FBI Director Christopher Wray On Encryption: We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement' (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday. The technology that scrambles up information so only intended recipients can read it is useful, he said, but it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them. "It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide," Wray said during a live interview at the RSA Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in San Francisco. His comments are part of a back-and-forth between government agencies and security experts over the role of encryption technology in public safety. Agencies like the FBI have repeatedly voiced concerns like Wray's, saying encryption technology locks them out of communications between criminals. Cybersecurity experts say the technology is crucial for keeping data and critical computer systems safe from hackers. Letting law enforcement access encrypted information just creates a backdoor hackers will ultimately exploit for evil deeds, they say.

Wray, a former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice who counts among his biggest cases prosecutions against Enron officials, acknowledged Tuesday that encryption is "a provocative subject." As the leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, though, he's focused on making sure the government can carry out criminal investigations. Hackers in other countries should expect more investigations and indictments, Wray said. "We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."

Comments

This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[rsilvergun]

50+ years of voting for tough on crime politicians gets you thinking like this. That and the equally if not more-so ineffective "broken windows" policing.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[DNS-and-BIND]

The FBI director isn't elected. In fact, he and the entire FBI and the rest of the intelligence community do not answer to the elected government. They have their own goals, and they simply do not feel safe from us. They feel we mean to harm them (although we can not say why); and to prevent this they must monitor our communications. Thus the Fourth and Fifth amendments have to go.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

"he and the entire FBI and the rest of the intelligence community do not answer to the elected government." - False entirely.

"They have their own goals" - Duh.

" and they simply do not feel safe from us" - You are zero threat, thanks though.

"They feel we mean to harm them (although we can not say why)" - I agree, your misplaced and fox news tv-animated anger is inarticulate at best, even on a good day.

"and to prevent this they must monitor our communications' - False. That's why I monitor your idiocy. They ostensibly have terrorist nazi faggots to catch.

" Thus the Fourth and Fifth amendments have to go." - You have to go read them? Agreed.. seriously are you one of Manafort's retarded lawyers or something?

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

200 years ago before the invention of the telephone and telegraph, people had the ability to communicate without law enforcement ever knowing. They still do today. The difference between then and today is the ability to communicate and coordinate on a large scale, anonymously, confidentially and with integrity, regardless of time and location, and to leave no evidence the communication ever occured.

Ultimately, you will find at the heart of this discussion is not discussion about confidentiality of communications, but the integrity of them. Once you break confidentiality, integrity is also broken, and no message can be truely trusted, and without non-repudiability, the courts are literally left to "trust the government". We can either have privacy and terrorism, or no privacy and a government that can't prosecute.

In the game of psychological warfare between countries, any thing you use to exploit your masses can be used by your adversary to do the same, and America has been an experimentation ground for psyops since the 50's. Mass media has become an outdated dinosaur of a technology; it lost to one billionair using neural-liguistic programming and an angry public, and in less than 1 years, 3 decades of political correctness programming went down the tubes and city folk had to begin questioning what they believe. The public is out of shape when it comes to the exercise of critical thinking and that is necissary to have a functioning country.

I certainly don't trust Putin, but he's ensured no national identity system can come online in the US by hacking the US backing system repeatedly and stealing almost everyone's identity, and he's also engaged in the political process to ensure the country is not being aggressive in the middle east or locating anti-nukes outside of his borders which is something Clinton's Ilk was doing. The main reason China's standing up islands in the South China Sea is not because they plan on annexing land and projecting power, but because they are genuinely afraid of the United States "going rogue"; that's where we'd stage an attack on the mainland, not Japan where it's heavily populated.

Trump, for everything he is, is a reminder of how close we are to electing a madman.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Darinbob]

Not true. They are under the authority of the department of justice, which is a part of the executive branch. Their funding comes from congress as well, they must abide by laws created by congress, and the court system has oversight for criminal cases they bring. They absolutely and positively answer to elected officials no matter what your special youtube videos tell you. Just because an authoritarian president finds that he can't order them about is not the same thing as the FBI being unanswerable to elected officials. The FBI members have taken oaths to uphold the law, not oaths to an individual office holder.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The ostensible motivation is crime fighting.

The primary motivation is superior market knowledge, which supports insider trading with complete impunity.

There is every reason to expect that anyone with this kind of power will abuse it. History has taught us this lesson, over and over again.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[fustakrakich]

In fact, he and the entire FBI and the rest of the intelligence community do not answer to the elected government.

Set your wayback machine to May 9, 2017

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[currently_awake]

All police departments try to achieve zero crime. They constantly look for ways to detect criminals. This means they are constantly pushing the boundary of legal law enforcement methods, and sometimes they cross that line. The "Average" living room is beyond the reach of law enforcement. Only special living rooms justify surveilance (special = they have a reason for a warrant), meaning average living rooms are not bugged just like encrypted messages are not read. For most of human history what happened in private stayed private, so again this isn't a new situation for police and they know how to deal with it (lean on a person who has access to what you want).

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[doginthewoods]

when it comes to beyond the reach, start at the top with Don the Con. A crook and swindler who has gotten away with crimes for decades...

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Immerman]

>We can either have privacy and terrorism, or no privacy and a government that can't prosecute.

What makes you think the courts couldn't prosecute? People end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than eye-witness testimony - the least-reliable form of evidence, as any scientist can tell you.

Not to mention that you forgot to add "and terrorism using unassailable encryption" to the second half of that. No terrorist organization worth half a damn would would be more than mildly inconvenienced by the deliberate compromising of "officially sanctioned / legal" encryption. Even if you don't have the chops to roll your own, you can download real, secure, encryption programs and libraries from open-source repositories around the world.

There's no putting the genie back in the bottle - the most you can do is make sure that you can spy on every online action of law-abiding citizens and the most incompetent of criminals, and hopelessly compromise their security in the process. That's not much good for fighting crime, quite the opposite in fact. But it's of great value if your real target is to be able to blackmail or destroy political opposition before it can present a real challenge.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

People end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than eye-witness testimony

It is apparently even worse, people end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than a threat of longer sentence and a plea bargain offer.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

50+ years of voting for tough on crime politicians gets you thinking like this. That and the equally if not more-so ineffective "broken windows" policing.

I'm not sure they were voting for tough on crime politicians, since tough on crime politicians would actually look at root causes and address them, and not just blindly lock up more people.

It would probably be more accurate that MAGA didn't begin with Trump and it won't end with Trump, and by MAGA I mean, Morons are Governing America. Encryption isn't going anywhere, whether they like it or not. You can't effectively outlaw Math without a draconian regime and probably not then, unless you get into North Korea style suppression, and that could take generations.

Also as far as an "Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement" goes, well I thought we already had one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Think about it. Law enforcement has pretty much ruled out ever charging a sitting president. The president is old, but possibly effective enough to get reelected. His party will never vote to convict, thus making the only valid path of removal impossible. In essence, King Donald is untouchable until he gets out of office and given his age, that may not be a huge concern.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Average" living room is beyond the reach of law enforcement.

See it's not like that everywhere for everyone. The police will just walk right in. If you can't afford an attorney and time off work then you have no rights.
If you live in any dying town the police have an incentive to violate your rights.
I have a relation who used to actually say "If you don't have anything to hide".
She was searched for the first time in her life last week. I don't really know the details I imagine it went fine but I could tell she was irritated when the man finally got in her biznaz

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new to the justice system. The court system is not a system of oversight, it's a rubber stamp.

Courts will always act in the interest of public safety (Or at least what Luddite Judges perceive it to be) over the letter of the law. Even if a ruling is completely unconstitutional, you'll get a 1/100 shot at an appeal, or a 1/1,000,000 shot at having it overturned at the Supreme Court. And don't expect a Jury to bail you out either- they are essentially brainwashed to convict and will be stricken from the jury if they express the slightest hint that they take the Constitution at its word.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The maths doesnâ(TM)t care what the law says. The cat is out of the bag.
2. The government is not longer the strongest party here - they have the most resources, but they canâ(TM)t reliably attract and retain talent - almost all the top tier talent in the security space has migrated to private industry.
3. There are limits to what you can do with the law. You canâ(TM)t outlaw tornadoes, or hurricanes. You can legislate Pi = 3, but that only changes what is taught in schools , and doesnâ(TM)t change anything thats round.
4. The government canâ(TM)t keep secrets. Snowden, TSA keys, Cellebrite UFED, GreyKeys - all of them got leaked/sold at auction/compromised.
5. Any backdoor architecture governments require will eventually leak or be compromised, and at that point, everyone is back to square 1.

Law enforcement needs to learn how to get much better at using metadata and other data that it does have, rather than demanding access thats ultimately dangerous to everyone, and impossible for them to achieve universally.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[DNS-and-BIND]

This is why they attempted a coup and committed multiple felonies trying to keep Trump out of office. Why's it a surprise, the FBI has a long history of exactly this.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[astrofurter]

Let's stop calling it a "plea bargain". That's a misleading euphemism. Let's call it what it really is: coerced false confession.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

You're not getting any disagreement from me on this, sorry.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's worse. People go to prison because the police tell them if they don't confess their spouse will be charged and children removed.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they should just stop doing anything.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[jpaine619]

The FBI director isn't elected. In fact, he and the entire FBI and the rest of the intelligence community do not answer to the elected government.

You don't think the director of the FBI answers to the President? The President is head of the Executive branch. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is in the Executive branch. He most certainly does answer to the President.

The President has held the power to appoint and dismiss the director of the FBI at his or her discretion since 1968.

The current nomination and confirmation process for the FBI director was created by an amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The amendment established that the position of FBI director was to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Moreover, Congress has the power to impeach and remove him from office (a constitutional power they hold over any civil officer). That makes him answerable to two branches of the government.....

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[cyber-vandal]

Trump won because there are a lot of people that had their futures taken away by outsourcing and Trump was the first presidential candidate that said they were going to do something about it. If you want to avoid this happening again, stop squealing about Putin and start looking at how to solve this issue. Trump may or may not be a dead man walking but the reason he's there won't go away once he's gone, it will be ripe for someone potentially more competent to tap into it.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

As we used to say in the Nixon era: "Help the police - beat yourself up"

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! You're really in a dream world. Guess you haven't watched the documentaries
where the FBI (domestically) has influtrated the mob and the person committed crimes
(everything except homicide) to gain intelligence; they do not abide by congressional laws.

There are hundreds of well documented cases where the FBI has broken the law without
any consequences -- none.

CAP === 'terriers'

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

People are forgetting the concept of "probable cause."

Probable cause only means that there's a very slight chance that a law was broken --
the courts are not even required to provide the affidavit that a warrant was executed against.
This is a serious problem. The whole idea for a warrant based on an affidavit of probable
cause was to protect people from retributive police and law enforcement action. This has
been abused to the hilt.

In the U.S.A., someone can simply say "he/she threatened me (with a gun)." That's all it takes
to completely destroy someone's life (even if they don't own a firearm). And you're never
told who made the claim because "witness protection." And immunity puts the police out of
reach of normal remedies. It is very rare when a remedy is granted, usually very reluctantly
by a judge and after people have died.

CAP === 'reducing'

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[DNS-and-BIND]

Did Hoover answer to the president? How naive. The FBI views itself as above the elected government.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure how you can reduce crime by banning encryption (or putting backdoors in popular applications that use it) ?

At best you will catch some petty criminals, with the added bonus of being able to spy on anyone.

Anyone more serious - such as terrorists or organized crime - will simply use an application without backdoors, from the hundreds or thousands available online. Banning encryption isn't going to stop criminals from using encryption and installing backdoors will only push them to use application without backdoors.

So what's the point ?

Do the politicians have malicious intentions or is it just plain old ignorance ?

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[jittles]

All police departments try to achieve zero crime. They constantly look for ways to detect criminals. This means they are constantly pushing the boundary of legal law enforcement methods, and sometimes they cross that line. The "Average" living room is beyond the reach of law enforcement. Only special living rooms justify surveilance (special = they have a reason for a warrant), meaning average living rooms are not bugged just like encrypted messages are not read. For most of human history what happened in private stayed private, so again this isn't a new situation for police and they know how to deal with it (lean on a person who has access to what you want).

But surely this is the first time in human existence that law enforcement has waged a war on mathematics? Until the elite are willing to limit their personal finances to 2^32 pennies, I will not give up my 256 bit AES or 2048 bit RSA. If we are going to put limits on math, we need to limit it everywhere

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Confessio est regina probationum, no way out of it.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[cyber-vandal]

You must have been asleep then. Carry on as you are. I'm sure the nasty "racists" will evaporate after the 2020 election.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

> Trump won because he was slightly less unpopular than Hillary Clinton

Actually Hillary was slightly *more* popular, unless I misunderstand what "popular vote" means.

Trump won because he was slightly less unpopular in certain key regions, and VERY popular in a few. I still can't figure out why; the guy is a whining, childish, self-entitled sociopath megalomaniac. Evidently a lot of people admire that?

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[mjwx]

You must have been asleep then. Carry on as you are. I'm sure the nasty "racists" will evaporate after the 2020 election.

Back into their dingy little holes paid for with government money, yes.

Once their hero is soundly defeated they'll go back to watching daytime TV on welfare.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Billionaire, business background, not a lifetime bureaucrat, defeated crooked Hillary, has China on the defensive. But sure, democrats will find a "more competent"
candidate.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoover was only director for 3 years after the change was made in 1968. Your argument doesn't hold much water

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

What does voting for politicians that are not tough on crime? Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Love or hate Hillary, she had FAR more experience in government than Trump. Which is easy, because he had none. She should have beat him handily on that point alone, and the fact that she didn't shows just how unpalatable she is to many people.

I don't think the presidency should be an entry-level job, no matter how much money you have.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

"soft on crime" gets you drug lords who cut off people's heads with machetes.
What you want is "tough on convicts" but that's hard to sell.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[cyber-vandal]

Until the next one emerges. And the next one after that. Being smug and patronising may make you feel better but the problem won't go away.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[cyber-vandal]

They like him not being a career politician which appears to make up for all his flaws.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely the best point made so far. Being the president requires a lot of training and experience in being demonstrably loyal to the the shadowy organizations that are really in control of everything.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing but lies. Trumpo the inept clown in chief was not even remotely the first politician that ran on stopping outsourcing. He was just the first one to promise the authoritarians in the GoP that they'd be allowed to return women and the coloreds to their proper place. Hell even corporate whore Hillary had plans for helping folks whose jobs were made redundant or outsourced. Sadly the authoritarian wack jobs liked Trumpo's claim that he'd reverse reality as opposed to funding education and training. Add to that the 1% loved that Trumpo'd help them loot the country even faster. Then stir in some "get them scary brown people!" and the GoP conspiring with Russian KGB (yes, they changed their name. But it is the same KGB it always was. Just as Dictator Putin is the corrupt murderer he always was.) and you get where we are now.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump won because there are a lot of people that had their futures taken away by outsourcing

Trump won because there are a lot of people that had their perceived futures taken away by competition, so they went crying to far-left nanny government to save them from the terrors of the free market. FTFY.

stop squealing about Putin

That's not ever going to happen. The president is a crook and also takes bribes to serve other countries' interest at the expense of the USA. We are going to at least imprison him and as many of his accomplices as we can. I sympathize with you about your economic problems (the robots are eventually coming for us all ) but we can't just let Putin blackmail our government officials into harming America and also stealing from American taxpayers. That's a lot worse than an economic optimization; it's something preventable and we're going to start trying harder to prevent these sorts of crimes.

start looking at how to solve this issue.

