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FBI Tells Congress It Needs Hackers To Keep Up With Tech Company Encryption (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: A high ranking technology official with the FBI told members of Congress Tuesday that the agency is incapable of cracking locked phones and devices on its own, even with additional resources. Amy Hess, the agency's executive assistant director for science and technology told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that encrypted communications continue to pose a challenge to the American law enforcement, and to the safety of the American public. But when asked by lawmakers to provide a practical solution beyond the FBI's talking points, she said that the cooperation of technology companies would be necessary. According to the New York Times, "The FBI defended its hiring of a third-party company to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, telling some lawmakers on Tuesday that it needed to join with partners in the rarefied world of for-profit hackers as technology companies increasingly resist their demands for consumer information." They are stressing the importance of cooperation with tech companies and "third parties" to help fight terrorism, claiming they do not have the capabilities and resources available to crack encrypted devices. Congress is currently debating potential legislation on encryption.
We will keep making more sophisticated encryption. You will not beable to keep pace with our progress. We do not want you in our devices, fuck your laws. Crapfully yours, The internet
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
What are we paying the NSA for?
I find it strange that nobody seems to mention that law enforcement worked just fine in ancient history when private conversations were not recorded at all. The government could not get a transcript on demand because there was none. Likewise, the government still is unable to read our thoughts. Why should a thought be treated differently when it is expressed in speech or electronically through writing? Why should the government feel hamstrung by inability to read our encrypted written thoughs when it still can not read them while they reside in our heads? Should we not demand that both be treated as private without question and inaccessible to government extortion? Law enforcement has done just fine without reading our thoughs for centuries; it should do just fine in the future without reading our encrypted letters.
Public vs private pay packet? Easy win.
Should it come to any surprise that the people they need don't want to work for the government? Or fled to Berlin to escape a similar fate?
If you keep backdooring encryption and ostracizing your own citizens who are strong on security, you can't expect to have any citizens who particularly want to help you out.
You can't just throw warm bodies at the problem like you can with traditional war. The Germans lost Einstein and countless other academic Jews to countries like the United States and Russia in WW2, and now the same thing is happening with security experts in the United States. Good luck with that.
moox. for a new generation.
Maybe if the FBI stopped requiring drug tests and lie detector tests for those employees it wants to be security and programming experts / hackers of its own, they might get some better applicants. The Venn diagram of those qualities reduces your option pool by quite a lot.
I've worked in information security for a long time. I 've spoken with colleagues at various government agencies and learned that indeed they don't have a expertise far beyond what's available in the private sector; the movies are as fictional in that respect as they are in others. They do need assistance from the private side of the infosec community.
Fifteen years ago, I would have been happy to assist those who protect and serve if they were working on some actual crime, such as a murder case I was once contacted about. Since Snowden and other events, it's become quite clear that the federal government is not the good guys, for any definition of "good guys".
There's no single solution, but there is one thing that would really help. Prior to 9/11, international spy agencies such as the NSA were prohibited from sharing information with domestic police at agencies such as the FBI. The thinking was that the techniques and mindset used against our enemies, such as North Korea, shouldn't be used against our own citizens. After 9/11 it was determined (correctly) that the prohibition on cooperation made it more difficult to defend against attacks, so the rules were weakened or eliminated and cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement was encouraged. We need to put those walls back in place. Yes it will make defending against attacks more difficult, but it's worth it because the alternative turns out to be having the NSA and FBI attacking the citizens.
The FBI wants to grow the market-sector of black-hat hacking? (Yes, I know, but language evolves, so I use the 'press-accepted' term here.)
In what reality could this conceivably be a good idea? Tons of new "exploit-mining" companies would spring up. Many would then have the FBI as perhaps one of their clients.
We already saw this with Symantec in the 1980's giving away $50 for each 'new' or even 'variant' of a virus that someone 'discovered'. They helpfully provided examples – you know, for training and reference purposes. We ended up with tons of variants on the first PC viruses, with someone changing a single line of a text string in an irrelevant way – such as changing the text displayed.
Back to the FBI hoping to contract this work out: WTF? That's worse than making this part of the revolving door between government service and private-sector employment.
The FBI becomes indistinguishable from black hats.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Who else are they going to turn to? All the honest, moral people gave them the finger.
Ah, and in the last eight years, what had the Obama administration done to counter that? Fucking moronic AC.
Just another day in Paradise
Umm, no. The executive branch doesn't control the judicial.
Just another day in Paradise
No, executive orders can be reversed at any time by the occupant of the White House. Nice try.
