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FBI Tried To Defeat Encryption 10 Years Ago, Files Show (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a NYTimes article: In early 2003, F.B.I. agents hit a roadblock in a secret investigation, called Operation Trail Mix. For months, agents had been intercepting phone calls and emails belonging to members of an animal welfare group that was believed to be sabotaging operations of a company that was using animals to test drugs. But encryption software had made the emails unreadable. So investigators tried something new. They persuaded a judge to let them remotely, and secretly, install software on the group's computers to help get around the encryption. That effort, revealed in newly declassified and released records, shows in new detail how F.B.I. hackers worked to defeat encryption more than a decade before the agency's recent fight with Apple over access to a locked iPhone. The Trail Mix case was, in some ways, a precursor to the Apple dispute. In both cases, the agents could not decode the data themselves, but found a clever workaround. The Trail Mix records also reveal what is believed to be the first example of the F.B.I. remotely installing surveillance software, known as spyware or malware, as part of a criminal wiretap. 'This was the first time that the Department of Justice had ever approved such an intercept of this type,' an F.B.I. agent wrote in a 2005 document summing up the case.
"Getting around the encryption" should be "intercepting data before it got encrypted or stealing passcodes with keylogging" or some-such.
>> They persuaded a judge to let them remotely, and secretly, install software on the group's computers to help get around the encryption
I really have no problem with this. Here, the FBI went through a legal process to get permission to monitor a suspect to look for specific messages. This is a lot different than law enforcement grabbing all data passing through an area and then fishing around in people's private business for suspicious or embarrassing activity.
It is never right to do the wrong thing (install malware) to do the right thing (clear or gather evidence against a suspect).
That doesn't mean it's the first time they did this.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Encryption (even more in such general terms, not even mentioning which algorithm or basic representing problem) has not been and cannot be "defeated" as such. It can be circumvented. And, besides some weak cryptosystems that have been proposed and found lacking after analysis (i.e. the knapsacks implementation), the only "useful" general attacks on cryptography are attacks on the implementation: Circumventing cryptography rather than breaking it.
Of course there was every reason to break out the big guns here! Encryption, shmencryption, privacy shmyracy, but where could we end up if we couldn't test on animals anymore!
That's clearly a matter of national security, if not survival of our culture or even the human race altogether!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How did the FBI remotely install anything? Were they sitting on undocumented exploits and tricked the user? Or did they just physically break into the residence and install something?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Had the FBI actually not broken numerous laws I may agree with you. The FBI installing illegal software without the person's knowledge is a bit different from wiretapping. First, the only way for the FBI to have this illegal software would be to create the software which is a criminal act. Alternatively, and more likely, they could have conspired with criminals to acquire the software. (It should be obvious that "criminals" could be agencies within Government(s).)
Wiretapping is legal and has some moral uses. We can correctly state that the person maintains the assumption of innocence while they are being wiretapped. Installing software to spy requires the assumption of guilt, and provides the means for the actors to create evidence.
The loss of ethics and morality in the agency makes them a gestapo, not a public police force. I'm sure that is the intent of this, and literally thousands of other cases within the last several years. It's the Government against the public, until the public takes back the Government.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Wtf is this? The world's central source for what the FBI is doing? Every fucking day, numerous stories on the FBI, encryption and Apple. We fucking got it. The government needs your nude MMS messages in order to fight terrorist. Let it go. Please. Everyone is sick of this shit... The FBI this, the FBI that. It's really getting old. Isn't there ANY tech news other than what the FBI is having for breakfast? This just in! Someone from the FBI pooped!
FBI Tried To Defeat Encryption 10 Years Ago, Files Show
They're probably trying to defeat encryption of some kind or another every single day.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Actually I think this is fine and ok. And TBH beautiful. They used encryption but they didn't change their windoze. Of course FBI raped their asses. Next time use a proper OS, pick one from this list: distrowatch.com
The third amendment was about this:
The practice of quartering troops in the homes in the occupied area wasn't just a matter of using up their resources to support the army. The troops served as spies against the citizens, hearing their conversations, going through their papers when they weren't looking, and so on, then reporting back to their superiors.
Imagine how having a live-in military spy would affect the ability of members of a family to participate in any activity in opposition to the desires of their current rulers - no matter how benign.
Spyware is exactly the same thing, at the electronic level: A software (rather than meatware) agent of the government, housed in the victim's premises, spying on all his activities, reading all his personal records and communications, reporting them all to its government controllers, and consuming his resources (disk space, RAM space, processor time, network bandwidth), to do so, and support his "life" in the process.
So it seems to me that a case could be made that the Third Amendment prohibits government installation of spyware on private-sector computers, except during war - and then only under terms explicitly and publicly set out in law - and in a manner visible an obvious to the target.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
All too often we see people in high places entrusted with power turn into criminals. When spying tools are allowed whether it be decryption or wire taps or keylogging there is a huge problem. Those tactics can be used for all kinds of illegal reasons and be completely covert. Suppose you have developed a product that shows tremendous potential and some jerk in government peeks into your communications and then passes information to a third party to steal your ideas. Or suppose that some creep is seriously attracted to your wife or daughter and tries to get information to leverage her into servicing him? The problem is that tools developed for law enforcement will always tend to leak out and be misused. The threat from crime and terror nuts may be less than the threat of government run wild.
If the government has write access to the computers without the suspects knowing then how can they prove chain-of-custody?
forensics requires that once storage is confiscated it is read-only copied and then the original is stored with a hash to prove it hasn't been altered while only the copy is researched.
In cases like this the government's word is the only proof that they aren't manufacturing evidence to take down groups that are making waves.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
One case and it went before a judge. (Homefully not FISA).
They judge believed they had cause. It's called a warrant and due process.
Hopefully the judge limited what information they could collect.
What would be even better is if there were dedicated specialist teams to collect that information such that they aren't rewarded or motivated by any potential conviction.
FBI exploited my desktop through aol aim 0day (Linux version) in mid 2003 after i hacked a big voter database in Missouri. I was not arrested, but yea they 0wned my boxes.
How dare animals have any rights!
A virus, trojan, malware, a backdoor. Legit
one off case athusued by a judge. As long as they get a warrant for every case, specifying each computer or person, it's fine. Blanket warrents and no warrents are illegal