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FBI Repeatedly Overstated Encryption Threat Figures To Congress, Public (techcrunch.com)
mi shares a report from The Washington Post (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The FBI has repeatedly provided grossly inflated statistics to Congress and the public about the extent of problems posed by encrypted cellphones, claiming investigators were locked out of nearly 7,800 devices connected to crimes last year when the correct number was much smaller, probably between 1,000 and 2,000.
Over a period of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the inflated figure as the most compelling evidence for the need to address what the FBI calls "Going Dark" -- the spread of encrypted software that can block investigators' access to digital data even with a court order. "The FBI's initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported,'' the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. The bureau said the problem stemmed from the use of three distinct databases that led to repeated counting of phones. Tests of the methodology conducted in April 2016 failed to detect the flaw, according to people familiar with the work.
Over a period of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the inflated figure as the most compelling evidence for the need to address what the FBI calls "Going Dark" -- the spread of encrypted software that can block investigators' access to digital data even with a court order. "The FBI's initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported,'' the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. The bureau said the problem stemmed from the use of three distinct databases that led to repeated counting of phones. Tests of the methodology conducted in April 2016 failed to detect the flaw, according to people familiar with the work.
How did law enforcement solve crimes before smartphones were a thing?
#DeleteChrome
Even if their numbers were true, it wouldn't change the fact that government mandated backdoors to encryption is a remarkably stupid and short sighted concept.
Hell, all investigations could grind to a halt tomorrow because of encryption, and it wouldn't change that equation. The quantity is irrelevant.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
An inability to access the phone means nothing if prosecution was successful for other reasons. A more useful statistic would be how many phones do they have that couldn't be opened that were evidence in crimes that have not been successfully prosecuted. But, that is probably far, far beyond their math skills.
"We screwed up our program that simply counts the number of devices, but you can trust us to make super secure software to access the back doors, it would never have a problem that allowed improper access!"
After the NSA exploit leaks I don't know how these Constitution-stomping tools don't get laughed out of the room when trying to claim their back door would be good-guys-only.
What is the point of this? Does it really matter if the guy had a pound or 28 ounces or 16 ounces or 8 ounces? A dose of heroin is probably 10mg. The guy is a drug dealer either way.
You missed the setup.
The cop testified - as in, went on record saying, under oath, that there was half a pound of heroin in a cereal box. He said he knew it was half of a pound based on weighing it at the scene when the heroin was confiscated, and did not re-weigh it at the station. That scale weighed exclusively in metric measurements, so the police officer would have needed to be able to convert between measurements quickly in order to make that claim. The defense attorney then asks the police officer to do what he claimed he did at the scene of the crime. The officer, given a pencil and paper (unlikely to have been at his disposal during the arrest) then struggles to accurately perform the sort of arithmetic that is performed by third graders.
Whether the defendant was dealing or not, the plaintiff is a police officer who either decided to guess at how much heroin was confiscated rather than write down what the scale said, or lied under oath. Either way, the defense attorney managed to make it basically impossible for the standard of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" to be met, so the only reason the guy ended up doing any jail time was based on familial loyalty rather than having been proven guilty.
High school, it never stops, you think it's over but there it is, the same people, behaving the same way, from the teens to their decrepitude, control freaks will be control freaks and they wont ever stop. It is all as lame as that regardless of the public relations and advertising.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Problem is not the numbers, it's the narrative itself.
They are effectively saying that they can't do anything, like say regular investigation jobs, if they don't have encryption to backdoors, which would effectively ease up their work on one end while exponentially raising the potential for other types of crimes like identity theft, blackmail, exploitation, stealing of corporate secrets, hacking, and whatnot.
The numbers don't matter. The stupidity of breaking encryption for an entire country does.