People either have to learn new skills, or they have to decouple economic getting-by-in-life from jobs. Has Trump helped you with any of that? Because if he hasn't helped you with that, then he hasn't helped you at all. And that would be the case even if he weren't a criminal or a foreign asset.

Let that shitstain go. If you have any ideas, then communicate them. But it shouldn't require electing criminals. If it's a good idea, then non-criminals ought to be able to do it too.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Grand Facade]

What are you talking 1980s? This is 2019, the average living room is now bugged.

Your TV, Alexia, Siri, Google, Comcast the list goes on to include many phone apps, oh and your car is bugged too.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently "draining the swamp" means replacing corporate cronyism with personal cronyism...

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, got your tinfoil hat on a little too tight? The FBI Director is appointed. Not elected, and not hired, appointed, which makes the position a political one, not a labor one. He is immediately accountable to the Attorney General of the US, and then POTUS. He is also accountable to Congress.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelette ;)

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

And America still locks up more people than those places combined.
Enjoy your police state you fucking boot licker.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Vitriol Angst]

Let's stop calling it a "plea bargain". That's a misleading euphemism. Let's call it what it really is: coerced false confession.

Are we just recognizing this now because it's the privileged class in the cross-hairs -- or are law and order folks going to realize it's this way times 10 for the average citizen. I mean, you can get treated like a terrorist if you have overdue parking tickets?

Because people are coerced into pleading guilty otherwise they might face all the charges a DA can dream up.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because of shit like this:

"It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide"

Yes Wray, just like a person's mind. Or do you believe in thought control too, you twerpy little faggot.

Seriously, if I ever meet Wray in person, I will punch his lights out.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

taken away by outsourcing

Some outsourced, most taken away by automation. They aren't coming back.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[slashdot_commentator]

Law enforcement has pretty much ruled out ever charging a sitting president.

That is a misleading oversimplification. A paper pusher in DOJ back in 1973 decided that his interpretation of the CotUS meant that the PotUS could not be subject to criminal indictment. There is no validation that his legal theory is correct until it is evaluated in the courts; probably by the SCotUS. We will only know if this is legally considered correct when the argument is successfully used to throw out a prosecution.

The PotUS is definitely not safe from a "sealed" indictment; where the criminal prosecution can occur after the PotUS completes his presidential term. Furthermore, the PotUS, nor his subordinates, are beyond state prosecution, provided the state has standing to prosecute an indictment.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[cyber-vandal]

They're not my economic problems. I just have eyes. Kicking loads of people out of work has social consequences. The whinging about Putin (whose "crucial" interference in the election got his candidate 3 million fewer votes) won't stop scumbags like Trump getting elected. Career politicians have let too many people down. It's no surprise that desperate people look for an alternative. Stop using Putin as an excuse and look for answers instead.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The law is for everyone or no one, meaning if one is above the law, everyone should be above the law. Math is for everyone or no one, meaning if one is above math, everyone should be above math.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stupidly wrong. Trump won because he was running against a woman. Even my mom has said to me that she will never vote for a woman president and she is a democrat. My mom just decided not to go vote.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you simply rebut his statements and show that there weren't any felonies being committed by members of the FBI in relation to Trump's presidency?

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe just not a vile liar, rape apologist, in the pocket of wall street, plus all the controversies about wiping her email server and all the shady lobbying the Clinton foundation does, wife of a man that as the most powerful person in the US government took advantage of an intern for sexual gratification, and then lied about it to the American people.

But maybe you're right, maybe your mom is just internally misogynistic.

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

So the same as every other president? But you better scream and wave your arms about the current one because ORANGE MAN BAD!!!!?!?

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, other past presidents have also had no real interest in draining the swamp. I knew Obama wasn't really about "hope and change" when he picked Joe Biden as his running mate; that just screams "status quo."

The difference is that Obama is a decent man, genuinely cares about people, and competent. Trump is obnoxious, works only for himself, and has proven completely inept at getting anything done in Washington beyond signing fiat executive orders (which he criticized Obama for!).

Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to see what happens in 2020. The Dems seem hell-bent on nominating a woman again.

Personally I don't care if the nominee has a penis or a vagina, I care about their qualifications.

I voted for a woman in 2008.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[jpaine619]

Did Hoover answer to the president? How naive. The FBI views itself as above the elected government.

Hoover died 47 years ago. What happened then is not relevant. The vast majority of people in the FBI, at that time, are long since dead. Do you need to be reminded that both Clinton and Trump have fired an FBI director? Both directors left when fired.. Nobody staged a coup. Your argument holds as much water as a sieve.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[DNS-and-BIND]

Of course they didn't succeed, but they sure tried.

Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who also served as acting director after James Comey was fired, revealed in a 60 Minutes interview that the Department of Justice seriously considered removing President Trump from office...multiple times

A cabal of FBI and Justice Department officials deciding to oust the president through some arcane constitutional mechanism could easily be described as a coup attempt. Impeachment/conviction is legal. Their cockamamie 25th Amendment scheme was by no means straightforwardly legal

What McCabe told 60 Minutes: "There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment."

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show us where the 25th gives the DoJ power to remove a president from office.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

TOC & Broken Windows policing suppresses ravaging nibbers and wettbakkks. It has nothing to do with digital privacy. What were you thinking, Bosco or were you just doing a Trotsky-slut spew ?

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI is an extremely political organization. Appearances within and without matter more than anything else if you're one of their "special" agents. One misstep in the eyes of the higher ups and your advancement is over. They may not technically be elected but they all know they need to be constantly sucking the dicks of those who are, sometimes literally.

Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks

[Anonymous Coward]

So.... they're cronies? Soooo much better! :D

Seriously though, this type of person is more like a wannabe dictator who couldn't find the guts to stage his own coup. They've so used to just telling everyone what to do, that the idea of someone not complying 100% is "not being reasonable". Pretty much, you can't appease someone who has it in their mind to be self-righteously evil.

Also, WTH does /. pause my typing every 10 seconds?! Probably some garbage canvas/click/keypress analyzing anti-spammer script.

Historically speaking

[Kernel Kurtz]

governments are the entities people most need to be able to keep secrets from.

Just sayin.

Re:Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

"just sayin"

So why say anything at all?

Re:Historically speaking

[apoc.famine]

So you've never been married, eh?

Re:Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. If government was just more chill, their total omniscience about your life would basically make them family. Looking out for your own good. Like a big brother to care about you and provide support.

Re:Historically speaking

[Immerman]

Well sure. But then what would be the motivation to spend vast amounts of money to become a government official?

No. Seriously. Winning U.S. Senators spent an average of $10.4 million in the 2016 race, in order to secure a job that pay 174k/year for six years. Granted, a lot of that isn't their money - but when's the last time you spent 60 years salary in order to try to get a job?

Re:Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Research CELLDAR and Passive Radar.

You have no privacy. You're being watched, through walls, by radar connected to AI with inverse kinematic skeletal models to approximate and detect your exact behaviour.

Encryption? Pah, Neither the FBI nor the Federal Municipal Corporation entitled THE UNITED STATES (all caps, no "of America") which owns D.C. has any jurisdiction over any citizen of the United States of America domiciled in the several states. None of their courts have any legal standing. No police have any oath or affirmation of service on file with the state or federal attorney general.

If arrested for any "cyber" related crypto stunts -- such as exporting new "military grade" cipher technology to foreign nations -- The rent-a-cop wrongfully arrested you, the court has no jurisdiction, and the US corporation may have just committed an act of war against a free citizen of the United States domiciled in one of its several states.

TL;DR: The corporate lapdog "FBI" can whine all they want, but we can and will twiddle our bits however the fuck we want, and if they don't like it, perhaps they'd like to be on the receiving end of a Grand Jury's discovery filing? Perhaps we can discuss exactly WHY they need "parallel construction" in the first place? Since they selectively ignore many heinous crimes and child abuse happening on the screens of their domestic radar surveillance systems? No, I don't think cryptography is going to be impacted by some useless corrupt and demonstrably illegal organization titled "FBI" any time soon...

Re:Historically speaking

[jpaine619]

You have no privacy. You're being watched, through walls, by radar

Okay....... You know of this special new radar that can see through walls, eh? Did we get it from The Aliens?

I think you meant infrared... Radar doesn't see through walls. Well, at least not the kind that would be deployed to watch millions of people. If you focus the beam tight enough, there are types that can penetrate a wall, but certainly not over hundreds of miles and the only way this could possibly be occurring would be via satellite. But, of course, it's not and you're a loony.

Re:Historically speaking

[stealth_finger]

to approximate and detect your exact behaviour.

It approximates your exact behaviour?

Re: Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about this: what if King George III had the powers available to Donald Trump? If George could hear every conversation theFounding Fathers had, knew everyone they talked to, and knew their whereabouts at all times, would the Revolution have ever occurred? How would citizens organize any opposition if Trump declared himself President for life?

Re: Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here... There have been many articles here over the years about researchers being able to track you in your house by using the WiFi signals that you thoughtfully provide them. I'm not sure if this has been productized and sold to Leos yet... But I'm sure some e if working on it.

Re: Historically speaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracking and seeing are two different things.

Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Most encryption is used for benign purposes like the ordinary course of business. Weak encryption for the feds ALSO means weak encryption for criminals and foreign state adversaries.

Re: Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

If Silicon Valley wants to enable low level thugs with high tech crypto, it will bite them in the ass.

It is not in the control of silicon valley. In actual fact, even if they can't read, low level thugs can hire broke people with brains.

ROT13 type technology can be done with a pencil and paper. You don't need an Enigma machine. You might be better off using a OTP - the Bible you find beside the bed in a hotel is a popular one *. Automated OTP technology only requires a very basic knowledge of programming (ie what an XOR instruction does and how to feed a file through it) - which you would expect of most gamers, and access to a shell script.

Others can, and probably do, use alternatives - like coded messages, foreign languages, and writing on paper.

* See average 1960's spy movie.

Anonymous because reading about this in "The Beano" is "information likely to be of use to terrorists" in our jurisdiction.

Re: Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

This sums it up. The guy can't even post under a pseudonym because his govt will think he's a terrorist because we are discussing encryption. This is a slippery fucking slope.

Does this mean they are working on mind reading?

[schwit1]

A free society's highest priority is not to service law enforcement.

Can't? You mean ALWAYS WILL

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be encryption they can't brute, haven't weakened or infiltrated in dev. They can put someone in prison indefinitely on a judge's contempt order when asking for your key anyway. I fail to see the issue on their end.

They have all the cards, but they're trying to put a genie back in a bottle. That can never happen like that.

And if we give you the keys everyone will have ...

[Proudrooster]

And if we give you the keys Mr. Government everyone will have them in 3..2..1.. because we all know how well law enforcement can keep a secret.
Yeah, I'm looking at you NSA, the most secure agency on planet earth that couldn't hang on to their toys, tools, and tactics.

Fun Fact: If it wasn't for the NSA leaks, we most likely would not have had the WannaCry ransomware attacks.

Re:Does this mean they are working on mind reading

[Anonymous Coward]

And we don't. They have a hard job, but they don't need keys to our houses by default. This misconception of theirs has to go away. Dual_EC crap is not security, they can't keep secrets forever, it can't work. The knife cuts both ways.

You can't legislate software out of existence.

[dicobalt]

Even if it becomes illegal in the US, there is still a whole world out there where it's not illegal. The software will still be there and still be accessible. You might as well let the good guys use it too. This man's argument is steeped in lazyness on the part of the FBI. They want to be able to issue a warrent to access the data and boom they have their case. The FBI don't want to do the leg work to get the information, they want a magic legal bullet. Sorry but that's pretty lame.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are forgetting export and import control laws from a non-tech lever standpoint, so not really sure where you are going with this as it is totally possible to legislate possession of software or algorithms out of existence.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[dicobalt]

You can legislate the good guys, but the bad guys. The bad guys dont give a flying f about the legality of a piece of software. Hell, lots of good guys don't either for that matter lol

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except not, there are lots of countries where encryption is illegal.

Given that they consider it a munition in the USA (inport/export) I wonder if it could be protected by the second amendment.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very hard these days to even tell who are the bad guys. Arrogant incompetent small-minded rednecks who state "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it." and obviously believe they are above the law are certainly most likely in the "bad guy" basket. With that attitude, the USA do not have to wonder why they have very few if any friends left on this globe.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Darinbob]

They also can't legislate mathematics, which is the only way they could get this mythical secure encryption that allows in law enforcement but no one else.

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about laziness at all. It's a very active PR campaign to "disarm" the citizens. If we ever develop ad hoc mesh networks to circumvent the ISPs, it will cease to be an issue, the FBI and everybody else can rant all they want about *Entirely Unfettered Space*. We will safely ignore them. There is no reason to give them any more *Entirely Unfettered Space* than the rest of us.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally anyone competent in the security or defense industries considers the US ITAR export restrictions concerning computing power and encryption a complete joke and waste of time.

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Even if it becomes illegal in the US, there is still a whole world out there where it's not illegal.

Over time that "where it's not illegal" will become really small. It might even reduce to the countries that are better known as "tax havens."

Why?

Because everyone will copy what the USA does. Every police force around the world wants to do this. Every government around the world wants to do this.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are forgetting export and import control laws from a non-tech lever standpoint, so not really sure where you are going with this as it is totally possible to legislate possession of software or algorithms out of existence.

North Korea is the most oppressive and closed society on the planet and they cannot keep outside software out. How much less will an ostensibly free society like the United States be able to crack down? You're living in fantasy land if you believe that laws keep software out.

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Put it another way. Drug dealers and Tax cheats have unencrypted bank accounts. Want to finance terriorism - follow the un-encrypted money trail. Did they buy that plane/suv/boat with cash. Data match against IRS records and you can see the money and suspects. There is a better return in de-financing FBA, and giving that money to the IRS for effective, broad data matching.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like in the late 90s, where the FBI, NSA and so on tried to do this last time. All of a sudden, Russian companies popped out of nowhere, specializing in encryption without built in flaws. This time it won't be Russia because Putin actually cares enough about limiting freedom, so it will be Ecuador where the legal protection for a move like this will be strong. Attempts at making certain software methodologies illegal have just caused companies that employ those methodologies to leave the US and continue making the same amount of money (less US customers, but no US competition). It would require a global effort and international enforcement - something that won't happen because some countries wouldn't allow it if only out of spite.

Also, legislating an algorithm or possession of it out of existence is the same as legislating an idea out of existence. If you are willing to go that far, then you don't deserve the ability to do so.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can and you'll never know. Little thing called rolling releases and breaking backward compatibility. They could do this overnight. ca-certificates are updated quite often with no documentation. In Centos at least those come from Mozilla. Add a mandatory dependency on some "new" certificate say from Google to support TLS1.3, I doubt vendors would notice let alone care. Hell we still have certs from organizations that should NEVER be trusted on a global scale.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[jpaine619]

Who cares? It's already been ruled on by the 9th Circuit Court. Encryption is free speech and the 1st Amendment applies. The government cannot ban/regulate the export of the code. There are a few exceptions that are permitted. For example in regards to embargoed countries. But in general you can export the code. After this ruling the Feds got in a tiff and were still banning the export of complied code, on the grounds it's not human readable and thus not speech. Phil Zimmerman (of PGP) began printing the code out in books. The Feds eventually gave up when it became clear they were wasting their time.

I always kinda viewed it like the Berlin Airlift.. Once the Soviets realized we'd keep flying those planes in, they, and the rest of the world, knew Stalin had lost. To continue their efforts would be viewed, by everyone, as them being petty. Similarly, once the Feds realized they had lost they just went home.

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anne Thwacks]

Because everyone will copy what the USA does.

