Stop pretending that undermining our rights is necessary to protect our rights. Because that's a fucking lie.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out
Finally for once the power of the uncaring and slack public will actually result in something good.
I know people who are Pakistani. I know people who have family in Libya. With all the Syrians moving to my area, I suspect that I will soon know a Syrian. What scares the crap out of me is that just through the classic six degrees of separation they will be "in contact" with an associate of a known terrorist. This then puts me in contact with someone in contact with an associate of a known terrorist. Then some poorly written ML algorithm will see that I have this situation but through to two separate terrorist organizations. Then boom, I have somehow become one of the strongest links connecting the three. Basically a Canadian terrorist nexus. Add to that that I have visited LiveLeak where terrorist videos regularly get posted, and suddenly I am being pulled aside at airports, or cops have a big red blinking light show up on their computer when they pull me over for running a stop sign, and come out all guns drawn.
It is not only the invasion of privacy that worries me but the complete and certified morons who then interpret this data.
I just think of the hard partying British couple who's tweet, "I'm going to destroy America and dig up Marilyn Monroe" got them arrested for planning to commit crimes. Context you stupid morons.
Plus in 99% of this sort of stuff the only advantage is to find out that terrorist A who blew himself to bits was actually in contact with terrorist B who blew himself to bits. It doesn't prevent squat, it just makes the paper pushers happy to have a better trail to confirm whatever obvious facts they started with.
Here is the horrible thing about all this. Everyone knows exactly which country on this planet funds the bulk of modern ISIS terrorism. Officials won't say it, and they certainly won't do anything about it. So instead they just want to rape our rights to prove that they are doing something.
I am distinctly not a lawyer, but is there merit to this thought? The entire legal basis of the "third party doctrine", with which enforcement types can grab your data from a company you do business with basically on demand (or with very easy to get approval), depends on your having "no reasonable expectation of privacy. Well, if I end to end encrypt all communications and stored data in such a way that the storing company does not hold the key, only I do, then I DO now have a reasonable expectation of privacy and the entire third party doctrine collapses legally. I'm VERY certain that it would take an army of attorneys and lots of $$$ and patience to push this idea through the courts, and likely a legal issue with which to establish "standing" to pursue the issue, but thoughts? Is there merit to this line of thinking?
The amount of baseless FUD the FBI and government pumps out continues to be nothing short of astonishing when considered that it's in the face of overwhelming evidence they're wrong on so many levels.
Because, you know, it's not as if they couldn't just use one-time pads to transmit in the clear over Twitter, or basic steganographic techniques to communicate messages with pictures of cats...
Oh wait... that's probably exactly what they're doing. But that would be inconvenient to the line of bullshit they're trying to sell us. Because it's not as if trying to catch terrorists by spying on the communications of all Americans (and citizens of other nations) is a violation of the Constitution or anything...
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
> Maybe the government shouldn't have imposed so many surveillance programs on its citizens -- and kept quiet about it for years -- that they now feel the need to use sophisticated security technologies.
Let's get off the "fuck the man" train for a second and look at this rationally.
I am really happy that people are waking up to the necessity of encryption. But end-to-end encryption relies on a secured local endpoints, and all we have are devices that are 100% owned by the corporations we rent them from.
That phone in your hand is not yours. It's a hostile environment for hostile apps.
I don't understand why ROOMS are tolerated so widely. People go in a ROOM, they close the fucking door to the ROOM and they speak softly and I can't hear a damn thing they say. People have been using all these ROOMS to have private conversations for years. I bet nearly every damn crime this year has been planned in a ROOM of some kind. This ROOM tech must be stopped!!!! Criminals might get ideas! Imagine that! They can talk in private in a room and we can't do anything about it!!! The madness must stop!!!!
Still true today.
Will this create problems when trying to root out bad actors? Sure!
The thing is, there's no such thing as perfect safety. No matter how hard law enforcement agencies try.
So, the American public can grow a pair, and realize that the government CANNOT protect them in all situations.
