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FBI Director Says Prolific Default Encryption Hurting Government Spying Efforts (go.com)
SonicSpike quotes a report from ABC News: FBI Director James Comey warned again Tuesday about the bureau's inability to access digital devices because of encryption and said investigators were collecting information about the challenge in preparation for an "adult conversation" next year. Widespread encryption built into smartphones is "making more and more of the room that we are charged to investigate dark," Comey said in a cybersecurity symposium. The remarks reiterated points that Comey has made repeatedly in the last two years, before Congress and in other settings, about the growing collision between electronic privacy and national security. "The conversation we've been trying to have about this has dipped below public consciousness now, and that's fine," Comey said at a symposium organized by Symantec, a technology company. "Because what we want to do is collect information this year so that next year we can have an adult conversation in this country." The American people, he said, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in private spaces -- including houses, cars and electronic devices. But that right is not absolute when law enforcement has probable cause to believe that there's evidence of a crime in one of those places, including a laptop or smartphone. "With good reason, the people of the United States -- through judges and law enforcement -- can invade our private spaces," Comey said, adding that that "bargain" has been at the center of the country since its inception. He said it's not the role of the FBI or tech companies to tell the American people how to live and govern themselves. "We need to understand in the FBI how is this exactly affecting our work, and then share that with folks," Comey said, conceding the American people might ultimately decide that its privacy was more important than "that portion of the room being dark." Comey made his remarks to the 2016 Symantec Government Symposium. The Daily Dot has another take on Comey's remarks, which you can read here.
Did they learn nothing from the encryption wars of the 1990s?
Here's my take on that.
Fuck you. We're not your children . Stop treating us as if we were.
He keeps proving it.
Go fuck yourself, federal government.
When law enforcement agencies in the USA think "parallel construction" of the source of their evidence is acceptable or justifiable. Maybe if they hadn't be so underhanded and dirty in the first place, people might believe in them.
that's what they want us to think. You're secure citizen, keep talking...
Um, Duh. You brought this on yourselves. If you didn't constantly overreach, I wouldn't feel as completed to encrypt all my communications.
You can't have an "adult" conversation with a child like Comey.
AC comments get piped to
The Feds were the ones that violated the "bargain".
Good.
What he's saying is that encryption works. Why is this a surprise for law enforcement?
Criminals used this since the beginning of time. I admit it was less mathematical and more: "The mouse evaded two traps but the tiger is sleeping"
The concept is the same.
"If you don't give me what I want, you're not acting like an adult!" *foot stomp*
> "With good reason, the people of the United States -- through judges and law enforcement -- can invade our private spaces," Comey said, adding that that "bargain" has been at the center of the country since its inception.
Yes, but for specific limited instances and after obtaining warrants for each case.
What Comey/The FBI are actually demanding is our freedom to use encryption be completely removed so that they can perform warrantless mass monitoring on a national scale.
Thanks for the submission.
Yes, Director, the room you're charged with exploring is dark. It's dark not just for you but for everyone. This include people who want to steal our identities or the contents of our bank accounts, who want to take personal pictures or conversations and broadcast them to the world without our consent, who want to perform corporate espionage, who want to see us to prey upon us and our children. Turning on the light may let you see, but you're outnumbered by the criminals in the darkness who are begging you to flip that switch so they too can see.
If you're willing to step it up and protect us from all those monsters in the dark, then tell us exactly how you plan to protect us and MAYBE we'll let you flip that switch. But somehow I don't think you want to commit the massive amount of resources that will be needed to protect us. If you don't, we want the light to stay off.
A few months ago I gave a copy of 1984 to a pretty smart friend of mine who I know otherwise seriously lacks in literacy and thinks he at least some what understands the implications of something like what this stories summary is offering but really doesn't. When I offered it I tried to explain that it is very timely and why. He cut me off while thumbing through it to say "That's a lot of words". He never read it and used it as kindling a couple of months later.
This is part of the problem. Extrapolate at will.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The 4th amendment says
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
That means if the FBI wants me decrypt any of my documents they can show my lawyer a search warrant otherwise they can FUCK OFF. If you want to fight these fuckers you, yes you, can start by teaching other people how to use strong encryption and why they should use it all the time. Yea,the NSA has monster facilities to break encryption but the cost of that is not zero. There are more of us then there are of them.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
He said it's not the role of the FBI or tech companies to tell the American people how to live and govern themselves
Finally, Comey says something I can agree with. Now take your own advise Comey and go shut the fuck up.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
If that's the best you've got, then you've got nothing.