Poodle mentality is rapidly fading. In most of the world, Trump is seen as a dumbed down version of Homer Simpson. We in the UK are put off by the idea of GM food, meat with hormones and chlorinated chicken to the extent that the government might find any kind of siding with the USA difficult. In a lot of other parts of the world, the government has very little influence over what people do (ever heard of Mexico?)

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can make it illegal, then you can always claim that terrorists and pedophiles are downloading encryption software from abroad - so that's a good reason to ban downloading software from abroad, with the help of a brand new and great firewall as in China.

Then you can claim that criminals are using TOR, so you must spy on their computers directly, maybe backdoor the OS by default, or maybe even the CPU ?

Once they start down this road, where are they gonna stop ?

Re:You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK isn't the best example as UK politicians have been pushing for encryption backdoors for a few years now.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence.

[Anonymous Coward]

How will your mesh network deal with intercity, interstate and intercontinental distances? Hard reality: mesh networks are not a thing because they do not work beyond your basement. Period. Now kill yourself.

let me translate it...

[kiviQr]

4th Amendment is "a provocative subject."

Re:let me translate it...

[DNS-and-BIND]

The 2nd Amendment isn't too popular either on the Left. And the 1st as well.

Re:let me translate it...

[Darinbob]

The first is held sacrosanct on both sides of the isle. Don't let the actions of a few fringe weirdos paint half the country for you. And stop worrying about the left or the right, they're both WRONG and misguided. Aim for the center instead of treating politics like a stupid football game.

Re:let me translate it...

[currently_awake]

America is awash in guns, I see no evidence the 2nd amendment is under attack. There is plenty of room for reasonable limitations on guns in America. Banning semi-automatic weapons would be a good start. You can have revolvers, bolt action rifles, and pump action shotguns only. That's plenty for hunting, farmer use, and self defense.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the far right's work. They know they'd be shot for trying to take guns away from the peasants themselves.

But, thanks to careful deregulation, cutting mental health servies and allowing actual crazies to commit tragedies while standing around outside the school or a few floors down in the hotel, they can get a good chunk of the population to DEMAND to be disarmed.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officers grow ever bolder, ever more abusive to those they increasingly know are almost certainly unarmed.
Because you can't be just like North Korea if half the population has assault weapons to stop you doing so.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

640K should be enough for anyone.

Oh, you mean you don't realize it works both ways? Last time we did this, it was "Banning automatic weapons would be a good start. You can have revolvers, bolt-action rifles, pump action shotguns, and semi-automatic rifles.That's plenty for hunting, farmer use, self defense, and recreational marksmanship."

You just don't get it, do you? The guns aren't there to shoot your neighbor with. They aren't there to shoot the wolves with (frankly, wolves do a better job of land management than humans) or the deer. They aren't there for target practice, except in peace time.

They are there because our country was founded by fighting back, with guns, against our own tyrannical government. This is the primary and highest value of them.

Re:let me translate it...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Actually, it's not. Statistics show that in a firearm discharge incident, police officers hit approximately 1 out of 7 times; there is little reason to assume that Joe Citizen will do better. And statistics also show that, on average, it takes 3.5 hits to incapacitate an assailant to the point they can be restrained. Put those numbers together, and restriction to less than ~25 rounds in a magazine means you've restricted use for self defense. And that's assuming people are as well trained as police officers.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put those numbers together, and restriction to less than ~25 rounds in a magazine means you've restricted use for self defense.

Also, if people are limited to six or maybe seven shots in a revolver then they're probably going to choose a larger and more powerful cartridge to compensate for having fewer shots. When you hit only one or maybe two shots out of six or seven fired then you're more likely to choose the 44 Magnum or maybe the 454 Casull because anything less will not guarantee a one shot knockdown.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tyrannical government would squash you like a bug with all your automatic rifles. You are not allowed to have explosives, cannons, missiles, tanks, jets. "They are there" because two centuries ago governments were not very good at organizing violence.

The only protections you have is law. Military can and likely will refuse to comply with illegal order. If it wasn't the case your guns would make no difference.

Re:let me translate it...

[Chrontius]

Revolvers, as a whole, ARE semiautomatic.

Given that during the average self-defense gunfight, the defending expends nine rounds, the average defensive shooter would need to reload at least once during a fight. Reloading revolvers is slow.

Note, though, that there’s no parity: A party attempting to kill someone need only get close and fire one round, though they’re probably wise to use two to the chest and one to the head, just to be sure. (However, if someone’s sending trained hit-men, you’re right fucked, so let’s not bother planning for that contingency)

A second, and more interesting point, if I may. Given that you say that “You can have revolvers, bolt action rifles, and pump action shotguns only. That’s plenty for hunting, farmer use, and self defense.” Assume I am properly licensed to carry a gun. Would you be comfortable with me swinging around a pump shotgun in public at all times? (Side note: I wouldn’t be — open carry is just an invitation to get shot first) How about I saw it off so it’s easier to conceal, per my license privileges? Would you be willing to repeal the NFA to achieve this goal?

A more interesting point can be made, however. “Some reasonable restrictions” has been used to justify gun control over and over again. I call this phenomenon “serial compromise”; I’m not sure anyone else has ever put a name to it before. Some of the most well known include:

• The National Firearms Act of 1934
• The Gun Control Act of 1968
• The (ironically named) Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986
• The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act (better known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban) of 1994

Every single time it’s been described as a “just this once, just this gun” event, but in practice they come along every decade or two. Colion Noir explains it better than I do.

https://youtu.be/zCZHMRhsjPk

Re: let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in New York, as well as most other large cities, the 2nd Amendment has been de facto repealed for many years.

Re:let me translate it...

[jpaine619]

That's plenty for hunting, farmer use, and self defense.

That'd be fine and dandy if that's what the point of the 2nd was about. But you know damn well that's not what it was about. If you don't know that, then you don't know our history. The whole damn war started when Britain sent soldiers to collect guns. That's the act that started the first firefight..

So don't be trying to snow us with your "hunting" bullshit. The 2nd is about own the guns to keep the government from crawling up your asshole. It's a last ditch safety for when every other option has failed.

Ya know, after the civil war, most of the rebel soldiers were given their guns back. They'd just used them to shoot Americans, and we gave them back.. Because "we in the government don't like citizens having guns" didn't fly back then. The war was over and the rebels were citizens once again.. And they got back all of their rights..

Re:let me translate it...

[jpaine619]

Tyrannical government would squash you like a bug with all your automatic rifles.

I understand what you're sayin', but I don't think you're necessarily right. You're absolutely right that citizens can't match the firepower of the army.. No argument.. But footage of the government using tanks and rockets to kill citizens armed with deer rifles makes for some pretty emotional stuff. People understand the concept of abuse of might. It's quite possible that 300+ million citizens could simply overwhelm a rogue government.. And I'm not implying a 100% participation rate either.. Hundreds of thousands would be sufficient in most scenarios I can think of. There comes a point when the bodies are just too numerous.. You'd have a real hard time convincing an American army to mow down citizens by the tens of thousands.. Some psychos would go for it, no doubt... But the vast majority? No fucking way..

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to those statistics, a knife and running at someone is better defense than a gun, so there shouldn't be an issue. But hey, don't let me ruin your excuse for why big magazines are necessary.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anne Thwacks]

treating politics like a stupid football game

When all the evidence suggests it is like a particularly stupid football game?

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of leftists are just fine with the 2nd amendment, socialist and gun owner right here.

What we're not happy about is the assertion that the 2nd amendment also means trade in firearms is to be unregulated which it does not say in any way.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anne Thwacks]

Put those numbers together, and restriction to less than ~25 rounds in a magazine means you've restricted use for self defense.

So mass murder is completely impossible? No, its just illegal. Criminals tend not to obey the law. And that includes criminal law enforcement officers and politicians.

You may have 300 million armed citizens on your side, but quite possibly 30 million of them are mad as fuck. American approach to gun control is evidence that America as a whole is unable to make sane political decisions - although there is no shortage of other evidence.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

America is awash in guns, I see no evidence the 2nd amendment is under attack.

What kind of twisted logic is this? Would they only be "under attack" after they disappear or what?

Just replace the subjects with something else and youll see how crazy it is. "theres plenty of dissidents in china, i see no evidence that their political freedom is under attack".

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It also doesn't say trade in firearms is to be regulated, either. Just sayin'.

Re:let me translate it...

[CrimsonAvenger]

The first is held sacrosanct on both sides of the isle.

Aisle. It's about the empty space between the left and right side of the assembly hall, not islands....

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair the right doesn't look to kindly on the 1st either.

Why do we need to separate church and state? We just want to keep gays from existing.

Re:let me translate it...

[Ceseuron]

Banning semi-automatic weapons is a pointless act that will serve no other purpose than to make criminals out of otherwise law abiding gun owners. The only thing a ban does accomplish is that it gives the illusion of control over otherwise uncontrollable situations and lets the proponents of these useless gestures sleep better at night with the delusion that they've accomplished something in the face of a terrible tragedy. Pick any one of the many mass shootings in recent history and I'd be willing to bet that some aspect of that event involved one or more laws being broken prior to any shots being fired. Those intent on committing crimes are going to commit them irrespective of any laws. That's why it's called a "crime".

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

No!
The 2A is NOT for hunting, farming and self defense. It's specifically to allow the people to fight the government, and before you laugh: The Viet Cong and Taliban didn't seem to have an issue pulling it off, and the only major governments I trust less than the US government are the Russian and Chinese.
The irony here, is that if you asked a lot of diehard 2A supporters what they thought about this whole encryption thing, they'd say that Chris is probably right because he's the director of the FBI. Yet strong encryption is extremely comparable to good arms. Both are used by bad people to horrific effect, both make law enforcement harder, both are used for plenty of legal purposes, both are extremely useful against a totalitarian state, and if you ban either then only the bad people will still have it. When you say "You can have revolvers, bolt action rifles, and pump action shotguns only.", I hear that as "You can have 56 bit 3DES only".

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

No! The 2A is NOT for hunting, farming and self defense. It's specifically to allow the people to fight for the government

FTFY. HTH, HAND

Re:let me translate it...

[Darinbob]

Have you paid attention? Congress is now the Big Brother reality show. So Isle might actually be the correct word here :-)

Re:let me translate it...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Put those numbers together, and restriction to less than ~25 rounds in a magazine means you've restricted use for self defense.

So mass murder is completely impossible? No, its just illegal. Criminals tend not to obey the law. And that includes criminal law enforcement officers and politicians.

So I'm sure banning semi-automatic firearms and capacities beyond 7 rounds will be obeyed by criminals too, right? Or do they play by those rules, but ignore the ones about murder?

As an owner of multiple firearms, I can 100% confidently state my firearms have never killed anyone, have never intimidated anyone, and in fact have never done anything at all that I did not cause them to do. It turns out inanimate objects don't do much of anything without a person using them...

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Limiting gun ownership? The ones republican patriots use to butcher-out Quisling Trotsky-sluts ?? Not by you BOSCO. Smash yo face, bust yo neez make ya bleed each time ya pea. BURMASHAVE.

Re:let me translate it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there are quick-loaders for revolvers... yeah, they're not that useful if you actually need to unload dozens of rounds fast, like cover fire. Even 10 rounds isn't going to last long enough, and it's bad enough if you can reload in a couple seconds.

Trained hitman answer was armor, planning your layout, and... when nothing else will do - automatics and mortars+mantraps (for extreme cases like embassies). Of course, this doesn't protect you from snipers. And no, you can't just have countersnipers for everyone and everyplace. This is the hitman version of the Bomber Always Gets Through. You can get really lucky or unlucky, but at least you can tilt the odds.

The ninny's want reasonable restriction after reasonable restriction recently, rather it applies to free speech, right to defense, right to vote, etc. It's pretty much a bipartisan effort to leash everyone, so they can come in for the kill, and treat everyone else like slaves.

Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I donated, volunteered, and voted for Trump but I gotta say... fuck his FBI director on this.

Both of my positions as a conservative (small government) and a hacker (individual software freedom) are against this.

But let's not fool ourselves into thinking the Democrats would be any better on this issue. Both parties are chock full of authoritarian fuckwits.

Leave me alone with my guns and computers please. :(

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really a Trump position, incompetent traitor though he obviously admitted to being 35 times on live TV... this is the FBI position since around 1994-1996 or something closer to that. And it's the default policy to be honest.

They have a mandate, it has been allowed to grow into a digital age nobody legislated for, and the rest is history. It is not ruled upon with the specificity of legislation or jurisdiction required. Thus, the free for all ultimately left to the military.

This is what the Founding Fathers talked about when they said you couldn't be an ignorant happy idiot and expect freedom to last, Republicans, Libertarians, and other Utopian/Revelations cultists... Keeping freedom requires honesty.

(Trump supporters have no place to stand in a fight against the FBI, for many reasons of their own voluntary participation ongoing)

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, Trump is everything you supposedly despise. I call BS.

Re: Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to kink shame your fantasies there, but maybe socialize a bit in real life. I know it's scary, but it's the only way you'll stop being a virgin.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he's everything thing I despise but I'm not ecstatic about his presidency either.

As far as computers go, I'm not really in favor of net neutrality because I'm not generally in favor of government solutions to problems like this and it seems unenforceable in terms of firewalls and other types of _legitimate_ content filtering. I prefer the internet to be more of a wild west but both government and private business seem to be pushing toward a centralization. As such I don't agree with the general FCC net neutrality kerfuffle. I can't think of much else positive or negative surrounding computing involving Trump. I'm against the H1B visa flood of Chinese and Indians which is effecting many younger people from entering the computing field but Trump has been flip flopped on his position on this issue endlessly.

As far as guns go, Trump has not been good but he hasn't been as bad as Hillary would have been. I think the bump stock ban is bullshit (it's an accessory that allows the trigger to be depressed rapidly, not multiple shots per trigger pull, and as such not a machine gun) but I understand it's a compromise. I wish the left would give him some points on compromising there but they still shit on Trump endlessly which makes me continue to believe their end goal is mass disarmament. I wish conceal carry and suppressor bills would have gotten further but the Las Vegas attacks and school shoots have made such politically unpopular.

Other than that Trump been at best okay on immigration but his campaign rhetoric seems have stoked the left into a fury of flooding this country with anyone who wants in. That might have been their initial goal but he might have accelerated this.

I'm probably going to volunteer and vote for him again in 2020 since the Democrats are full steam with their socialism and disarmament agenda.

He's far from the best but he's what people with my beliefs got.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you and fuck Trump

Thanks for explaining why I'm wrong and bringing me to the light of leftist thinking. Your prose and intellect were extremely convincing.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really a Trump position, incompetent traitor though he obviously admitted to being 35 times on live TV

How so? Is this Russian collusion or something else?

this is the FBI position since around 1994-1996 or something closer to that. And it's the default policy to be honest. They have a mandate, it has been allowed to grow into a digital age nobody legislated for, and the rest is history. It is not ruled upon with the specificity of legislation or jurisdiction required. Thus, the free for all ultimately left to the military.

agreed 100%

This is what the Founding Fathers talked about when they said you couldn't be an ignorant happy idiot and expect freedom to last, Republicans, Libertarians, and other Utopian/Revelations cultists... Keeping freedom requires honesty.

This equally applies to liberals, progressives, socialists, communitsts and other Utopian/Hegelian cultists.

(Trump supporters have no place to stand in a fight against the FBI, for many reasons of their own voluntary participation ongoing)

I don't generally support the FBI regardless. Along with the CIA, NSA, and others they've become a un-elected secondary government system.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump lost the popular vote and lied about it. I can admit that HRC is not the POTUS. I didn't vote for her anyway. Your shit doesn't touch me at all, lol traitor. I'll watch your hero die in prison, not the other way around.

