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Top FBI Attorney Worried About WhatsApp Encryption (usnews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fbi-despises-encryption dept.

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.

6 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck him by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

    1. Re:Fuck him by rhazz · · Score: 5, Funny

      FBI: If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out.

      Public: Ok.

    2. Re:Fuck him by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Freedom always has a price. Compared to our ancestors, even with encryption, the cost of freedom is pretty fucking cheap these days.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Fuck him by Sigma+7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But he is correct? There _are_ costs, potentially involving people being killed.

      Eliminating encryption won't handle:

      • A lone wolf.
      • Communications that aren't across phone lines or the internet (e.g. Sneaker net).
      • Communications from burner phones that appear innocous (e.g. asking friends to meet up at certain galleries/malls/etc), but are actually targetting data.
      • Letters, especially if they aren't immediatly suspicious.
      • Open broadcasts, calls to action.

      There's no real cost to allowing encryption, as criminals can easily find alternate methods that don't require encryption.

    4. Re:Fuck him by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am completely willing to bear these risks and costs. It is my cost for freedom, I know that, *history* knows that, and I will bear them.
      If some fucknut strafes the local shopping mall while my daughter is there and she's killed, that is my cost for her and everyone else to be able to live a life without ID and to go have fun at malls and all sorts of things in life.
      That's my cost and I'll pay it gladly.

      And while I'm at it, we should have rebuilt the WTC towers exactly as they were before to send a big FUCK YOU to them.
      But *no* we got a bunch of fucking tears and memorials and FUD and PATRIOT ACT.

      Fuck all these governments trying to take our freedom.
      Fuck em all.

      Be Brave, not sheep.

    5. Re:Fuck him by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Quote:

      The price for having freedom and presumption of innocence is the fact that guilty men may roam free and evil men may do harm before they can be stopped.

      But if stopping them means risking the loss of freedom and the punishment of the innocent, then tolerating such men is the cost that we must accept for all the treasures a free society offers.
      A saboteur, terrorist, or criminal can only destroy objects and harm lives.

      But they are incapable of touching the foundation on which that freedom is founded.
      Only our fear and paranoia can do that.