The Feds got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They instigated all of this. They have no standing to whine about it.
Part of being "grown up" is owning your mistakes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Organized Crime Leaders Say Prolific Default Encryption Hurting Identity Theft Efforts" It is a curious coincidence...
""Because what we want to do is collect information this year so that next year we can have an adult conversation in this country."
But we are already having that conversation:
We as adults, don't want you to spy on us and we'll do everything we'll have to reach that goal, even if we have to import our gadgets from one of the other 194 countries, where they don't give a fuck about your reasons.
You, OTOH are throwing a tantrum like a brat that has to do the bed himself for the first time in his life.
They need to realize this is actually a good thing. They can keep spying, there are still ways to do that. But we need to have our data private, end of story. It's not that we have anything to hide, but we need to be able to keep ourselves protected from the bad guys because the government sure as hell isn't doing that nor do they have any care to.
If there is a backdoor to encryption, the bad guys will have the keys 100% of the time with absolutely no exceptions. They will steal the keys or just out right buy them. Comey will probably unwittingly give them away. We see people in corporations and governments fuck this stuff up all the time and accidentally send that confidential email to the entire company or outside vendors, etc. Just an accident, but that's all it takes. If encryption has no backdoors and is strong enough to not be hacked and it's on by default without any end user having to really think about it, then we are safer, but only then.
Exactly. If I and millions of other people want to use encryption, it's not up to the FBI to tell me not to do so.
This guy will never admit it, but the fault lies with the past and continuing attitudes towards data gathering in the NSA and FBI. Massive overreach (as documented by Snowden) led to an accelerated implementation of encryption.
Comey: grow a pair and admit that it is your own fault.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So his views are the 'adult' views and anyone with critical views of that is a child?
Chronic hacking victim doesn't see what the big deal is.
That's the point.
This signature is false.
You can still follow the "bad guys", plant bugs with court authorization, use GPS trackers with court authorization, all the old school techniques are available to you. You just can't use our own devices against us. Why is that so hard to understand? Stop acting like a petulant child.
I bet he also thinks it really hurts his efficiency that he can't simply open letters as he pleases or simply storm suspects' homes and take away whatever he considers to be evidence.
Pesky thing those "liberties" and "rights". Things are so much easier for police in a police state, I tell ya.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the Chinese, Russian, governments; by other corporations; by .... Maybe someone ought to tell James Comey that encryption is also used to frustrate many others, not just the FBI.
Comey seems to think he's the adult in the conversation.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
They aren't supposed to be "watching the whole room". They are supposed to be watching people for whom there are sufficient grounds for judges to issue warrants for them to be watched by better-targeted and higher-powered surveillance tools. They aren't supposed to be trolling through the entire God-damned internet looking for "suspicious activity". The whole Internet community is "suspicious" by the FBI's lights.
I understand what he's saying and agree that encryption makes it hard for the FBI. The problem is that every time the FBI gets a new power, they have a long and storied history of abusing that power. The FBI (and government in general) abusing the constitutional rights of citizens is the main reason I support strong encryption for everyone. Criminals and terrorists don't scare me, the FBI does.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
So the FBI wants people to cooperate with them, to use weak encryption so they can unlock data when they need to. OK. Who is going to do that? Let's say law-abiding people will cooperate. What compels criminals to cooperate? What compels non-Americans to cooperate? What prevents people from use their own additional encryption, like putting a 2nd lock on your door? What prevents people from obfuscating their data? Here's the key, see, it's a Rick Astley video.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
His orders come from the top.
You have 69 shopping days left to decide who will be on top. Take it up with them.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
He basically wants the right to secretly dig a tunnel under your home, sneak in while you're not there, steal whatever they want, and leave without anyone knowing it. Except in your phone.
Even worse: he want the tunnels being pre-dug (= "backdoors").
You know how in Switzerland every house has a mandatory under-ground shelter ?
What he wants is every single house in the USA having a mandatory underground tunnel that leads to a nearby police station. A *secret* tunnel that you're forbidden to know about when you buy your house.
That's what an encryption backdoor is the equivalent of : a mandatory secret back-door built in every house in the USA.