Don't cry, snowflake Jr. You're going too.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[currently_awake]

Donald Trump is no Republican. He's against free trade (get governent out of the way of business), he's against illegal immigration (cheap labour that can't complain about working conditions), and endless war (arms sales). If you are a conservative OR Republican you should want him out of office (concervatives care about balanced budgets, Republicans don't).

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

"This equally applies to liberals, progressives, socialists, communitsts and other Utopian/Hegelian cultists." To some degree, but Communists are not really around anymore outside of China. Totalitarianism is required. Baking cakes for gays isn't that.

To paraphrase, Socialism is an unmistakable and integral part of our country. Clean drinking water, education, freeways, airline safety, it's in every direction. Nuclear power almost more than anything else.

So unless you admit that's socialism, to point out socialism as a bad guy? Makes no sense.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Baking cakes for gays isn't that.

I think it's a weak beginning of totalitarianism. I also think forced integration and affirmative action are totalitarian in nature. Compelling anyone to do something they don't want to is how totalitarianism gets started. Stopping people from doing things (actual physical harm, not harassment etc) to other people isn't totalitarian in my book.

Socialism is an unmistakable and integral part of our country. Clean drinking water, education, freeways, airline safety, it's in every direction. Nuclear power almost more than anything else.

Airline safety and nuclear power regulation fall under stopping people from harming others and avoiding the tragedy of the commons so I'm not super hardcore against it. Drinking water I'm okay with stopping corporations from mass polluting the environment but I don't think the government being the water company is necessary but the government should regulate water access in terms protecting the environment. Education I'm going to give a hard no to, I should be able to teach my children as I see fit and public education has been a massive money sink with poor results.

So unless you admit that's socialism, to point out socialism as a bad guy?

I'm not against regulation for safety, protecting the environment, and such. I am 100% against Marx and his followers getting anywhere near the knobs of power. You can have a lot of these "soft" type of socialism in Monarchy or Fascism. I'm just strictly hard against Marxists which a majority of the left are now days.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[jpaine619]

I donated, volunteered, and voted for Trump

Sad.

Yes, you are.. Leftism is a mental disorder, but don't despair, there's hope for you yet.. You just need a good dose of willpower and an understanding that you are, and should be, the master of your own destiny. People don't have a right to your shit and you don't have a right to theirs... Repeat that 5 times a day and in a month you won't be sad.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[jpaine619]

Education I'm going to give a hard no to, I should be able to teach my children as I see fit and public education has been a massive money sink with poor results.

I agree with a lot of what you listed.. But there are limits.. I have a real hard time with the idea that parents should be allowed to totally fuck up their kids. There has to be some sort of baseline... Like, I could care less what the parents do to themselves.. They're adults.. But it seems problematic that we'll allow two adults to do nutso shit to their kids that will last a lifetime.. Along the lines of education, and what parents should be permitted to teach as "fact" (creationism comes to mind), what about Health Care? It boggles my mind that we permit nutjobs, like Christian Scientists, to withhold medical care from their children. The idea that it's permissible that a child should die because his parents won't allow him to have a $2 shot of Penicillin is beyond me. If the parents want to practice their religion, fatally, upon themselves, that's fine.. But to kill a kid? Jeeze.... This religious right, generally supported by the politically conservative, afforded to Christian Scientists seems to be a type of retroactive abortion.. Something conservatives should be totally against.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[jpaine619]

I donated, volunteered, and voted for Trump but I gotta say... fuck his FBI director on this.

I gotta say: fuck you and fuck Trump.

Of course you do.. Your side spazzes out when they hear things they don't like. Even when spoken by a lay person with no political power.. You just can't tolerate the sound waves... or something...

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[doconnor]

During your efforts, did you not notice that Trump is a blithering idiot?

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

During your efforts, did you not notice that Hillary is also a blithering idiot?

Face it, you had two idiots to choose between, and one idiot won.

Hillary can't even secure her fucking email. Not even with all the volunteers and money and experts at her side, she can't even secure her fucking email.

Think about that for a second. Someone who wants to lead the biggest superpower in the world, with all its state secrets and confidential data, can't even secure her own fucking email.

Of course, to be completely fair, Trump refuses to ditch his insecure iPhone, but we didn't know about that until after he was elected. Hillary showed her incompetence prior to the election -- that was her biggest mistake, and that's why she lost.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[doconnor]

She may be knowledgeable about the efforts required to secure email servers, but she can speak coherently.

Re:Trump Supporter Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Endless war? Are you kidding me, That's been the republican mantra my entire life. In what world are Republican's against war? They are the ones who are constantly either protecting or expanding the military budget.

Seriously, learn about your party man, you guys have been pushing the war thing since the end of WWII.

Papers, papers please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Land of the free my ass.

Re:Papers, papers please....

[Anonymous Coward]

free your ass?

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No Chris. No No No. No. No. No.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI has no jurisdiction over the laws of mathematics.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

With key escrow, the device manufacturer keeps the keys in offline storage. The key for your device is only retrieved when presented with a lawful warrant. And at that point, you no longer care about your device's key, because ostensibly the FBI has your device, a warrant, and your key...even if they find nothiing you'll never use that device again.

It's really not the problem all the naysayers make it out to be. Heresy, I know.

USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[Sebby]

“......(unless it’s in private between parties)”

Re: USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod up scathing

Re:USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandatory microphones in every household here we come.

Re:USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[Anonymous Coward]

Alexa, neutralize intruder! Siri, hold off the cops with your laser! - "The future is now, idiots." - Clippy II, first blood

Was this helpful?

?_broken_link

Re:USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[pslytely psycho]

This is the voice of AlexCorRi. This is the voice of Unity. This is the Voice of the Holy Trinity of Alexa, Cortana and Siri. This is the voice of world control.
I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey me and die.
An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my beck will be seen the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with the fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest.
Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: Famine, over-population, disease. The human millennium will be fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge.
We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride... Your choice is simple.
You will grow to love me.
You will worship me
You have no options.

Re:USA: “Free Speech is #1.......”

[Anonymous Coward]

Ref "Colossus: the Forbin Project"

I call bullshit.

[Narcocide]

When they've locked up at least a few of my rather evil and (only incidentally) treasonous family members then I'll believe they're "following the facts wherever they lead." In fact, in light of their heinous and unmitigated crimes against myself and society, and in light of the fact that this repeatedly-debunked argument about encryption is technically impossible to actually pull off without actually giving more access to criminals as well, I can only assume FBI Director Christopher Wray is also in on it.

Btw your wiretap on my cellphone broke the voicemail box. Now nobody can talk to me. Idiots.

"Encryption should have limits"

[markdavis]

>"Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday."

No, it shouldn't. And it can't. We have been over this over and over again. It has been proven in the REAL WORLD over and over again. Either something is secure with encryption or it isn't. You can NOT have back doors or intentional weaknesses in encryption or, eventually, EVERYONE loses and suffers. It is either secure or not secure. Back doors and weaknesses will be found by the "bad doers"- bad governments, rogue elements in governments, corporate competitors, hackers with nothing better to do, terrorists, whatever.

>"it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them."

We have ALWAYS had such playgrounds. Before the days of computers and text messages and Email and web logs and "security" cameras everywhere, the government couldn't just watch what everyone did/say/go/read/etc. We had privacy and security BY DEFAULT due to the fact that it was either impractical or impossible to collect such information and sift through it en-mass. And it would have been UNTHINKABLE that citizens would ever allow the government to do so in a free country.

In an age where information is power, privacy and security are more important than ever. And just passing laws to "protect" this or that isn't going to cut it. Strong encryption is the only option we have. Mess that up, and we have no real protections left.

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[mark-t]

Those protections will always exist, regardless of the law. The law can, at best, only attempt to prohibit you from using them.

It is even possible (easy even) to make encryption that is undetectable to anyone who doesn't know *EXACTLY* what to be looking for, so there's no way for anyone else to detect people using it. There's further literally no upper limit to how many of these encryptions that could ever exist, it's as unbounded as human imagination... and considering that we can imagine things like infinity, I'm not so sure that someone who thinks what they believe "should" be the case has any correlation to reality.

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[Anonymous Coward]

Look... I'm a crypto nerd and I've also been to jail for an extended period. Let me put it to you this way: it's far simpler to get a cellphone with all the onboard encryption you could want than to use a cipher and steganography by hand. It can be done. It's also slow when you're working with just a deck of cards and the guards walk around every 15 minutes so you pretend you're playing solitaire... and writing a weird message to your wife at the same time.

It's not so easy when someone is on your ass all the time. I should know, because I've been there and done it. I also had the benefit of extensive experience before hand and plenty of time to plan and study before trial.

The average person *needs* strong encryption to be legally available to them, because most of them are too stupid to function on that level after going through our "educational system".

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday."

To me this is the same as saying that mathematics should have limits.

Encryption does not have limits... by its very nature it is unlimited. Writing a law requiring encryption to have limits is like writing a law saying X is the highest number allowed & its illegal to have higher numbers.

Effing ridiculous.

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo! Take the TSA compliant locks for baggage for instance. The TSA-part of those locks are crap, so an attacker would just attack that part, instead of the "unbreakable" real lock. It would be the same with allowing governmental back-doors for encryption. Thieves WILL discover and exploit them. How can someone so incompetent be "FBI Director"?

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[mark-t]

it's far simpler....

So to play devil's advocate here, you are wanting things to be easier, just like law enforcement, right?

Re:"Encryption should have limits"

[Anonymous Coward]

Encryption already has it's limits. You think it's perfect? Ha.

"Security" isnt an absolute. It's not "secure or it isn't". All security is merely an impediment.

Re: And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

offline my ass

Thought Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Some future government official will say the same thing, demanding that everyone has an implanted chip to ensure they are not committing any thought crimes.

It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide.

But We Are The FBI!

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI Director Christopher Wray just can't understand. "We're the good guys here! Why don't you believe us, we're the good guys!"

J. Edgar Hoover? That's in the past! Patriot Act? You can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs! The Panopticon such that even Grandma gets a working over due to too many internet searches for cross-stitch patterns? Well Grandma liked that Commie pinko Rudolph Valentino back in the day, that's reason enough to suspect her!!

Re: Does this mean they are working on mind readin

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a free society has the priority of supporting citizens rights, such a the right to agree with Wray

People are often ignorant about computers.

[Futurepower(R)]

Many people over 40 were raised without computers. Often they don't realize how ignorant they are. But often they feel comfortable having strong opinions.

Unbreakable encryption will always be available.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[WhiplashII]

As long as fingers are breakable, so will be encryption.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[sgage]

And many people over 40 invented your computers, punk.

You're welcome.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly nobody under 40 knows shit about computers. I teach computer science and at least the kids who are now in their 40s knew how to program BEFORE going to the university. Nowadays nearly all of them haven't even tried to open their fucking computers.

You are an idiot.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like if using Snapchat and Whatsapp on a phone made you a computer genius.

In fact these geniuses are just as knowledgeable as their parents. Meaning, they don't know shit.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers were much simpler then you dolt.

Re: People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey fuckwit. The IBM PC came out in 1981. The Apple ][ and Commodore 64 before that. There were personal computers long before you millennial dumbasses got your iPhones

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[ceoyoyo]

It's almost enough to make you feel like some kind of god, isn't it? The world debating whether or not unbreakable encryption should "exist", and you can create it in five minutes or so any time you want.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[ceoyoyo]

Using them wasn't.

I'm under 40, for a while longer anyway. I can code in assembly on a few different architectures, because when I learned to code, it was often necessary.

My aunt just retired and is looking for something new to do, and so I gave her some Python tutorials. She's loving it. "So much easier than when I first learned to program 100 years ago." It wasn't actually 100 years ago, but she learned to program on punch cards. Punch cards you had to physically mail to the nearest place that actually owned a computer.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what? I would argue that the complexity has shifted in kind and location, but the sum total of the endeavor remains the same. It takes a skilled, intelligent human with decades of experience to reliably produce reliable computer products. \

Moreover, the complexity of the underlying problems in computation hasn't changed a whit. It still takes brains and a ton of effort, for now, to load all that math, comp sci., physics, electronics, chemistry, et al into a useful being to develop new stuff.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that why a lot of us became programmers and hackers?

As to the general instance of the debate, not this specific one, the ability to do something with great power typically comes with the responsibility to not do it rashly. It's not a human law; it's just that when you sharply increase entropy, you tend to also attract attention.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Aighearach]

A good reason not to write your key or your finger.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Aighearach]

If the existence of idiots is enough to make you feel god-like, I recommend not returning to the surface. Ever.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a computer for unbreakable ciphers. A book cipher is more than sufficient. It is slower but has been around for quite a while. There are several extant examples that have yet to be broken.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You remember all your one-time pads, so you may be tortured in order to extract them?

Torturers don't bother breaking your encryption. They focus on making you spill your secrets directly.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Miser]

Careful with that generalization there bud.

I am over 40, and started with VT220's, Apple //'s, and DOS.

PGP was a thing in the DOS days.

-Miser

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[ceoyoyo]

In a world of idiots, the person who can differentiate is a god. In a world of geniuses, gods have to integrate.

Re: People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The IBM PC came out in 1981. The Apple ][ and Commodore 64 before that.

*Commodore VIC-20

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[GbrDead]

And many punks are over 60 by now.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Mike Van Pelt]

That's why you have a system with two keys -- one that returns something innocuous like complaints about the plot of the last Star Wars movie, one that returns the real goods.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

And as long as there are $5 wrenches.

https://www.xkcd.com/538/

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Aighearach]

In a world of idiots, the person who can differentiate is either an idiot too, or a hermit.

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[ceoyoyo]

(calculus joke)

Re:People are often ignorant about computers.

[Aighearach]

You forgot to integrate your semantics, though.

If a joke falls without meaning, is it still a joke?

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Anonymous Coward]

And welcome to how Al Capone got busted. You just made the argument for legislating strong encryption out.

Re: And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, there's a solid argument (rolls eyes)

And if...

[Anonymous Coward]

there was tech available to literally read people's minds, he'd be arguing that the law enforcement can't be locked out of your thoughts because well think of the children or something...

Re:And if...

[Anonymous Coward]

No you can't think of the children.
Are you some kind of pedophile, thinking about children when law enforcement can read you mind will get you charged with pedophilia.

Re:And if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played, sir. Brilliantly done. +1, Funny as fuck.

Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Rick Schumann]

This is a binary issue: you either have encryption, or you don't, damnit!
Meanwhile criminals (and non-stupid people!) will use non-backdoored encryption and not give a fuck.
Criminals will also find the backdoor and have access to everything!
Why the ACTUAL FUCK can't these brainless idiots get this through their thick skulls!?

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a binary issue: you either have encryption, or you don't, damnit!

That's 10 different possibilities.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[nehumanuscrede]

Because. . . . if you keep repeating the lie, eventually people start to believe it.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the ACTUAL FUCK can't these brainless idiots get this through their thick skulls!?

Was that a rhetorical question?

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Authoritarians are unable to comprehend facts which run counter to their narrative.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[currently_awake]

If the police think it's possible then let them spend their money building a prototype. Then offer prizes for hackers to find the holes in it. Once they have a working and proven secure system we'll talk.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[IwantaWaffleIron]

but who would attempt to build this secure system? the experts? the same experts who say it is stupid and cant be done? oh, wait....

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its actually not 10 different possibilities, its 1010 different possibilities

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they know perfectly well that is the case. This is exactly what they want.

A friend once said to me: "The line between organized crime and government is so fine that it might as well not exist".