They can then choose whether or not they will act with more circumspection and awareness of the dangers inherent in their surroundings.
And they'll accept the fact that sometimes bad things happen regardless of how much effort was put into prevention.
Or we can simply have ever-greater encroachment on people's liberties.
And bad shit will CONTINUE to happen, regardless of how much effort is put into prevention.
So we have a choice:
* Liberty and danger?
OR
* Tyranny and danger?
PICK ONE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
All of these people holding positions of power demanding access to everything we do all the time need to be the first to make their everything open to us. Strangely they won't do that, and go to great lengths to prevent us from knowing anything about their activities even though we write their paycheck.
This demand should extend beyond Government officials and to people like Gates, Schmidt, and others in the private sector that make the same arguments and demands that "we" be transparent while "they" hide information and hoard wealth.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The FBI attorney is (purposefully?) confusing possible and probable as well as level of risk. Is it possible that terrorists will see WhatsApp's encryption, flock there, and plot a huge attack resulting in many deaths unseen by law enforcement? Certainly. It is also possible that the terrorists will wake up tomorrow morning realizing that this whole "kill everyone different than us" thing is idiotic, will drop their weapons, and take up a less destructive hobby. Both are possible, but are also not very probable. The recent attacks have been planned using SMS and other unencrypted communication methods. If law enforcement can't catch them when they're not encrypting, why go through the bother of deploying encryption?
As far as of level risk goes, there were 32,727 deaths due to terrorism worldwide in 2014 (Source). Even adding all terrorism deaths together since 2006 gives 161,834. Remember, this is worldwide. If we wanted to limit this to US deaths from terrorism, we'd get 303 American deaths from 2004-2014 (Source). In contrast, 2014 had 17.6 million identity theft victims in the US alone. (Source)
This all means that you have almost a 639,000 times greater risk of being an identity theft victim than a terrorism victim. Granted, I doubt many people are going to use WhatsApp to share information that could be used in identity theft, but this isn't the FBI vs. WhatsApp any more than it was just the FBI vs. Apple. It's the FBI vs Encryption. They want to see encryption either go away or be backdoored so they can get in at any time. Unfortunately, if this were to happen, a lot more people would find themselves vulnerable to various scams and the number of terrorists captured would be at or near zero.
This isn't even "trading liberty for security" as much as it is "trading security for some nebulous promise of possible security later on."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Get this paranoid nut case of out of any authoritative place in government. Maybe a window at the DMV where he can do only do minimal damage. This helps to stop the alphabets from doing an all out colostomy on every Joe Average that tweaks his interest. The upside for him is that now they have an easier time hiding their home grown terrorist operations. Thats the way life works, it rains and the sun comes out, get over yourself, there is a life beyond paranoia. Remember it was chicken little that was running around in circles screaming the sky is falling. Hollering I told you so at each and every one of life's aberrations no longer resonates with the public, its just more white noise.
I just did some googling. Apparently the number of people who die by terrorism from now back to 2001 is absolutely dwarfed by the number of people who day every year from automobile accidents, mostly caused by allowing cars to be driven by error prone, inferior, humans.
Maybe a better use of our tax dollars would be a new 'Manhattan Project' or "Moon Shot' project. Replace the 'War On Terror' with a real 'War On Human Driven Cars'. Self driving cars for everyone. That would save vastly more lives than would ever be saved by allowing the FBI snoops to break into every phone, any where, any time, and without any kind of supervision. That is what this is really about.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Everyone needs end-to-end encryption, unbreakable, backdoor proof encryption faced with the FBI
that spent 41 agents FOUR YEARS of hunting down something useful to Kenneth Starr
And 12 years looking for anything that would silence or intimidate Martin Luther King
And 18 agents hunting down Nixon's Enemies list
And at least 5 years chasing reporter's notebooks and phone calls to silence whistleblowers
And the 8 years hunting Julian Assange for the "crime" of showing the deliberate murder of Journalists in Iraq.
Our liberty REQUIRES secrecy from these people.
Our safety can't be guaranteed by giving up our freedom.