And with the automation and international connection that is available on the internet, the real-world situation is even worse than this putative mandatory tunnel.
(Now the metaphor is getting a bit harder...)
It would be as if the police station had an nearly infinite amount of low-ranking police personal that could devote their entire time to travel the tunnel each day, sneak into your house every single day, and take a picture of you naked in your shower. And not only you personnally, but though every tunnel, available in every single home built on US soil under US building code. Each fucking day.
But said local police station lacks trained and experienced detective to do anything useful out of the photos/objects/proofs brought back from by the agents.
And meanwhile, all the people living outside of the USA are completely immune to it because their local building code either don't mandate the tunnel (and thus, the US police agents can't even use this tunnel network to peak into the homes of ISIS terrorists, although that was the main selling point of the tunnel network when it was voted in)
Or mandate an entirely different type of tunnel that the US police has never heard off (and leaves some part of the US population at risk, because they buy and install a port-a-potty from China, and never realise that these come with tunnels leading directly into their chinese secret police).
All the while the Russia mafia has trained an incredibly huge army of burglars to roam the US (and Chinese) networks of secret tunnels, stealing as much as possible from every house they happen to reach. And even sometimes using your own house as a base of operation to commit crimes while you're away for work. (botnets).
At the end of the operation, maybe 1 single terrorist happens to get caught due to random chance. And maybe due to the fact that he was bragging that he is a terrorist the whole day in the middle of the street ( = wasn't even using encryption at all. Just plain text SMS.)
At the same time there will be millions of damage due to stolen property through the tunnels network.
( = just have a look at the massive data leaks that you have *today* when hacker still go through the long round about route of actually hacking into servers. Now think how much more damage would be done when the hack don't actually even bother to hack, but just leverage the backdoors that are mandated by the various governments)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When law enforcement agencies in the USA think "parallel construction" of the source of their evidence is acceptable or justifiable. Maybe if they hadn't be so underhanded and dirty in the first place, people might believe in them.
This is a third of the problem, and the third they really don't understand. I don't believe there's even been an apology for mass surveillance, just rationalizations and more-of-the-same and parlor tricks like pretending it was meaningfully helpful to make the telcos rather than the government maintain surveillance databases.
There is also the tech problem. If the encryption is breakable because your friends have a secret key, your enemies are going to make that secret key their #1 priority. If you share that secret key with your friends at the NSA, now your enemies have at least two places they can try to social engineer, crack, etc... that secret key from.
And then there is the legal problem, where it is hard to have effective legal accountability for law enforcement under any conditions, but it's harder still when dealing with secret government actions and mass warrants.
Real lawyers write in C++
This is WHY there is so much wide spread encryption. The FBI/CIA/etc proved beyond reasonable doubt (again) that they can not be trusted. They are many times when privacy should be invaded and proper channels were built for this. But it was these organizations that ignored and bypassed them.
They lost the public's trust and encryption is the response. Their job was never meant to be easy. They just made it far harder on their own by trying to cheat the public.
The FBI has no one but themselves to blame and it is well deserved. This is probably the best news regarding the FBI we have had in a long time.
We, the people, have already had an adult conversation.
You were not invited, Mr. Comey, as you did not meet the criteria.
In that conversation, we decided it best to encrypt our communications.
Maybe if you behave yourself, you will be invited to the next adult conversation.
This signature is false.
Parallel construction, aka "a conveniently timed and helpful anonymous tip"
Another thing encryption helps with: making it harder to plant evidence on digital devices...
Yeah... I'm in the "go f*** yourself" camp on this one.
That brief comment is the only visible one rated "insightful" that barely touches on the obvious insights here.
Obviously the FBI is complaining about a technology that it would like to ban or regulate. Sorry, you fibbing FBIers, you KNOW that it doesn't work that way. You can't make everyone forget and even if you could, the technology would simply be rediscovered. The law of gravity is more than a good idea, and ditto on the mathematics of information theory.
If the FBI wasn't constantly abusing innocent people, then those innocent people would not feel motivated to encrypt their personal information. Of course, it is not the FBI or even the government that is committing most of the abuse. Most of the abuses are coming from private companies that merely bribe the politicians to subvert the Constitution for their greater profits. Most of those abuses are actually with carrots rather than sticks, but they are still wrong.