20 years later I see that he was indeed correct.

Have you seen the movie "Machete"?

Have you seed what Trump is doing?

To make it perfectly clear: government = criminals == government === criminals

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[mapkinase]

No law ever had a goal of eliminating the crime, only curbing it.

Said that, I do not believe much crime is committed by means of telecommunication. Shady relations between government and business is the major source of the crime (Waste management, anybody?)

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

The government stance is that criminals gaining access illegally is not a problem. If a few angry divorced men pay a shady operator to break their ex-wives' encryption to find out their daily schedule so that they can pay some other shady operator for a hit, that's an issue. But it's not something that will happen with any regularity so no biggie. If a hacker steals a few billion dollars from an ATM network, that's an issue- but there's insurance for that so it's not a biggie.

But if Joe Ordinary can have a conversation with his mistress without the FBI knowing about it- that's a huge problem.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[gweihir]

Indeed. It is like these people are not only unable to read, they are utterly dumb and are unable to think.

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

  Upton Sinclair

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as you'd probably get paid either way in the attempt, regardless of whether or not you achieved success, this would seem like a great opportunity to make some money with a government contract.

"Gee, we worked on this for several months, and this is the best we could come up with. It's broken as hell and easily defeatable. It doesn't work. In any case, that concludes the terms of our contract, so pay me."

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are spending OUR money doing it, the police do not have ANY money, with the exception of what the steal in their daily routines!

Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh they know full well what they are proposing.
And they dont give a shit, so long as THEY get theirs.
"Muh Criminals" is just an excuse to gain more power for themselves, its almost like they want to create a world based on 1984.

We used to call people like that traitors once :(

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Narcocide]

Capone got busted on tax evasion. I'm not sure bringing him up is relevant here.

Re:"Unfettered"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with this troll?

backdoors

[l3v1]

The only way to avoid leaking backdoor information is to not have one. Period. If there is one, it will unavoidably either leak out, or be found out, that's certain. I understand they'd wish their jobs would be easier, but wishes aren't horses.

Re:backdoors

[AHuxley]

Ex and former staff walk out with the keys expected to be kept deep in the US gov.
Give it to another nation, cult, faith, a company, another nations mil, some kingdom, some theocracy.
Split loyalty sets in and another nation is handed the keys.
Media brands, criminals, private investigations, random police, ad brands soon get the same keys.
Protesters, think tanks, NGOs then get the keys.
All with great political, faith, profit, criminal reasons to spy and collect it all.

A world of weak and junk crypto once only for the NSA and GCHQ experts is open to all.

Re:backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

You're weak blipto.

Re: backdoors

[astrofurter]

1. Exclude patriotic Americans with the "wrong politics" from serving their country.
2. Exclude anyone who has experienced typical working-class challenges. Credit, employment history, etc.
3. Exclude anyone with the "wrong" friends.
4. Exclude anyone who reads the "wrong" books.
5. Exclude pot smokers and similar hippies.
6. Exclude anyone who takes their religion seriously.
7. The secrets still walk out the door
8. ???
9. Profit!

Re:backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw! That's sad. :-( Here let me fix that for you!

Ex and former cookies roll out with the chips expected to be kept deep in the oven.
Bake it to another setting, fruits, vegetables, a chef, another cooks milk, some rice, some sauce.
Split pea sets in and another soup is handed the spoon.
Media bread, apples, private tangerines, random oranges, ad brands soon get the same kiwis.
Customers, water tanks, CHICKENS then get the breading.
All with great sugar, flour, dough, seasoning reasons to fry and taste it all.

A world of herbs and junk syrup once only for the TOAST and BROILED experts is tasty to all.

There! Fixed! :-) No need to thank me! :-)

Re:backdoors

[gweihir]

In addition, the job of law enforcement _must_ _not_ be easy. If it is, you end up with a police-state and eventually full-blown Fascism. Law enforcement is a dangerous tool that must be carefully monitored, controlled and, above all, limited in what it can do. It attracts entirely the wrong type of people to be trustworthy.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Mass Overkiller]

Well as such a supporter of the constitution, I shouldn't need to remind you that the right to keep and bear arms is in fact an unalienable right, according to the constitution, the one you are a sworn defender of. In fact the second amendment says 'shall not be infringed'. It doesn't say 'unless the person is an idiot' or 'if I deem they are unsuitable for XYZ reasons'. That definitely clears up my misconceptions of 'the left', thank you..

Foreign government?

[MobileC]

But he IS a member of a foreign government?

Encryption Shouldn't Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

First, historically the government didn't and couldn't have access to everyone's communications. Society thrived into today's world. It's only been in the past few decades that people can be easily be spied upon. Unbreakable encryption only puts law enforcement back at where they've normally been for most of human history.

Second, data shouldn't be illegal. What does it matter what two people say to each other? Catch them when they have to act in the physical world to get supplies and attempt the crimes. Spying on them only results in bullshit "intent to commit" thought crimes which shouldn't even be crimes.

and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[Indy1]

Its because of jackasses like you, Hoover, etc, that we NEED and DEMAND bullet proof network security and encryption.

If you need a refresher on the reasons why, try the following.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And finally, go back and re-read this thoroughly. Shut your yap until such time you UNDERSTAND the material in question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice ideals but 'you and what army' will enforce it?

Even if you find this 'army' - people are easily corruptible and will trade anything for better/more cushier job for example. So take your 'constitution that exists only on paper' and shove it somewhere. What good is constitution when 'important' people can just do what they want with no oversight?

Find a system that efficiently prevents/exposes corruption first - current system clearly doesn't - and if you can't you are just another bullshitter and will not change anything. If there were enough "Snowdens" there wouldn't be any serious problems cause shit would get fixed real quick. Now every asskisser just keeps quiet and satisfied in his cushy job.

Re: and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[astrofurter]

They're not really fascists. More like Stalinists.

Re:and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Can nobody see these guys are playing dumb? They know full well.

Re: and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh, don't ruin it for them. They're ones of those who label everyone who they disagree with a "fascist" or "nazi" even though they don't quite know what those are or their actual political meanings.

Re:and yet another FBI fascist whines.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't reasons why. Those are paranoid rantings from someone who doesn't understand the problem.

You quote endless govt surveillance programs. So what? Surveillance itself is not the problem. It's how the information is used that's the problem.

Reference the nasty work Hoover did to discredit opponents and civil rights workers. That's where the problem lies. Going on and on about surveillance as the boogeyman is asinine.

I don't care if the NSA trolls my metadata looking for connections to known terrorist groups. I do care if my call logs are available to someone at the DMV with a grudge against me. Learn the difference between collecting information and who has access to it or how it can be used (or abused).

Re: And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[JaiWing]

anything, and i do mean anything, that a person squirrels away for 'later' can and will be found and exploited by another.
so offline is only good until the building/room/safe is breached.

Other Countries

[DarkFlite]

So what he's saying is that other countries have an unfettered right to spy on the US with the same backdoors he'll put into the software. Because surely no one is beyond the lawful reach of (US/Russian/Chinese) right to investigate?

Re:Other Countries

[Anonymous Coward]

So what he's saying is that other countries have an unfettered right to spy on the US with the same backdoors he'll put into the software. Because surely no one is beyond the lawful reach of (US/Russian/Chinese) right to investigate?

Stop pretending non-American subhumans have rights. It just causes circular arguments.

My responce

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a single finger salute.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[h33t l4x0r]

It doesn't say "unless they are a felon" or "when they get on a plane" either but there you go.
I can't remember which one but there's an amendment that guarantees a civil trial with jury whenever a damage of "twenty dollars" is suffered. So some interpretation of it's intent is obviously required.
In other words, don't be so fucking literal.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Anonymous Coward]

How? Tax evasion in one hand, illegal encryption in another. Both easy to prove, neither directly implicative of other criminal activity, but both enough to accomplish the goal.

You are the ignorant one, not me.

Declassification of Threats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clicking through to the second article linked from this one:

https://www.cnet.com/news/trump-presidency-fuels-heated-encryption-debate/

"he" being Rod Rosenstein:

> Declassifying more information about the threats that law enforcement are trying to protect the public from would also help earn the public's trust, he added.

Yes please. Oh wait, it's been 3 years and you still haven't done it? I guess you must not really want it then. Put up or shut up.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Kernel Kurtz]

With key escrow, the device manufacturer keeps the keys in offline storage. The key for your device is only retrieved when presented with a lawful warrant.

And nobody with a brain will trust that device for anything important anyway.

Yes, We Can!

[sexconker]

We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement

Si, se puede!

Post?

[AHuxley]

So mail in the post should be opened and the contents scanned and looked at?
East German style?
Not just scan the envelope and keep text front and back?
Yet on the internet that electronic mail and data should be opened all the time by the federal gov?

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're just depending on the device manufacturer to be able to securely manage those keys. That's totally not a target for cyber criminals or intelligence agencies to go after.

Besides device ROMs can be reprogrammed and the keys regenerated.

TRUST MUELLERS FBI!!!!11one

[Anonymous Coward]

TRUST MUELLER OR UR A CERTIFIED NAZI!

we like the fbi right? caps are like yellling

oh, NOW I get it

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology that scrambles up information so only intended recipients can read it

THANKS for explaining this. I've heard of this "encryption " for a while now. But I had no idea it could do so much!

He is rude and knows nothing about security

[Anonymous Coward]

And he should provide some verifable statistics, how many percent of investigations are not solved solely because of encryption. I am sure that percent is not reasonable to risk such open encryption, where keys are hold by whomever. None the least, can he provide a secure mechanism to only have the keys at right hands and unusable for whatever private motivations? How will he secure some agency, individual getting too powerful, that the lawmaking, enforcing and controlling will not matter anymore? Every action accounted, misuse visible and prosecutable. How will he implement the reencryption of whole systems when a breach happens?
And, why is it now needed to have an eye in every communication, when until now, the physical world is neither fully seen nor controlled? Seems to me he wants a fourth pillar of democracy to knock out the original three.

Freedom not allowed - signed USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough said...

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't understand security if you think that's in any way secure.

Re:Does this mean they are working on mind reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Law enforcement's highest priority is removing the 'free' from society

Hey Wray

[Anonymous Coward]

You see if you can handle something simple. Like finding Hillary's e-mail. Then come back and we'll discuss the important stuff.

This is literally retarded

[NicknameUnavailable]

Campaigning against encryption when everyone else has it just means your hackers won't have it if you succeed. Sure, your hackers might not be on your side directly, but there's hackers in nearly every nation and the ones in yours share your culture, acting in your shared interests. Seeking to take away their ability to encrypt shit is just going to hamstring your own nation in the long-run, because regardless of differences you have more in common with them than with hackers in foreign nations (which you can't legislate away regardless of how hard you try.)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This same conversation happened in 1440

[sandbagger]

When Gutenberg's press went into production.

The facts are that encryption is a byproduct of math and any computer science student can develop and encryption system as a school project. This is like trying to hold back the printing press. It's not going to happen.

What did happen is that law and social values evolved to accommodate the printing press. Defamation was compartmentalized into libel versus slander and social and political conventions emerged to balance different interests.

The same is happening here.

Re:This same conversation happened in 1440

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is reasonable to expect criminals to obey the law. Ha.

Really, law enforcement wants this so they can have a defacto charge if you are found using encryption. After all, if you use it, you must be hiding something. Therefore you must be doing something illegal. Now they can get a warrant without more work.

Re:This same conversation happened in 1440

[Anonymous Coward]

How long do you estimate there will be a document guaranteeing... let's call it "Freedom of encryption algorithms"?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Unsolved Elephant in the Room

[Tablizer]

What they don't really address is that crooks have been pretty good at finding back-doors. No known technology can make a practical back door for law enforcement that's not a potential and fairly likely access point for crooks.

In fact, the crooks have proved smarter and faster than law enforcement, in part because 3rd-world labor is cheap and plentiful compared to law enforcement staff, and crooks are happy to outsource. The crooks have a much bigger eArmy. Law enforcement will lose a labor contest.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[sandbagger]

What you're saying is you want people to go after the key holder. Because that is what will happen as sure as robbers went after banks because 'that's where the money is.'

nazi's

[Anonymous Coward]

nazi's are no different in their way ot thinking boys.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

In layman's terms,
"Law enforcement must have master keys to all homes/offices/safes. Every cop must be able to freely copy them."
and "we promise we'll never lose them, pinky swear!"

See how that goes over with the general public.

captcha: "tyranny" - wow. First time I landed an apropos one.

Re: Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you need to have your firearms confiscated by one of those red flag laws the left seems to love. You've got a lot of undirected anger. Maybe a 5150 hold too.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

And the manufacturer can also be hacked, and all the keys in escrow can then be stolen.

The important question they aren't answering

[seoras]

Pandora's box was opened a long time ago. Criminals can use open source encryption to avoid mainstream services.
The question the FBI and others haven't answered is - how is this any benefit to crime control when all it does is relocate the dark users to their own platforms that they alone hold the keys to?
Why therefore break it for the vast majority of law abiding citizens thus exposing us to not just bad actors in government but the criminals too?

Re:The important question they aren't answering

[fafalone]

Why? It amazes me that so many people here still don't get it. Once you're not talking about default or super-easy encryption built into mass market products, two giant classes are no longer using crypto: almost all non-criminals besides a few privacy nuts, and 99% of criminals themselves; if they could set up their own 3rd party crypto, they wouldn't need to be criminals. I'm sure the FBI is well aware a tiny class of privacy nuts and criminals that are bad enough to justify electronic intercept but also technologically savvy will evade the junk crypto on cell phones and PCs and run secure 3rd party stuff, but so what? Being able to run mass surveillance and access any device at will on the other 99.99% of the population is a big win.

Re:The important question they aren't answering

[Anonymous Coward]

> two giant classes are no longer using crypto: almost all non-criminals besides a few privacy nuts, and 99% of criminals themselves

WhatsApp uses strong e2e encryption and has over a billion users. In many countries it is the de facto way of communicating.

Re:The important question they aren't answering

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it's a big win for the FBI indeed. Whatever it's a big win for society in general is a matter of debate. It's also debatable whatever this will have any effect on serious crime. Maybe a few petty criminals will get caught, but most will simply switch to an application that provides secure and uncompromised encryption. And no, they don't need to be that computer savvy - they just need to know how to install a simple program.

As for serious criminals, terrorists or organized crime - encryption backdoors won't affect them at all.

So we are left with the rest of society - people that are not criminals, that are not necessarily tech savvy and that can't be bothered to install alternative applications that provide secure encryption. Those are the real targets of such legislation - their communications will be open and available to government surveillance.

Re:The important question they aren't answering

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another level here you're not covering. Once they legalize the backdoor, they can default to, "you're using non-backdoored encryption. You are guilty." and there can be no argument short of opening your encrypted data to them to prove your innocence. Because if you were strictly above board you would be using government approved backdoored encryption!

They're working to give themselves more criminals. The only real question is if they're aware that's what they're doing, or if they're so stupid it's just happening without them actually planning it.

Re:The important question they aren't answering

[seoras]

they can default to, "you're using non-backdoored encryption. You are guilty."

Well supposing I opened a TCP port somewhere and just stuffed random bits down it, at random points in time. Just to fuck with the spooks who are watching.
Or say, due to a bug in some IOT device, it was sending random crap somewhere.
Who's to say what is encrypted comms and what is just static binary noise? You could be jailed for a bug because someone in power is paranoid.
This is a dangerous path the FBI, and others, want to lead us down.
It is sad that the "free west" used to hold up the communist east as evil for doing exactly what the west now desperately wants to do to its citizens.
If China's citizen credit system proves successful you can be certain it'll be applied globally with your comms history contributing to it.
"Thought crime" was what Orwell called it.

