Slashdot Mirror
Justice Department Revives Push To Mandate a Way To Unlock Phones (nytimes.com)
"FBI and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on approaches to provide such 'extraordinary access' to encrypted devices," reports The New York Times (alternative source), citing people familiar with the matter. Justice Department officials believe that these "mechanisms allowing access to the data" exist without weakening the devices' security against hacking. Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the report: Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said. The FBI has been agitating for versions of such a mandate since 2010, complaining that the spreading use of encryption is eroding investigators' ability to carry out wiretap orders and search warrants -- a problem it calls "going dark." The issue repeatedly flared without resolution under the Obama administration, peaking in 2016, when the government tried to force Apple to help it break into the iPhone of one of the attackers in the terrorist assault in San Bernardino, Calif. The debate receded when the Trump administration took office, but in recent months top officials like Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, have begun talking publicly about the "going dark" problem. The National Security Council and the Justice Department declined to comment about the internal deliberations. The people familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioning that they were at a preliminary stage and that no request for legislation was imminent. But the renewed push is certain to be met with resistance.
This is basically impossible without banning general-purpose computing devices entirely. Even if phones have a backdoor, what's to stop someone from loading a Linux variant designed outside the US onto a laptop and using it for secure communications?
Entirely banning "unhackable" communication would require a walled garden that looks more like Alcatraz for every single compute device sold in the world.
I'd expect the issue to surface as many times as necessary until the Justice (lol) Department gets what they want.
Bearing in mind that Trump wanted the IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited a protest website against his inauguration, I'd add the 1st amendment in there quite heavily too.
You misunderstand. Its not necessarily about being hackable or backdoored. There is no need to remove the current level of encryption and digital signatures and other technical security features, nor is it necessary to prevent further advances in these areas. All that government would need to do is require Apple/Google/Microsoft/etc to archive your passcode, and give up your passcode when presented with a warrant. Yes, that is not desirable. However it is not "banning unhackable communication".
So the US is becoming China-lite now?
Why compare them with China? Why not the UK? After all, UK courts have ruled that prisoners can be forced to hand over encryption keys, and can be held in custody indefinitely until they comply.
Where was your snarky comment when that was going on, BTW?
There is no stopping it. Either side.
LE is going to keep pushing for it until they get it, Team FuckYou is going to keep writing workarounds to thwart it and the folks you want to catch with your new backdoor are simply going to cease using the compromised products altogether and find something else.
Kind of makes me wonder the real reasons for banning Huawei phones from the US markets. National Security or the fact they won't play ball with the DOJ. . .
And those keys held in escrow will somehow magically be immune to loss by theft or coercion.
#DeleteChrome
”They included Ray Ozzie, a former chief software architect at Microsoft; Stefan Savage, a computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego; and Ernie Brickell, a former chief security officer at Intel.”
I can’t speak to Professor Savage’s expertise; but just having these particular guys from Intel and Microsoft involved should scare the crap out of you.
#DeleteChrome
It's my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that use of encryption is specifically banned on ham radio bands.
Your "solution" to the problem of obtaining strong encryption iis to use a medium that already band use of encryption entirely?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Out personal information is widely available to multiple groups. The government has easy access to an almost endless amount of information about us. There is:
The 3rd party doctrine roughly states that we can only assert a privacy right over information we directly control. If the information is shared with a 3rd party, they we don't control it, and we can't assert a privacy right over it. As the 3rd party doctrine has expanded, we have lost privacy over any shared information.
Now, law enforcement wishes to move beyond the limits of the 3rd party doctrine. They advance the legal theory that we should not be allowed to control our own information/privacy AT ALL. They believe that the desires of law enforcement should always outvote an individual's desire for freedom, privacy or liberty. That we should never be allowed to be secret, private or alone.
The proposals for "Responsible Encryption" are a simple end-run around the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments to the US constitution. Instead of debating this crap, we should be demanding stronger privacy protections. We need to restrict the 3rd party doctrine. We need to penalize any lawyer or judge who participates in granting "General" warrants. We need to restrain the Intelligence community from conducting mass surveillance on the US public.