BAD economics. Naughty, naughty. The financial models should not incentivize bad behavior, but the bad result is quite predictable. Solutions exist. DAUPR.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Strong crypto is widely available, and given a .js library can be done in a browser. There was a golden age of information spying, when info was carried by wires or waves, without strong crypto. Before, you had to capture the courier, now you have to attack either side of the maths. Deal with it. Rolling back strong crypto will just give a false sense of security.
John_Chalisque
Based on those comments by Mr. Comey, I don't think that the FBI is doing the job that the American taxpayers think they they are paying them to do. This will end in tears.
Translation
Give us a backdoor we promise we wont abuse it you can trust us we have your best interest at heart
You forgot the "please please pleeeze..."
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
The "adult conversation" the FBI says it's planning is a call for criminalization of any encryption that the FBI can't break. They want a back door and if you won't give it to them, they will put you in jail. Or use the powers of the NDAA to hold you without trial or "rendition" you to a country like Egypt where you can be tortured without anyone noticing.
This is an FBI which not only has broken the law regarding surveillance of US citizens, but then lied about it to Congress. The FBI may be correct that some terrorists will succeed because their communications are encrypted. That is better than living under an FBI shadow government that thinks it is above the law. We don't have to speculate about the intent of the FBI. We already know they broke the law and lied to Congress. And still have not been prosecuted for it.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Doors with locks.
Envelopes that aren't resealable.
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
All those things "hurt" government's ability to watch its citizens.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Even if I trusted the FBI to only use the information for the public good and in accordance with the law, I don't trust their ability to secure the information. Whatever mechanism is provided to the FBI to access secured data risks being transferred to some non-trusted party.
One the most important lessons from Snowdon was that even the NSA cannot protect its own secrets. How can I possibly be convinced that the FBI will be able to do so? Will Llooyds insure them for say $1T against a data breech? Or how about in the event of a breech, the directory and the top 1000 managers are executed (regardless of their personal guilt)? Are they *that* sure? If they aren't that sure, then I'm not sure enough to trust them. Imagine the damage that could be done by a person or government with access to virtually all information in the US .
One wonders if The Idiot Comey is adding to the problem. Encryption is effective! Let's turn it on. He is constantly beating the drum, while to us in the tech fields it just proves he's an idiot (and a liar, an a fool, and ...) to those outside of the 'establishment' he is telling them it works.
Good. We don't need you spying on us. At all. FBI need to learn a new way to get information.
Someone should make an app that generates long messages of random terror-keywords and then spam these messages as email around to other users with the same app, some unencrypted, encrypting some of it with weak encryption, and some with strong encryption. This will make the signal to noise ratio too low for the government to effectively monitor electronic communications.
Fuck your condescending self-righteous tone with a cactus, IMO.
I guess you kindof proved his point..
The Hackers does not seemed deterred, they have gotten into everything even into the government.
We are under no duty whatsoever to make life easier for Hoover's little nut cult.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Comey wants to spy on us, but he refused to recommend prosecution against Hillary running top secret info on her home-brew email server? How about he treat the average American citizen with the same kid gloves Hillary got? Here's your adult conversation Comey: do your JOB with Hillary, THEN we can have an adult conversation about you spying on us.
A lot of us have seen Comey lying his ass off on TV recently about other things. So when he tells us that encryption is making it harder for the government to spy on us, why should we believe him? As far as I'm concerned he is trying to convince us that our current level of encryption is secure and we don't need to do more, but my expectation is that they can pretty much read everything and we need to up our game.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
is so full of shit, it's coming out of their ears.
Their constant whining about crypto is merely a distraction. They don't need to break the crypto when they can just install the malware to steal your keys.
They don't need it when they can just jail you indefinitely for failing to provide the keys on demand.
They want everyone to THINK they can't get into it, when reality is quite different.
It's akin to putting a high security vault door on your house. Seems pretty safe until you notice the windows. Then the door becomes irrelevant.
The NSA has shown us that NOTHING that is network connected can be trusted. Period.
If they're not sitting on a trove of zero-days, then someone else IS. The attack surface is just too big to effectively secure. Too many ways in.
You want to keep something a secret you would be better off going back to old school methods. With their fingers in everything, I just don't trust the tech enough to utilize it for anything I want to keep secure.
I promise I'll give up my password when I get a warrant and verify it with my lawyer.