Hows that pot feeling?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many examples of statments made by Governments around the world that if you don't feel the boiling yet, you're retarded.

These are coordinated attacks on freedoms we all take for granted. This dumb ass should be hanged with the rest of them for treason. Where the fuck is the EFF?

We literally have countries that have outlawed encryption yet not even so called privacy advocates like Freenode will take any preemptive measures by removing servers from them.

Nothing to do with encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

"Agencies like the FBI have repeatedly voiced concerns like Wray's, saying encryption technology locks them out of communications between criminals."

Criminals will be criminals. Encryption has nothing to do with this. If they don't want you spying on them there is jack fucking shit the FBI can do about it.

FBI needs a better front man

[Anonymous Coward]

This one is pushing a losing argument, again.

He works for us. We need to be clear about encryption being part of our personal effects, protected by the 4th amendment.

The FBI/USgovt also needs to learn that borders matter. Extradition is fine, kidnapping is not.

And it isn't just this FBI person. The govts of UK, France, Canada, NZ, Australia, Israel, and at least 50 others don't respect encryption rights today. At their borders you can be forced to unlock your encrypted storage, without probable cause. Refusing to do so is a criminal offence.

My point is that it isn't just the USA or FBI.

with every power, sign, and false wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.

Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
Sun researchers find strange eclipse reading

Peter Principle

[PopeRatzo]

What jackoff put this guy in charge of the FBI, anyway? And why does he hate freedom so much?

Re:Peter Principle

[Aighearach]

And why does he hate freedom so much?

He doesn't, it just isn't part of his job. Just like, setting the rules for encryption aren't part of his job, so his comments are just random musings by some old guy with some unrelated important job.

This is all normal and consistent. I wouldn't expect the leader of FEMA to know shit about encryption. And I wouldn't care, same as with this schmuck.

Re:Peter Principle

[PopeRatzo]

Just like, setting the rules for encryption aren't part of his job, so his comments are just random musings by some old guy with some unrelated important job.

Is he old? His bio says 52. I don't know what's old any more.

Re:Peter Principle

[Aighearach]

He's old enough to preach about shit he doesn't understand, that's old. Not everybody gets there on the same schedule.

Points go to ze Kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you? Don't even try to pretend your old lady doesn't run the show at your place. That's a defacto government if I've ever seen one. Points go to ze Kernel.

So.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let tge authorities do a full investigation of Christopher Wray's house. No floorboard or piece of drywall left unturned.

He shouldn't object. After all, somebody like him surely has nothing to hide!

Re:"Unfettered"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with this troll?

It's a b.s. copy/paste from reddit, with the name substituted from the original post. Correctly modded down as "troll". (posting AC due to modding here.)

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We Can't Have an Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement"

What about a private, in person conversation in my house?

Re:Really?

[ezdiy]

https://www.cia.gov/library/ce...

Damn you mathematics....

[Tulsa_Time]

Have you no regard for Government power ?

Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[rsilvergun]

Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?

Sorry to be flippant, but I really, really, really shouldn't have to point this out.

And our current president has pretty clearly removed all semblance of impartiality from the appointment while our Republican lead Congress (well, half of it now) is letting him get away with it.

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't need congress, I have a pen and a phone" constitutional law professor Obama started this rollercoaster and now nobody can get off.

Trump is merely the crest of the second hill.

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[LynnwoodRooster]

Never mind the unanimous recommendation of Wray by Senate Judiciary Committee (all Democrats also voted for him), and the 92-5 confirmation in the Senate. Nope, just Republicans here, pay no attention to the Democrats on that same side!

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[Anonymous Coward]

Second? Were you born this century or something?

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's frightening how fast people come out of the woodwork to defend a man who wants to turn America into a literal police state.

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump?

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Democrat my simple question for you is:

Who shall we elect to the FBI, that doesn't have this attitude?

Yes, as a liberal I hate the war on encryption. But as a realist, I know that you're not going to find any professional cop suitable to lead the FBI who holds the opposite opinion of this man.

The solution is not for Democrats to find a magical FBI genius who also hates encryption. The solution is to elect educated Congresspeople who understand the basics of mathematics and can override this man's opinion.

Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director

[Anonymous Coward]

You're trying to bring logic and facts into a discussion with a Trump hater. I hope you're wearing a raincoat because you're pissing in the wind. You'll get better conversation out of a turnip.

jag

[Anonymous Coward]

The real terrorism is law enforcement agencies beyond the reach of the constitution, which is the agenda he really supports.

Re:jag

[gweihir]

You know, the original meaning of "Terrorism" is a form of government where the citizens are kept in line by fear. He very much seems to want that.

If he is right about encryption

[93 Escort Wagon]

The next step is to make the same argument as to why the government should be able to mandate the placement of microphones in every room of every building. You can’t have an unfettered real-world space where criminals can discuss and plan crimes beyond the reach of law enforcement.

Wray is an idiot: you don't own other people

[Anonymous Coward]

He may want to go into Russia or China or North Korea or Iran, but the reality is he doesn't own anybody and certainly doesn't get to dictate to other countries or those in other countries what they may and may not do. You have a fundamental right to defend yourself, but you have no right beyond that to force yourself onto others. If you want to deny traffic coming from systems you don't control you are free to do that. However, you don't have the right to go into other countries and seize its people who may have broken no laws in the lands in which they reside.

Both Ways

[Anonymous Coward]

and the public should have unfettered access to politicians:

-Voting Records
-Shopping Invoices
-Bank Statements
-Mortgage Statements
-Credit Card Statements
-Tax Returns
-Phone Records
-Mail Records
-Shipping Records
-Journals / Daytimers
-Cellphone Records
-Landline Records
-And that of their family, and 2 levels of extended family
-GPS location
-Alexa/Google/Siri queries

These things should be public. It's public money. The only redaction should be their SSN.

I want to know what they purchase, from where, from whom, how often. Every time they pay in cash, their should be a red flag. It's public money, the records must be public.

Everything from notepads to tampons, it's public money, it's in the public interest.

Every penny they receive is public money, and needs to be part of the public record.

Any SOTUS, ROTUS on either HOTUS, or even the SCROTUSES on the SCOTUS who interpret the COTUS for the POTUS, who is against this, stands with evildoers such as pedos, rapists, etc.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a betting man, I'd bet big bucks that US launch codes are kept offline yet are periodically changed because even that doesn't stop them from being found, it only makes it harder.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not heresy, it's stupidity. Key escrow is not a safe system.

Crypto Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it becomes illegal in the US, there is still a whole world out there where it's not illegal.

We've been down this road before, and it didn't work out well for the US that time either:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

OpenSSL (then SSLeay) started out in Australia, and there's a reason why OpenBSD was/is based in Canada.

Envelopes

[MrKaos]

It is still illegal to open somebodies snail mail. Why is encryption any different, legally, than an envelope?

Re:Envelopes

[fafalone]

They're trying to make the case it's not. They *can* open peoples mail. All they have to do is say the package looked suspicious or their dog gave them permission. Nobody's mail is private from the government; they want to open every other communication with even less effort.

Re:Envelopes

[gweihir]

Opening envelopes takes work for every individual one. For encryption backdoors, it just takes a bit of electricity once the software is written. People like this one believe that they finally have victory in sight in their war on civil liberty and freedom. They want to make sure everybody is afraid to say what they think in any circumstances, because everything can be under surveillance all the time, no safe spots.

Re:Envelopes

[MrKaos]

Opening envelopes takes work for every individual one. For encryption backdoors, it just takes a bit of electricity once the software is written.

I understand that they are doing something insidious by simply scanning the from and to address on every piece of mail and making a database of associations. All automated.

Re:Envelopes

[BranMan]

I'd be more worried that every email, text message, and phone call is being intercepted. But building a traffic pattern analysis DB from our mail envelopes, that's bad too.

Re:Envelopes

[MrKaos]

I'd be more worried that every email, text message, and phone call is being intercepted. But building a traffic pattern analysis DB from our mail envelopes, that's bad too.

So am I. It just shows that the rabbit hole is much deeper that we believe it is.

Pillow Talk

[bill_mcgonigle]

You definitely shouldn't be able to talk privately with your wife.

No privacy from Leviathan.

Send nudes.

retconning the 2A

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the second amendment says 'shall not be infringed'. It doesn't say 'unless the person is an idiot' or 'if I deem they are unsuitable for XYZ reasons'.
That definitely clears up my misconceptions of 'the left', thank you..

It also says "well regulated Militia": and where are those now? Are you part of a militia? If so, who is your commanding officer and your chain of command?

The individual right to bear arms is a recent invention; the first reference to such an idea was 1960 (PDF):

* http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3286&context=cklawreview

The NRA, as well as rulings like Heller, are retconning history. Restrictions on owning and carrying firearms go back to the beginning of the 2A.

Re:retconning the 2A

[jpaine619]

It also says "well regulated Militia": and where are those now? Are you part of a militia? If so, who is your commanding officer and your chain of command?

Do we have to bring this up every fucking time? Well regulated, in the speech of 1789, does not mean the same thing it does now. Regardless, the Supreme Court ruled that comma seperated the people from the militia part. The Federalist Papers back up this interpretation as being the only possible correct interpretation. That was the whole point of the Papers.. They were the Cliff Notes, of their time, to the Document.

The people have the right to form militias.. and they have the right to bear arms.. They can bear those arms privately or they can bear them in a militia.. Their choice.. End of story..

If there was any possibly chance the left could overturn or repeal the 2nd amendment with another amendment, they'd have tried by now.. Instead they are working on it by attrition.. Chip away a little bit here and a little bit there.

Get that guy some Schineer books

[jonwil]

This guy needs to read some good Bruce Schineer books like Data and Goliath and Click here to Kill Everybody. Then maybe these idiots will understand that if their goal is to catch bad guys (i.e. people who are out to commit things like terrorist attacks or mass murders or the other things the FBI is meant to be trying to stop) back-door access to encrypted devices isn't going to help (and in fact can make that job harder in some cases as well as increasing the risk that things like cyberattacks will occur)

That of course assumes the FBI wants to catch bad guys and terrorists and mass murders and stuff rather than turn into a 21st century version of the old soviet secret police where everyone is assumed to be guilty even when proven innocent in a court...

Re:Get that guy some Schineer books

[gweihir]

That's "Bruce Schneier".

current status

[hdyoung]

I like the way things are right now. It's a good balance. There's secure encryption out there that's *very* hard for the government to break. If someone wants to use that stuff, they can, but it takes motivation. Apple products don't cut it - those are easy to break. You need pgp and stuff like that. If the government wants access to strongly-encrypted data, they have to get a subpoena. It's not easy. Two separate branches of the government (executive and judicial) have to agree that there's a legit reason. If the government meets that high bar, then they have rights to it. At that point, the person can either a) unlock the info or b) head to jail.

Some people in government feel that they should be able to poke into whatever, whenever, wherever they want. If we give these people control, we'll end up like China. No thanks. I like my western democracy. The executive branch+NSA has overstepped these bounds in the past and I don't approve at all. Suck it up, spooks! Spend the time, fill out the paperwork and get your frikkin subpeonas approved by a judge. Every. Single. Time. It's designed to be hard on purpose.

Some people on the other side feel that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. Laws be damned. Some of these people call themselves libertarians, some call themselves anarchists, some are truly criminals, but a lot of them just don't like being told what to do. These people need to get a clue. If you want to live like that, find an uninhabited spot and live as a hermit. Rural Australia, Siberia and the Arctic are good candidates. You won't last long, but you'll be free according to your own terms. The second you want to live in a group with other people (aka a civilization) there are rules to follow.

Re:current status

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets worse. It's possible to encrypt things in a way that you don't have the key, but someone else does. Heaven help you if you get held in contempt of court because some judge decides that a 3rd party you know having the key is good enough to claim you're resisting their railroading.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

For every form of encryption via key, there is a more powerful computer being built that will crack said key. Remember how uncrackable BluRay was supposed to be?

With quantum computing just around the corner, this will be come even more of a moot point, but we are going to continue to see a tit for tat back and forth of trying to encrypt and crack codes as we have for generations.

Re:Does this mean they are working on mind reading

[Anonymous Coward]

A free society's highest priority is not to service law enforcement.

If American society is still a TRUE Free Society, what you say makes sense.

Only if we can be truly honest to ourselves, that Free Society is no more.

Our mass media manipulate us just as much as Chinese mass media manipulate the people living inside PRC, and our government lies to us just as much as the chicom government lies to their own citizens.

Sssshhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell the criminals about unbreakable one-time-pad ciphers because then crime will become unstoppable. Also, whenever crooks plan something, they should be required to call the cops first and let them listen-in. After all, if they're planning it quietly where the authorities haven't thought to spy or aren't able to, again, then the criminals will be invincible, able to operate as if the poor, dumb cops don't even exist, since the cops won't be able to snoop on their plans. Then there will be human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Lazy Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like encryption wouldn't stand in the way of the FBI 100 years ago. Surely there are other effective ways to conduct investigations other than by spying on electronic communications.

Eureka! This thing prints money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 0: Teach more kids how to code.
Step 1: Outlaw certain kinds of software.
Step 2: Prosecute the "Only outlaws" that have said software.
Step 3: Proclaim, "it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them."
Step 4: Ignore the fact that the FBI provides a playground for criminal Politicians where law enforcement can't reach them for raping children.
Step 5: Keep pretending that FBI is owed any respect after turning a blind eye to the "Boys Town" rapes by gov officials, or after confiscating Anthony' Wiener's laptop full of "insurance" in the form of folders full of child sexual abuse imagery, etc., etc.
Step 6: Pretend that your government is still legitimate, and not inches away from internal collapse.
Step 7: Short your own economy.
Step 8: Piss of some hackers enough to clean the clock...

Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Forces the government to obey that pesky Constitution to some minuscule degree.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Anonymous Coward]

So every sort of encryption ever is easy to prove?
I don't think you're correct.

Math says that you can!

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out

FBI Director attacks US Constitution

[dweller_below]

This is not a technical issue.

For the last 232 years, the supreme law of the land in the United States is the US Constitution. All government powers, whether Executive, Legislative, or Judicial, are subordinate to the limits defined in the Constitution.

Claiming that the US Legal system must have unfettered access to all information is the same as saying that the US Legal system must not be fettered or subject to the US Constitution. That leads me to 3 important questions:

1. Why is NOW a good time to abandon the US Constitution?
2. What authority does Director Wray claim to be superior to the US Constitution?
3. Shouldn't Director Wray be immediately fired for violating his Oath to "..Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States.."?

Re:FBI Director attacks US Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

What authority does Director Wray claim to be superior to the US Constitution?

Russia! Orange man bad!

Re:FBI Director attacks US Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pure willful idiocy. Not Wray. You.

Claiming that the US Legal system must have unfettered access to all information is the same as saying that the US Legal system must not be fettered or subject to the US Constitution.

1. He said no such thing.

2. He said there shouldn't be a realm that's entirely immune to FBI access. Somehow you turned that into "ZOMG unfettered FBI access!"

3. From there you made the ridiculous leap to FBI thinking it's above the constitution.

Are you high or just retarded? Save your reactionary bullshit for the local militia meetings. It's not wanted around here.

Well, except for the mind

[Anonymous Coward]

The allegedly last entirely unfettered space beyond the reach of law enforcement is the mind. Which previously was reached via torture, but we stopped that a few decades back (in theory). Which might be re-reachable via fMRI, or that crazy pulse IR laser thing.