Just another day in Paradise
It's a general problem with police forces in general. A police force can only function effectively if it has the consent and support of the population. To do this, it has to be seen as being on the side of the majority of the population. When you pass laws that criminalise the majority and when you cut funding for police programs that visibly assist the community, then this breaks down.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
By their own laws the people they seek to "help" them are not "hackers" but "crackers" who would normally pursued and locked up by that same FBI. Don't tehy have NSA assets to use? No, because even the NSA cannot blatantly circumvent what Congress has ruled over and over regarding mandatory back doors. No, they are looking for criminals because they are engaging in crime and in circumvention of he will of the people. They must be treated as law breakers.
The US already have a bunch of very bright hackers on its payroll. They work down at Fort Meade in a big glass building with NSA written on the front of it.
What this smacks of, is kingdom building. The FBI is trying to bolster its own little playpen, instead of playing nicely with others and asking the NSA for help.
The FBI simply wants a bigger budget.
Take away the academy, weapons qualification, etc parts and will let them get more people as well as older tech pro's who should not be cut out if they are.
older than 37 (right now only have an Veterans ones)
don't have the right degree (they can also add more wavers)
driver’s license (easy to get but there are people in areas where you don't need a car)
There should be non field desk job roll that even some in wheel chair can do tech stuff for the FBI.
There is no right of the government to monitor communications. Before we had communications technology, it was all but impossible. The telegraph offered the first viable method for the government (and others) to spy on any and all communications, followed by the telephone, the cellphone, email, texts, etc. At each step, security was an afterthought, and so it provided a larger and larger attack surface. Governments (and others) have enjoyed the access that inattention has brought for too long. For so long, in fact, that they now view their access as an inalienable right that's being assaulted by "evil" tech companies.
The fact is that communications cannot be subject to eavesdropping by the government without also being subject to eavesdropping by criminals. The government knows this, and uses encryption to protect its own communications. The banks know this, and use encryption to protect their communications. Criminals know this, and use encryption to protect theirs. But that doesn't make criminals omnipotent. It doesn't even obstruct targeted surveillance. From bugs to keyloggers to laser microphones to tails, there are a wide array of surveillance tools and techniques to practice targeted surveillance. The problem is laziness -- the government wants to sit on its ass and let the information come to it, instead of going out and collecting it.
That's all well and good, if it works. But the downside isn't just the potential for abuse by the government, or the lack of oversight, or the intrusiveness. An insecure infrastructure is open to attack by malicious individuals, organizations, and nation-states. "Protection" against the narrow segment of "crimes and attacks that are preventable by solely by dragnet surveillance" comes at the cost of criminal network penetration, identity theft, corporate espionage, credit card fraud, malware, ransomware, and spying by foreign powers. We shore up defenses against the rare (if spectacularly awful) terrorist attack at the expense of the everyday cybercrimes, which are, taken together, *far* more harmful and preventable, even if they don't make for very dramatic headlines. It's like devoting all of our law enforcement resources to stopping serial killers and leaving regular murders -- the vast majority -- uninvestigated, let alone solved, and in fact encouraging them by a declared lack of enforcement. Worse, it's allowing our enemy to dictate our actions, to provoke a change in our behavior, ethics, and values.
Perversely, dragnet surveillance is not the antidote to anything other than security, and it takes a myopic vision and tragically flawed reasoning to believe otherwise. When the government asks for the keys to everything, just say no.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Would that matter?
I'm surprised they can find anyone who would claim to be a Hacker to work with them.
Low pay.
Poor track record sticking to the letter of the law, let alone the spirit of the law.
Do illegal things and hide them behind national security.
To me it is no different than the scientists that won't work on weapons technology for the military.
We can't trust them to use that kind of power responsibly at any level (local, state, or federal law enforcement).
The proper checks and balances are just not there.
There should be non field desk job roll that even some in wheel chair can do tech stuff for the FBI.
There probably are. There is law that lets people declared permanently disabled by the SSA –people on SSDI – "go to the front of the line". Effectively, from the bits I've read, anyone SSDI disabled, applying for a Federal Government job:
* Gets to skip the resume-culling steps that everyone else must pass through—They get to be considered in the last round.
* Is entitled to 'special considerations'. Not just wheelchair ramps, but flexible scheduling and similar accommodations.
* Is a 'diversity hire', scoring the hiring departments political points
The program is intended to have the same % of 'regular' people employed in proper jobs as the $ of SSDI people employed in proper jobs – jobs for which they must be qualified, BTW.
They went after the Quest CEO and put him in jail for 6 years after he refused to cooperate with the NSA.
And sloshes back up to The Hill. These Congressional leaders know what they know and don't listen to no scientists! The contempt and fear is palpable. When reality doesn't conform, they resort to threats, blame games and force.
So the FBI can't find talented people to help them with imaginary, badly conceived, and wrongheaded problems. I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"