The only reasons for backdoors are to violate the 4th amendment with mass surveillance or for ephemeral keys that get destroyed like an encrypted chat or phone call but they should not have been recorded without a warrant in the first place.
Technology does not work that way. There are any number of permutations in which the room is not dark for everyone.
The worst possible permutation is where criminals have access to all our private information, and the system that wants to prosecute those criminals can obtain no evidence against them.
The best possible permutation is where criminals are in total darkness, while the most incorruptible members of law enforcement, after obtaining a legitimate warrant, are in a brightly-lit room.
There are smart people in the fields of cybersecurity and encryption. It just might be possible for them, over time, to develop clever checks, balances, and safeguards, that get us close to the best possible permutation.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The FBI, of ALL agencies, should be the last to complain about encryption, especially with the skeletons in their own closet (namely, Hoover's widescale phone taps, for example). The last time I checked, it wasn't the job of the government, or the people, to make law enforcement's job *easy*. The FBI just doesn't want to have to actually *investigate* and do the legwork they used to before the age of mass communication. There's a cost/benefit analysis to be made: calculate the harm caused by a very small minority of individuals who want to do the US harm, and compare that to the harm of caused by any organized crime group exploiting the backdoors the FBI wants to see in everything. I guarantee the harm caused by terrorists is so miniscule in comparison as to make a request to cripple widescale encryption tantamount to an attack on America, itself.
What's the problem?
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
and stop using corporate-vendor encryption - it's too good and we can't spy on it.
-- FBI Agent Brer Rabbit
Funny that the one calling for an "adult conversation" is exactly the one acting like a spoiled rich kid who has been crying for years now because he didn't get what he wants.
The public will have an adult conversation with the FBI only when it realizes what a fucking clown James Comey is and finally takes steps to remove him from his position.
We've been through all his propaganda-like defenses and overbearing one sided paranoid attacks against privacy and citizen security so far, as adults to, only to reject his ideas and applaud the few companies that are actually interested in defending privacy and a functional democracy.
If the FBI cannot function without backdoors and only promote privacy erosion, it's quite clear that the problem is in policy. Either way, removing the current director and putting someone in his place who understand the basic idea that actions like he is proposing does more harm than good should be a step in the right direction.
Stop wasting your fucking time trying to attack the civil liberties of the people you are supposed to work for. Can't he see how useless this whole thing is? It's only through the force of sheer ignorance that he's still able to talk all the crap he's been talking so far, which is the worst part of it all.
The moment you get backdoors to american based business is the moment criminals will flock to foreign companies to do whatever they want to - most of them actually already did, are outside of your reach, you provoked it, and there's nothing you can do in those cases.
Meanwhile, businesses trying to protect industry secrets, journalists, citizens trying to protect sensitive data, victims of abuse and persecution, are all getting exposed by erosion of privacy. Law enforcement and government has proven time and time again how incapable they are of securing sensitive information. You don't get the key to the kingdom if you can't help but losing it all the fucking time.
Be an "adult" and just admit that you want the power for yourself. Or that you are completely clueless as to what you are talking about. It's over.
It's not a bargain, it's a tradeoff.
A bargain is something you strike with some other party that has something you want. You give them something; they give you something.
There is no other party here. It's our society; our country; our government. We make the rules. We face a (putative) tradeoff between privacy and security. It is entirely on us how we make that tradeoff.
I don't agree with that "bargain", I'm okay with encryption being everywhere and anywhere. More importantly, I'm not afraid of, and are willing to deal with the consequences thereof. No deal.
Dickhead. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"FBI Director Says Prolific Default Encryption Hurting Government Spying Efforts "
GOOD!!!!!
You scumbags have forgotten you are supposed to serve the American people, NOT spy on them indiscriminately!
Making Americans more vulnerable to foreign and domestic hackers does not make us safer.
Just because the FBI could also potentially use those same hacking tools against criminals and terrorists doesn't make it a good idea to make the rest of us vulnerable.
Like ordering people to leave their doors open at night in case the FBI needs to check on something.
So Comey wants to eliminate one of our biggest protections against organized crime, pedophiles, Federal agencies acting illegally, and other forms of criminals. Who on Earth can promote such an agenda, while claiming to be protecting Americans, other that someone with an agenda similar to those he is claiming to fight?
