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FBI Chief Calls Unbreakable Encryption 'Urgent Public Safety Issue' (reuters.com)
The inability of law enforcement authorities to access data from electronic devices due to powerful encryption is an "urgent public safety issue," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday in remarks that sought to renew a contentious debate over privacy and security. From a report: The FBI was unable to access data from nearly 7,800 devices in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 with technical tools despite possessing proper legal authority to pry them open, a growing figure that impacts every area of the agency's work, Wray said during a speech at a cyber security conference in New York. "This is an urgent public safety issue," Wray added, while saying that a solution is "not so clear cut."
I don't see it all that short term thinking. This is definitely part of a larger picture, a longer termed plan.
Get this wedge in now, this idea that some authority should have all the keys to the encryption kingdom, and it should be easier to keep it there when the next privacy scheme comes along. Otherwise it's a doubly hard fight the next time. You have to convince more people that the authorities are correct to want it. Do it now, when it is of less concern.
Either encryption works for everyone, or it works for no one.
In the end, calling unbreakable encryption an "urgent public safety issue" is pointless.
Why are cars lacking security features against terrorists?
Why are guns lacking security features against terrorists?
Why is cash lacking security features against terrorists?
The FBI/CIA/NSA does not only want to access the devices thieves/killers/terrorists, they want to spy on EVERYONE.
#DeleteFacebook
You have the legal authority to pry them open. Get prying. Having the authority to try to open something doesn't give you the entitlement to open it. Unfortunately, it seems the top dog at the FBI does not understand this concept. It's also entirely the fault of the FBI and other government agencies with police powers that this encryption situation has gone in this direction. They made this bed and they must lie in it. No law can change the fundamental properties of mathematical operations, and good luck outlawing consumer encryption since every CPU being made nowadays (even Celerons and Atoms) has hardware AES and such strong encryption is ubiquitous. Combined with the epic failure and subsequent revelations of major flaws in the government's key escrow Clipper Chip, there is no way the FBI is killing off the spread of encryption.
It is an 'Urgent Public Safety Issue', but not in the way they are suggesting...
If he can find unbreakable encryption to be an urgent public safety issue, can I find him to be an urgent public privacy issue?
Also, no amount of wishing will put the AES-256 toothpaste back in the tube. Because, math.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What the law enforcement clambering for a back door or weaker encryption forget or fail to see is that the 7k cases they are talking about isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the 17 million identity thefts each year
pigs just keep on piggin'.
each month is a new cry about their lack of ability to STROLL THRU OUR LIVES and even plant shit on our computers.
we will not give in. but I suspect we'll lose anyway, because they have infinite money, power, almost people, who want to invade our privacy for lulz (mostly).
its sad that we are now in a perpetual state of WAR with our own governments on this very issue. and they show no signs of giving in.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They want to catch crooks. Meanwhile, billions in dictatorships are kept down with the assistance of breaking crypto.
Are we to sacrifice them so a prosecutor can get a notch or two on his belt once in a great while?
And what are those hundreds of millions of children living with a boot on their face...forever...worth?
Torture and murder some, you are a nasty criminal. Torture and murder hundreds of thousands, and people in free countries say you are practicing self-rule.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
People said that when television first went to satellites. Back in the '80;s, home satellite TV boxes had card readers (just like credit cards) that had all your data id: channel and subscription info, on them. Possession of card readers, used by hackers to read/write their own cards, even for legitimate purposes (like making library cards on the same technology) became a crime - So too did even the "knowledge" of how the readers worked. It was a crime to post or share data layouts or how the hardware functioned. When a society reaches a point where it accepts that knowledge itself is a crime, essentially, outlawing ideas, the notion of "freedom" from there on is nothing more than veneer.
The real safety issue is the lack of respect our government has for the Constitution. I for one am not happy with the whole secret court, secret warrant and other "Patriot Act" nonsense. The government has immense power and only wants more and more. The most dangerous thing in any society is a government that forgets it rules for the people and not OVER them.
If the FBI gets their way on this weak breakable encryption, it will have economic consequences for the US.
The other 96% of the world's population will know that they can't trust American products. They might make their own phones, systems, devices, etc even more secure against American TLAs. Thus accomplishing the opposite of what the TLAs want.
Aren't the majority of smartphones already made outside the US? Maybe all they need to do is build their own secure OS with secure encryption that the US won't like. Will the US stop people coming in with foreign made phones that are too secure?
What about economic consequences of American executives traveling abroad using insecure US made equipment and having valuable trade secrets stolen?
But think of the children!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Because. What they REALLY want is different. They want unsupervised, unmonitored, warrantless access to all your data, any time. All the time. That is what this is actually about. Even if they need secret gag orders imposed upon tech companies. They want unmonitored access.
We now have:
Secret Laws
Secret Interpretations of Laws
Secret Courts
Secret Warrants
Secret Court Orders
Secret Arrests
Secret Trials
Secret Evidence (not made available to the defense)
Secret Convictions
Secret Prisons
Secret "enhanced interrogation" programs
Gee, it sounds like we've become everything we were fighting against in the previous century.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.