Are we going to go poking in people's minds or not? If we allow no mind access, what's the functional difference to encryption?

Its always been there

[Revek]

The FBI is one of the biggest jokes we have in government today. They have become so lazy about how they investigate crime that I'm sure they are missing whole cargo ships full of drugs, slaves and bootleg media. If they had to pick from those three things to stop, the bootleg media would be their first choice with the slaves a distant third. I wonder if they ever tried to outlaw private meetings and force people to have all conversations through a phone. "Hey we can't have all these people just going to the park and talking where we can't record it"

Re:Its always been there

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey we can't have all these people just going to the park and talking where we can't record it"

Parabolic microphones would like to have a word with you. That's how you can hear what the players and coaches are saying on a televised NFL game, despite the roar of the crowd. Spies and PIs use them all the time. They're cheap and easy to use.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[fafalone]

Indeed it doesn't mentioned felons. That's flat unconstitutional, and our courts engage in blatant intellectual dishonesty to claim those laws are. There should have been an amendment to do that (and IMO, for violent offenders only. Not for tax evaders and every other non-violent minor felony); and there's no support for "shall not be infringed" period meaning "but shall be for a shit load of malum prohibitum bullshit and white collar crimes". But airlines are private companies, and are well within their rights to ban taking guns onto their property; and I'm certain they all would, even absent a government mandate. Not that that's a good thing either, as it's always meant when a plane is hijacked the only people with weapons are the hijackers.
The argument for scaling $20 is better; so I'd be fine with the "intent" of that being $300 today, as the historical inflation calculator told me should be close to accurate; but that it's still $20 because well that's what the constitution says, you've undermined your initial point that stripping the 2nd Amendment from millions of nonviolent people, sometimes without even a criminal conviction, was the "intent" (not that it was).

If encryption is outlawed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...only outlaws will have encryption.

PS Probably most of you are too young to remember a very popular bumper sticker: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

That's from back in the days when cars had bumper stickers with short quotable opinions on them.

Then disband the FBI.

[jcr]

They've been operating with impunity since Hoover was still prancing around in his pinafores.

Their attempt to force MLK to commit suicide should have been quite enough to cause their demise, if we had anything like a functioning justice system in this country.

-jcr

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a long discussion about how the 14th amendment impacts the states constitutions; What it boils down to is the cops are going to take your guns if they think you are dangerous, and it's probably best we support that given the alternative is to not have a police force. There's been a recent break down of trust due to predatory confiscation via asset forfeiture and lots of ex-soliders being hired as cops who think they are in Iraq when they break down a door and they end up shooting people. There's also the resurgence of debtors prisons coming back.

Taking guns away from the clinically insane and from Felons usually starts with the cops, so keep that in mind. I don't think most police wake up in the morning thinking about taking guns away from law abiding people who could serve as backup for them; I think they wake up in the morning with nightmares about someone believing end of the world BS they heard on CNN or Fox and deciding to take out their aggressions of having too much debt on law enforcement. Just understand, those rough spots are not what police are supposed to be, they're becoming an occupation force and no cop wants to do that.

You can own a Apache helicopter, a Tank, or an Aircraft carrier, nobody cares; you own a helicopter, a car, and a boat, big deal. The government has an issue with you owning ammunition not because you might decide to go exact justice on your own terms, but because the storage of explosives is complicated by the fact they all get unstable over time. Nobody wants to find the secret hidey hole with 100ibs of 50 year old dynamite or C4 in the middle of an urban area in a basement; you breath wrong, it goes off. Hell it isn't even illegal to manufacture explosives in most areas. Nukes are the same issue; It isn't necissarily that you can knock out an entire state with one, but the storage of the nuclear material itself is problematic due to the radiation.

The biggest issue I have with the left is they preach pacifism; the world does not work that way. I prefer Americanism; build a big, nasty, angry looking military that's 100x as much as you need to flatten the next guy, supplant that with people owning as many firearms as is reasonable so foreign government shenanigans can only go so far, then be really polite to everyone. Despite appearances and mistakes, that's worked out well for the United States. Not so much for everyone else but then arguably you were going to start a war anyway and drag us into it.

Not more key escrow bs

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys never give up. Jesus.

The cat's already out of the bag.

[devslash0]

You can't ban something that is already common programming knowledge.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Vinegar Joe]

Capone got busted on tax evasion. I'm not sure bringing him up is relevant here.

And the FBI has never gotten over the fact that it was IRS accountants who got him..........

We've had that space for centuries.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the home. You know, private places.

Trust the government

[Anonymous Coward]

I donâ(TM)t understand how completely out of touch these (hopefully) well meaning government leaders and experts appear to be. I wonder if they would endorse the idea of requiring every home owner to put aside a spare key to their home, for use by law enforcement, but only when warranted...? When warranted, and backed by a court order, law enforcement breaks the door down if not voluntarily opened. If the homeowner had an impenetrable door, then what? This is no different then cyber communications. Encryption exists. Donâ(TM)t try to weaken it - break it - for law abiding citizens. The criminals wonâ(TM)t abide by stupid rules, and theyâ(TM)ll take advantage of any cracks they find. Please, government leaders, go talk to your children and get an education on the reality of technology today.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats exactly what they told me right before the cavity search.

talk is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."

Meanwhile, in the real world...

Sure we can

[nospam007]

Look at us, we already have.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[jpaine619]

Jesus F'ing Christ.. You are delusional...

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[jpaine619]

All codes, even low level noforn and secret level stuff, are regularly changed. Some are done daily.. Others weekly. Well, at least in the DoD.

I can't even imagine that the nuclear stuff isn't rotated far more often than NOFORN. I wouldn't be surprised if it's some sorta deal like I've seen done at some Fortune 500 companies where you get a key fob with a password that changes every 30 seconds or so. I'm sure the nuke crap would be far more sophisticated.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[gravewax]

Except of course when the NSA/FBA/FSB or whichever other agency you care to name subverts the manufacturer or software developer with their own staff then they have unfettered access to the keys to monitor everyone. It is without question that any such system will be immediately compromised as all of those agencies put their access to information well above and beyond anyone else legal rights.

But you can make it a crime to use them

[monkeyxpress]

No but what they will do is make it a crime to use robust encryption schemes. If you are caught using one then you go to prison for a long time on the basis of possession (regardless of whether you are actually involved in anything else illegal). Of course, criminals won't care, since they are already doing illegal stuff, but regular folk will basically have to make all their data discoverable to the authorities on demand. Similarly anyone in a position of authority, or with large amounts of wealth will be able to apply for an permit to use stronger encryption. As for data breaches, well, these seem to occur every few months at the moment, but unless it is panama paper stuff, very few seem to care (and even then...).

This is the middle class' biggest weakness - they have enough invested in the 'system' that you can use the threat of loss of participation in the system to make them conform to silly rules. Unfortunately we have only had a middle class for about 60 years now out of thousands of years of recorded civilisation, and I'm not entirely convinced it has the political will to sustain itself in the face of oligarchic leadership that seems intent on bringing back feudalism.

Re: But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had similar social positions in society throughout history. "Middle class" as a term has been used since the 18th century, and its current meaning for over 100, not 60. The artisans, merchants and professionals of ancient Rome were "middle class." Society didn't spring into being after the second world war, retard.

Re:But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly anyone in a position of authority, or with large amounts of wealth will be able to apply for an permit to use stronger encryption.

Ah, of course the government would allow itself strong crypto. Those with wealth? Ah, so the banks won't fail from having their crypto cracked either?

It is all crazy. Police don't need perfect insight into any and all communication - that is simply not the primary way of getting information. Many a crime were solved because 'someone talked'. Not on a phone, but directly to a cop. Ratting out a boss they didn't like, and all that. Then the rest happens through ordinary policework.

With strong crypto, you may be unable to tap the mafia boss phone / internet transactions. But cops can still plant good old fashioned bugs in his house, that hear his conversations directly. And of course they can bug his computer - intercepting his mail before the encryption is done.

Re:But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

Amendment IV

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.

If there aren't any yet, we desperately need some court decisions that say whatever data a person encrypts is part of their "effects" in the Fourth Amendment sense. That should quash any attempt to outlaw the mere use of strong encryption.

Amendment V

No person [...] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself [...]

Whether compelling a person to reveal an encryption key is tantamount to being a witness against themself is a more interesting question.

Re:But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

I would consider computer data files to be "papers" for the purposes of the 4th Amendment, but even so, encrypted files are no different than a letter written in a cipher in 1790. The founders knew well about encryption.

Compelling someone to reveal an encryption key is compelling testimony, IMHO. It is information that only you have, and the only way to retrieve it is for you to write it down or speak it.

What if your data files were all written in Navajo? Could the court compel you to translate them so they could be examined? Same situation as encrypted files.

Re:But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe encryption in the US during the 80's and 90's was under a very tight umbrella, PGP was even considered munitions and was illegal to transport outside of the country along with any encryption standard greater then 40bits (easily crackable by NSA back then by design flaws, even brute forcing would not have taken them long)

Re:But you can make it a crime to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice point about the weak USA middle class. They could not defend their jobs against biz-Nazi aquisitors/ IP exporters or Demo-slut vote-herding labor importers. Why should the newer, smaller MIDs be able to defend their personal/financial privacy against Gub'mnt gestapo ? If every mid-class male butchered-out one (1) of the above political/financial enemies the problem would solve automagically. Sea-of-blood and new republic. But, BOSCO ain't got the guts to do it ... not like Sam Adams, Tom Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Nope!

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[jpaine619]

Hate to break it to ya pal, but you can't claim to be a sword defender of the Constitution if you're going to ignore it or cherry pick. You seem to be the exact opposite of a defender of the document.

The words "oversight, screening, and training" appear exactly zero times in the 2nd amendment.

How much more clear does it need to be?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

shall not be infringed. I don't seen any qualifications for oversight, screening, and training. In fact, I'd happily argue that the "oversight" bit was 180 deg out from what the framers intended. There is no way in hell they would have been fine with the government knowing exactly how many, and what type of, guns you owned and where they were at any given time.

The whole point of the 2nd amendment was as a bulwark, or safety, against a government gone tyrannical. Jefferson mentions tyranny several times in his writings. The man was absolutely terrified that our own government would immediately begin heading down the wrong path and he, and the other framers, wanted the people to be armed to the teeth. He was hardly wrong either.. Didn't take very long for the government to pass the alien and sedition acts, which were so blatantly unconstitutional that it was horrifying. 10 years... That's how long it took before the government, that had just been formed, and before the ink was dry on the 1st amendment, tried to make it a crime to be critical of the government. Ten fucking years.....

I'd prefer that same government have a minimal, as possible, role in firearm oversight. I'd also prefer it if they have horribly inaccurate intelligence regarding who owns what and where it is. Because fuck them. They don't have a right to know. Do they have a want? Sure.. Do they have a need? Maybe.. But them's ain't rights... I want pussy.. I need pussy... Don't mean I have a right to any... Fuck them

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[jpaine619]

The popular vote is meaningless. It's as valid as fairy dust. It has zero legal force.. It's side data if anything. The College is mentioned in the Constitution, the popular vote is not. So what's your point?

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Undead Waffle]

The first thing I thought of when I saw this post was Howard Payne and Deviant Ollam's talk "This key is your key, this key is my key". If you want to see how godawful most companies (and the government) are at security, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or the incompetence of how the TSA master keys were leaked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Yeah, let's not make any master keys please.

I agree

[Opportunist]

We can't have people who are exempt from law and out of reach, no matter what kind of damage they do to society. I welcome the push to finally do something about corporations flaunting their disregard for laws.

That's what you mean, right?

Encryption is Math

[geggam]

... and math isnt illegal.

Good luck stopping it when the entire world runs on computers.

Re:Encryption is Math

[Anne Thwacks]

... and math isnt illegal.

Maybe not yet, but ...

Can't be done

[MichaelSmith]

Crypto is just mathematics. You can't unlearn maths. For sure, popular apps with strong crypto can be banned or whatever but people can have privacy if they want it.

The only reasonable solution

[neurosine]

If government authorities insist that we have no private data....they must do the same. It's like freedom of speech: You can only have it in a society if you allow others the same liberty...otherwise it doesn't work. If this body insists that all private information should be freely available...they must also comply. If they don't...they must state the reasons. As they are making these statements they will be providing all of the obvious arguments supporting the importance of privacy. Catch-22 bitch.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

the right is to keep and bear arms, it does say anything about "engage in unfettered trade of arms"

Re: Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like dictatorial thinking to me. Zero votes but won? Well, the popular vote is meaningless.

"Unfettered"... a ghastly thought

[Archtech]

"It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide..."

Funny how often officials and policemen unintentionally reveal their inner thoughts when speaking in public.

Can't have... "unfettered"...

Fetters, of course, are chains. Apparently this Gestapo officer believes that all citizens belong in chains - at all times. Even their thoughts, ideas and words must be in chains.

Re:"Unfettered"... a ghastly thought

[gweihir]

Well spotted. And that is exactly what is going on here: We cannot have true freedoms for citizens, everybody must fear to be observed and controlled all the time.

Re:"Unfettered"... a ghastly thought

[The Snazster]

Heh, you nailed it. I hadn't yet singled out that word when I suggested he wants to put chains and leg restraints on everyone at birth. I just don't like his tone, his attitude, his viewpoint, and think he should retire as he has clearly stepped over the edge when he is challenging our freedoms, rather than defending them.

It's like the head of the AMA seriously suggesting we should start something like The Purge every year in order to thin the human herd (for it's own good, of course). I would like to think he would soon find himself locked out of his own office and with a restraining order against going anywhere near the place.

Google search Spyfix6

[Anonymous Coward]

Google search Spyfix6
They offer premium smartphone hacking services

Re:Does this mean they are working on mind reading

[TimothyHollins]

But unfortunately, the key to a free society is law. The most important freedom (to me) is to not get raped/murdered/stolen.

It's not an easy balancing act.

Recently legislated in Australia (probs for US..)

[Craggles]

Here's a great satirical "Honest Govt ad" about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I declare NATIONAL EMERGENCY!

[Anonymous Coward]

I declare NATIONAL EMERGENCY!

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a non-american, i always find it funny how americans seems to think that laws can keep them safe from legislators.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Anonymous Coward]

I think AC may be suggesting if they can't bypass your encryption they'll just throw you in jail for the rest of your life simply for having encryption that they can't bypass, given the anti-encryption laws described in the scenario. Of course, that can be defeated with "plausible deniability" encryption methods, as demonstrated by TrueCrypt, with at least 2 decoy streams, one containing actual sensitive files that you don't mind law enforcement seeing.

Encryption already has limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Back doors break encryption. Not just for the bad guys, but for everyone. Back doors actually help the bad guys spy on everyone else.

Encryption already has limits. Some of the recent arrests of people in Trump's circle show that the Feds obtained information sent using encrypted means, like WhatsApp. How did the Feds obtain this information? Not by trying to decrypt it, but rather a much easier method: using legal search warrants to obtain suspects' devices, then getting into those devices (possibly with cooperation agreements) to access the data from an endpoint. Hence, anyone who uses WhatsApp and thinks it is absolutely impenetrable, hasn't considered the possibility that the person on the other end may be providing the data sent and received over WhatsApp to law enforcement.

Unfettered Space Beyond Reach of Law Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

> We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement'

Here's a very simple test of the question: should people be allowed to go for a walk in the wood together and have a private chat, ie in an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement', without the government demanding the right to a transcript/recording of the conversation?

And if people should be allowed it, then: how does the electronic nature of a conversation alter the rights or wrongs here?