His arguments are highly illogical at face value, but make perfect sense as a means to harm America from the inside. Prior to Snowden, when we buried our collective heads in the sands of denial about illegal Federal behavior, I could have assumed that Comey at least had our best interests at heart. But now I must assume that his agenda is to continue harming us.
The conversation we've been trying to have about this has dipped below public consciousness now, and that's fine,
It is them again pointing out what they are doing in plain sight and they even state what they are doing or planning on doing. It is like the FBI or CIA's comments that it would take a major terror attack where encryption was used to turn the people against it and then the Paris attacks happen and the narrative from the news media was all about how encryption helped/enabled these attacks. A little while later there was the San Bernardino attack and that fucking iPhone caper where government incompetence ran rampant from the start and again where encryption was painted as the problem instead of stupidity by the media.
Granted there is a lot that Comey said here that make me think he needs a big punch in the dick for, especially his patronizing statements, but that one statement is the stand out one for me.
Time to offend someone
Judging from the early comments it is clear why the FBI director is calling for a "grown up" conversation. Are all of the comment going to be F bomb anti government posts? How about a debate and constructive conversation?
There's not really anything to discuss. Encryption exists and can be made practically unbreakable. Back doors or weakened encryption will be exploited by criminals or other malicious actors making the encryption useless. Anyone with the know-how can make an encryption algorithm that doesn't contain the back doors, shutting out law enforcement. So it's pointless to install back doors or weaken the encryption if the goal is to catch criminals.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
For too long the FBI has sat back and watched as other agencies have been helping without them.
The IRS has been helping people to realize what are acceptable political views.
The DHS will soon be helping protect our voting process as well as an outcome that is favorable to them.
NASA has been helping to reach out to muslims.
The EPA has been helping write laws without Congress, and helping to "crucify" people who don't comply with them.
The NEA has been helping raise awareness about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act.
There have been a number of cases where the police have helped strangle unarmed people lately.
So good for the FBI! Helping us understand our emails and forward the details to the other helpers in the federal government.
The possibility of people using encryption that can't be cracked by the government has been part of the bargain since the beginning. Thomas Jefferson understood this better than anyone since he was actually one of the foremost cryptographers of his time. His mechanical encryption device, Jefferson disk , (or close derivatives of it) were used by the US military up to WW II.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the FBI is arguing that it should be able to read all internet traffic in the US, to make sure nobody is breaking the law. That IS what they are saying. There is no need to read between lines here. So then, we just invent a Great Firewall of USA that works like the internet in Communist China? Will we then pay for rooms full of FBI agents who will monitor our email, phone, and browser traffic for signs of law breaking? I don't know, but this may be the most important question of our generation. How far do we bend over to allow law enforcement to protect us from ourselves? I have already heard law enforcement agencies arguing for more cameras everywhere, license plate readers on every signal light, random DUI stops, random body searches, forced interrogations with lie detection technology, background checks for job applicants, license seekers, renters, real estate purchases, car purchases, ...
Wait, we have most of that already. We're basically already screwed. We're only arguing how much worse we're going to be screwed in 5 years...
OK.
the analogy here is we're being presented with two options.
1) A car with no locks anyone can steal.
2) A car with a great lock that only the owner can unlock.
The feds want unfettered access, and are trying to get us to agree to #1. They cannot guarantee that someone "bad" won't steal our car, it's just not possible. I refuse.
... or rather, incredibly condescending. Given my occupation (and prior occupation in law enforcement), I am a huge advocate for catching criminals. I am also a huge advocate for the rule of law and respecting rights of people under law. By saying that the Bureau is collecting information so we can have an "adult" conversation, the clear implication is that those on the other side of the conversation from the Bureau have been having conversations that are immature or child-like. The tone of those comments is like that of a parent telling a child that it is time for the child to grow up. It indicates a lack of respect for the opposing views. The Bureau isn't doing itself any favors with that kind of approach.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Boo hoo.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Over our dead bodies, and possibly his. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
Stego atop encryption. They can't crack your encryption if they don't know you're encrypting.
Is civil assets forfeiture the same kind of bargain? What about the Wickard v. Filburn bargain? (interstate = intrastate) Or the Kelo v. City of New London bargain? (public = private) And how about the GFSZA bargain that prevents the States from recognizing licensed concealed carry from other States and prevents all legal unlicensed carry?
Fuck your bargain James Comey, fuck your FBI, and fuck your government. Die in a fire.