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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.
Sherlock reportedly overstated the threat of No Shit to Congress, Public. Also, Cop Math doesn't have a Wikipedia page. I'm genuinely surprised.
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I am hardly shocked. Law enforcement suffers from continuous mission creep. They always have and always will.
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!
The Infamous Cop Math:
A number of years ago I had a heroin case in Hayward. They had a warrant where the snitch, known, in polite terms, as a “confidential informant” with the obligatory history of reliability in past snitchings and who was a good citizen and such said there were two packages of heroin in a cereal box in my client’s kitchen. One weighed one pound and the other a half pound. Cops came in with a warrant and sure enough easily found the heroin and that’s what the packages weighed.
Me: So officer did you wait until you got to the station to do the weighing or did you use the scale that was there and which is now in evidence.
Cop: I used the scale there
Me: but that’s an Ohaus scale isn’t it
Cop: yes
Me: and it is graded in grams isn’t it
Cop: yes
Me: so you did the math in your head right
Cop: yes
Me: so how many grams are in a half pound
Cop: [absolute silence]
me: let me help you out here. Let’s say there are about 28 grams in an ounce. So how many grams in a half pound
Cop: [silence continues]
Me: ok. Let’s make it easier. Let’s say there are 16 ounces in a pound. So how many grams in a half pound [more silence – but now the jury is laughing]
Me: ok let me help you out a little more here. If a pound has 16 ounces how many ounces are in a half pound [more silence – juror yells out “8”. Jury laughs].
Me: look if there are 28 grams in an ounce and juror number 3 helped you out by telling you there were 8 ounces in a half pound, how many grams were in what you tell us was a half pound. Now I walk up to the bench and snatch a yellow pad and pencil. “May I, your honor.” Here officer. Here is a pad and pencil. Now write down 28. Remember that’s one gram. Now you learned from juror number 3 that there are 8 oz in a half pound so you simply take 28 and multiply by 8. OK, what’s the number. [very long painful silence]. DA, who is now a judge and was an especially vicious DA, asks for a recess. He comes over to me but trips over his big box of files [now jury is in hysterics].
By the way, my guy is on trial with his much younger cousin. Cousin is about to go to trial on a dead bang 4+ pound cocaine case. The DA says if they both take a year in county jail he’ll dump the cocaine case.
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.
The FBI doesn't do a very good job. They have a long history of corruption, of lies, and being untrustworthy.
You left out "incompetent". I once worked with the FBI's "high tech task force" for several weeks, and the most competent guy on the team had been a history major. His only advantage over the rest of the team was that he knew he was an idiot.
I believe it is possible with current technology to "read a mind" - perhaps not reliably, but enough of the time to make it useful. This would involve something like placing an individual in an fMRI machine, projecting images of people, things, symbols, etc. and observing the mind's reaction to them. I bet you could involuntarily extract a password this way - one symbol at a time. The opening of whatever vault the password protects would be your proof of its correctness so you wouldn't need to worry about misinterpretation.
However, I think it should be obvious that this would represent a violation of a person's 5th amendment rights.
A future scenario we need to start preparing for though is accessing an implanted memory device other than the individual's "brain". We are already interfacing chips to brains. I'd be surprised if some of those devices don't have memories, though perhaps they are all still external to the person with the interface chip. Regardless of whether they are internal or external, I believe those memories contained in a personal extension are also deserving of 5th amendment protection. You shouldn't be able to access my pacemaker to see if I had an elevated heart rate during the time of a crime without my explicit consent regardless of warrant.
If we don't take this route of protecting personal electronic memories by the 5th amendment, a day will come when the 5th amendment is worthless.
If we do protect them, we need to consider that, initially, implanted personal augmentations are going to be more available to the rich than the poor. Those that don't have the money will "continue" to augment their capabilities using external devices. They should not have lesser rights just because their augmentation is external.
I say "continue" because that is exactly what my smartphone is to me today. It is a personal augmentation. I have an atrocious memory. Instead of trying to keep my calendar, appointments, reminders, personal communications, etc. in my head, they are in my phone's store which in many cases is extended to the cloud.
Regardless of where those memories physically reside, they are my memories and nowhere near as "readable" as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet. In fact, the tech necessary to read and access the memories from the chips is much closer to that of the tech necessary to read my biological memory without my permission than the tech necessary to read a piece of paper.
In short, I believe the law has erred in comparing smartphone memories to filing cabinets to find precedent. They should have compared them to the memory in our brains and considered their contents to be under 5th amendment protection. They should not be legally accessible, much less admissible, without my permission - even if unencrypted - unless I say so, not some judge. We need to do some backtracking and fix it now or face a future where users of augmentation tech - eventually everyone - give up their 5th amendment rights.
Dude, "being questioned by" is not the same as "worked with".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Their list of fuck ups is pretty long. Waco, Ruby Ridge, 9/11, oh and the valentines day school shooter where people called the FBI and told them who was going to do it. All the tips apparently go into the trash. I'd clean house there if I were Trump.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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.
Do I remotely believe the FBI narrative with respect to encryption? No.
Do I think that the current administration will seize on this reporting [despite the current President's absolute loathing for the Post and its owner] and use it as another weapon to undermine the credibility of the FBI in the eyes of the public? Yes, absolutely.
Whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, we need the FBI. The FBI was, when it was introuduced, [IIUC] the only agency with the authority to pursue a crime [and criminals] across state borders. Unfortunately, what has happened since then has been the gradual "bloating" of all government agencies, with departments fighting each-other for larger budgets and more status. When the DHS was introduced, the Executive started a turf war that continues to this day - and in one sense this whole "unbreakable encryption" debacle is just a part of that - because the best thing that the FBI can do to underscore it's value is to actually solve crimes, so within the FBI there will inevitably be a narrative which says, "anything which prevents us or delays us from solving crimes will make us look bad and must therefore be destroyed..."
So the thing which is pushing the FBI to wage their war on encryption likely has far less to do with "organised crime, paedophiles and terrorists" and everything to do with, "making us look like a better agency than the DHS thanks to our conviction rates."
I should caution us here, however, from thinking that, "Well, stuff them, this clearly isn't our problem..." It is. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important one to me is that the concept of "demonstrating ability via some grade-school metrics", which has permeated every workplace, now drives people [including FBI Agents and Directors] to make questionable decisions. One of the most horrific examples of this was U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who insists to this day that her office acted "appropriately and reasonably" when bringing charges against Aaron Swartz. In that case, even though Aaron had a legal right to the documents he was obtaining, even though the owner of the documents looked at the facts and withdrew their complaint, Ortiz pressed ahead. The ruthless pressure that drove Ortiz to get a conviction cost Aaron his life. That is NOT ok.
Ortiz has continued to spin a narrative that Aaron was offered a plea deal (which he rejected because it would have prevented him for running for public office, which he most dearly wanted to do) whilst conveniently forgetting the mandacious way they went about building their case, the way that they destroyed not just Aaron but Quinn Norton too.
This is the problem.
We need the FBI.
But we need them to act with honesty, integrity and candor at all times. By failing to do this, they undermine not just their credibility, but the support of the public at the time when they most desperately need it, in the face of an Executive that is clearly determined to either destroy them, or bend them to his will...