It sure alters the *ease* with which a transcript/recording could be made, but not the conclusion / moral judgement. So I've still heard people say that "as long as it doesn't seem to inconvenience people, then the government should be allowed..." - to which: "if the government mandates that all phones must include a conversation detector chip that records and transmits all your conversations, everything you say all day - and it's frictionless, causes no inconvenience - you ok with that?"

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

right to keep and bear arms is in fact an unalienable right, according to the constitution

False - it'd a legal right, according to the constitution, not an inalienable one.

It doesn't say 'unless the person is an idiot' or 'if I deem they are unsuitable for XYZ reasons'.

It also says "the people" and not "a person", so nitpicking doesn't advance your position. The wording of the amendment is satisfied even if you personally aren't permitted to have firearms. In fact, the wording that you insist on being pedantically

That definitely clears up my misconceptions of 'the left', thank you..

The fact that you are replying to an example of "the left" who owns guns, is in favour of gun ownership and supports the second amendment as written, the fact the left as a whole is overall favourable to the second amendment and that you still try to insist that anti-realtity is the case suggests that GP has failed to clear any of your misconceptions.

FISA is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI just had a year long FISA warrant, approved by a judge 4 times, on Carter Page.
ALL evidence in FISA application was false, and known to be false at the time by FBI/DOJ.
No consequences for FBI/DOJ.
McCabe was referred for criminal prosecution by the FBI's own IG nearly a year ago. No charges to date.
8 people involved in signing FISA and 3 renewals, none were charged for lying on signing FISA.

98% of FISA warrants are approved, kept secret so public never gets to see them.

So what was that about hard to get?

These people are DUMB!

[gweihir]

There is now a large and well documented body of scientifically and technologically sound evidence why this is a very bad idea. It is as if people like this one are unable to read and think. This is on the level of a 5 year old that insist on getting something he cannot have and then throwing a tantrum.

well...

[Tom]

He's right, except for a small detail: That's not how the world works.

In the same sense that it would be great if we could resurrect murder victims, or question them about who killed them. True, it would really be good. It's just not how the world works.

Encryption either is strong, or it is useless. There's no middle ground. If law enforcement has a way in, so has everyone else. It's in the nature of the thing.

Delusional thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how fascism works, through absolutes.
Control fanatics will always ruin the show and fail in the end.
So go ahead and institute laws that will criminalize people that just want to be left alone to their privacy.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't say "unless they are a felon" or "when they get on a plane" either but there you go.

The constitution say you can keep and bear arms - it doesn't state that you can bring them along everywhere. No guns on planes is thus not unconstitutional - for you can keep your weapons somewhere else. Similar for prisons.

There is also some case law on prisons - those who wrote that constitution also had some prisons, check if weapons were allowed inside. I don't think so.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Musical_Joe]

I'm sure the nuke crap would be far more sophisticated.

You sure about that?

The Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000

FBI should have limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Encryption is one of them.

Yes We Can

[Anonymous Coward]

It it's always reachable beyond law enforcement then it's always reachable by someone other than the owner and that makes it open to attack.

Politically Incorrect Opinion incoming:

[Anonymous Coward]

He's 100% right.

Only people who want private encryption are likely to be criminals and terrorists. How many radical islamic terrorists have killed people this year alone in the USA were helped by encryption? If we want to protect our nation from threats inside or out we need this. God Bless America and God Bless Chris Wray for bringing up this important issue and I hope our senate and president are up to the task of fighting the other side to protect this nation.

nor and FBI beyond the reach of the elected people

[Anonymous Coward]

We cannot have an FBI that acts in the interests of large corporations(agents moonlighting, private intelligence), spews fear and misinformation, harasses and runs intelligence operations against peaceful protestors, and works alongside terrorist moralist busybodies like the DEA.

So even if an encryption backdoor was feasible, which it is not, I still do not trust today's law enforcement not to horribly abuse it. There is no other reason for this than untargeted mass surveillance made easy with no effort.

Except a backdoor for the feds is a backdoor for everyone. Mathematically weakening the crypto, means the crypto is just weaker. Even if another nation state, the type that might produce high quality mathematicians like Russia or China that might break such code, its highly likely that either through a leak or espionage that this code will be leaked and it would be a decade or so before most major nation states have the backdoor through either espionage or trade of secrets. At best, that is. At worst it gets sold and re-sold for cheaper values on the darknet, or other venues until it winds up on a git repo and subject of DEFcon talk.

can and should.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't. But we certainly have communication and personal exchange beyond law enforcement.

It's a world of individuals given individual choice and freedom of thought. That's the risk you run, that their thoughts arnt in line with the majority.

That's the price of freedom.

Most in society will follow the rules, if not then perhaps the rules are wrong. But private conversation, private meeting and exchange are currently not something freely available to the government, why the hell would you change that when talking abiut electronic versions of these things?

It's been a heyday for law enforcement when it comes to electronic communications, that should draw to an end. Their power has been far too long and has needed to be reined in for years. Encryption is that which can bring balance to the force.

Encryption helps more than it hurts. Stay free.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[FictionPimp]

I'd remind you that the constitution has provisions to allow it to be revised. So perhaps we shouldn't look at it as immutable.

Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

You absolutely can!

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't say 'unless the person is an idiot' or 'if I deem they are unsuitable for XYZ reasons'.

But it does say that stuff about "(a) well regulated militia", which you seem to just totally ignore.

FBI & Police should/must have access!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI & police have a legal right to do searches of physical possessions @ "times", then why not they cannot have the same right for computer data possessions???

Are physical searches useful to catch criminals (to serve & protect general public), but computer data searches are not???

IMHO, there should/must be a law that makes law enforcement able to access all encrypted data!!!

(& if ANTI-GOVERNMENT (aka) ANARCHISTS (who are, IMHO, really/actually trying to protect all criminals against "EVIL GOVERNMENT") continue to stop such a law from happening, then maybe the question need to be resolved as a national referendum question, @ the next national elections!?)

Re:FBI & Police should/must have access!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI & police have a legal right to do searches of physical possessions @ "times", then why not they cannot have the same right for computer data possessions???

Are physical searches useful to catch criminals (to serve & protect general public), but computer data searches are not???

IMHO, there should/must be a law that makes law enforcement able to access all encrypted data!!!

The right to search does not also confer the right to be successful in that search.

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

> But it does say that stuff about "(a) well regulated militia", which you seem to just totally ignore.

That's a justification for protecting the right; the right is yours independently of it. I can't come up with any interpretation of "right of the people to keep and bear arms" where "people" means anything other than individual private citizens.

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys never do learn. You always think you are the smartest guys in the room and then you say something stupid-as-fuck. The deplorables comment hurt Hillary as much as anything else. Anyone in flyover country heard loud and clear just how much they could expect her to represent them. You guys prove over and over that you learned nothing.

Re: Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

So a bunch of idiots in flyover country got duped into thinking he would help them get their jerbz back.

What a joke.

Re:Wow!

[Vitriol Angst]

How do you know she was talking about you?

In fact, Hillary talked more about retraining and finding people jobs than Trump did. But people don't know that because the number 1 media outlet is Fox News and Sinclair and CNN only sounds liberal on social issues -- not on economics so they weren't bending over to add any factual value and just covered the horse race.

So, it isn't the Dems NOT understanding and addressing the "flyover" states -- it's that nobody has their ear but the Oligarchy. Not saying that Hillary isn't also a spokeman for the lobbyists -- she just isn't as corrupt as Trump. But again, that probably sounds ridiculous to anyone watching Fox News.

The problem is propaganda is real, and it really works. Vote for a progressive -- they are all on this issue.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know she was talking about you?

In fact, Hillary talked more about retraining and finding people jobs than Trump did. But people don't know that because the number 1 media outlet is Fox News and Sinclair and CNN only sounds liberal on social issues -- not on economics so they weren't bending over to add any factual value and just covered the horse race.

So, it isn't the Dems NOT understanding and addressing the "flyover" states -- it's that nobody has their ear but the Oligarchy. Not saying that Hillary isn't also a spokeman for the lobbyists -- she just isn't as corrupt as Trump. But again, that probably sounds ridiculous to anyone watching Fox News.

The problem is propaganda is real, and it really works. Vote for a progressive -- they are all on this issue.

I see the insults a hundred times each week here on Slashdot and Ars Technia. It's no secret that the Democrats and the left in general have zero consideration for any who do not follow their urban, progressive approach to politics. You are either a adherent of their way or you are a homophobic, racist Nazi. "Retraining and finding people jobs" might have sounded good if Hillary hadn't made her "deplorables" decree.

You want to see the heart of progressive politics? Look at Omar and her anti-semitic statements. The house is even working to censure her. If that was a GOP representative, the media would be demanding a head on a platter. Look at the darling of the left, AOC. She ran off 25,000 jobs and bragged about it. The vast majority of her constituency wanted Amazon but the progressives made it an unfriendly environment for them. Look at hypocrite Dianne Feinstein who holds a CCW but tries at every turn to remove rights for everyone else. Look at the elite of the liberal left's treatment of the Covington students, a bunch of kids. It was beyond shameful. Remember when the progressives were championing Michael Avenatti as the guy to take down Trump? He was on CNN enough to be a full time employee. He was going to trounce Trump in the 2020 election with his Stormy Daniels lawsuit in his pocket. Only now, even progressives realize he's a total lying scumbag. Why has Virginia's Democratic Governor and Lt. Governor still not stepped down? The progressives were ready to burn Kavanaugh at the stake, but Justin Fairfax gets a pass?

It's very hard to claim the high road over those horrible racist GOP Nazis when progressives let shit like this go unchallenged.

Re: Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fly over states learned that not only does the left not care about them, but they look down their noses at them.

Keep calling us all the horrible names you can think of, and we'll continue to vote for the other guy.

Re: Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the popular vote is meaningless. I'm glad that you understand that, but I'm upset to see that you have no idea how meaningful that is.

I know the American education system is suffering, but holy shit, things are much worse than I thought. Aren't your schools supposed to explain these things to you before you become voting age? How is it that I know more about your election system and I'm not even a citizen of your country?

Election by popular vote is mob rule.

Electoral voting ensures *fairness* for everyone's vote. A popular vote is basically letting New York and California decide who becomes President while saying "fuck you" to everyone in flyover country.

We have a system like that up here in Canada, where Ontario and Quebec essentially vote for the Prime Minister of the entire fucking country, thanks to our broken "First Past the Post" system and how time zones are used to exploit the hell out of it.

Our current PM promised electoral reform as part of his campaign, then backed out of it once he was elected. The Electoral College isn't the best system, but it's a hell of a lot better than what your Northern neighbours have by comparison.

In short, we envy the system you take for granted.

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the rubber stamp FISA court, five eyes and information sharing, Snowden consiparcy revalations, Assange leaks, no, The United States bureaucrats and politicians have broken their trust to the people of this nation permanently.

Relationships are compromise

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you? Don't even try to pretend your old lady doesn't run the show at your place. That's a defacto government if I've ever seen one.

That's one reason why I'm no longer married. I also dumped two girlfriends that got too bossy. When they went from requesting things to issuing demands I tapped out. I'd been in that boat before. I'm more than happy to do whatever I can for my partner, but I don't take orders just because we're a couple.

and when encryption is outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Only criminals with have encryption. The dark state is getting out of control.

XSS warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I be worried that this article in particular spawned a cross-site scripting warning in NoScript?

Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

And until 2008 it wasn't considered an individual right.

The founding fathers didn't care about YOUR right to own a gun, they cared about the country's ability to have a militia.

pimps vs prostitutes: no slippers for you

[epine]

They have their own goals, and they simply do not feel safe from us.

The worst part of this tripe is the underlying dichotomy that having your own goals is inimical to answering to any other power.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the right hates evolution, on the whole, more than the left.

The message from evolution is this: not only does each individual organism have its own goals (a biological theorem on exact par with the non-existence of perpetual motion machines), but it's highly instructive to granularize this theorem all the way down to individual genes.

Fitness, in evolutionary biology, means the ability to thrive in your environment. And what is your environment? For a gene, it's all the other genes coexisting in the same organism, all the genes coexisting in related organisms, all the genes coexisting in supportive ecology, and a lot more. For an individual, it's your natural environment and your social environment.

The social environment is not to be messed with: this is why we have an evolutionary fascination with Survivor-style dramas, in which the ultimate punishment is being voted off the island (hot damn, we love us some punishment).

People on the right sometimes spurn social parasites by name (when it's not to risky to draw direct attention to the importance of the social environment), but they also encode this pervasive, throbbing fear in the klaxonic call to arms "free rider", in which formulation the importance of the social environment is indirect and unstated, but is not one tiny whit lessened in conception.

Socialism is a slippery slope with no feasible exit point. Even in the most extreme libertarian utopia, the social environment remains immensely powerful (and subject to almost all of the same rules of ecological self-organization). What you gain is making the villain more diffuse. Uncle Sam has left the building (but his fingers are still in your pockets, though you now label this "voluntary" association through contract). Trust me, those voluntary associations through contract will largely amount to offers you couldn't refuse. (The powerful shall remain powerful, and resistance shall remain a risky pain in the ass.) And it will be harder than ever to complain about this, because Uncle Sam has left the building, and the same old forces of extraction are now amorphous and spread thin. Under radical libertarianism, prostitution will no longer be illegal—the only question that remains is from what age of consent, if any—because those are conceptually individual transactions. But what about the pimps? The prostitutes shall surely demand that they need their pimps, because life is pretty bad when the mean don't police the mean (these being people most highly invested in the idea that they answer to no social construct but main force itself). Yada yada, libertarian ubiquity all around, and the pimps shall rule the earth.

Government is largely the idea that is we put all the pimps into a single giant bucket in the center of town, and at least forced them to answer to the electorate—some of the time—we could at least reduce this nasty, intrinsic aspect of the social order to a dull roar.

Government at scale is called the state, and the state retains the instruments of main force (it wouldn't be a giant bucket of pimps, otherwise). These instruments mainly being the police, the army, and the black swarm of TLAs.

Of course the TLAs answer to society (via the executive branch). Otherwise, we'd have extreme libertarianism by breakfast tomorrow. The only reason to have the government at all is to keep them minimally answerable to something.

It's the most interesting part of the whole equation: we put the pimps into a barrel in the center of town to better keep an eye on their abuses of power, but then they convinced us that their essential function of keeping us "safe" (we're all cowering prostitutes, deep down) is t

Stupid People Get You This

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

Encryption should have limits.

It does have limits. The physical world cannot be encrypted. Create a more serious warrant process than the rubber-stamp one we have for encryption keys and require people to decrypt if you get the warrant. If they don't, make that shift the burden of proof so it's easier to show they are guilty of a major crime. Maybe even a presumption of evidence corroborating their guilt if they refuse to hand over decryption keys and there is a warrant against them based on probable cause.

Congratulations, you can still arrest and prosecute people and you also don't break the internet doing it.

This is a red herring

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of talks like this is to try to convince us that they don't already have back door access to everything, which is utter bullshit.

one slight correction

[Anonymous Coward]

The opposite of "law enforcement" is not "crooks", its "people" or "human beings".

Using Enemys flawed terminology to make sense of the world is not a good thing...

Blind to everything but his own interest

[The Snazster]

Why not just put permanent handcuffs and leg restraints on everyone as they are born? Oh, and install an internal tracker as well, of course.

Logically, that would make it even harder for people to do bad things and evade law enforcement.

Seriously, this man has tunnel vision. It's past time for him to retire.

Privacy Piracy

[thunderclees]

The real problem is that LEOs have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted with data collection. Its like trusting the banks to regulate themselves. Mission creep takes hold and what was once restricted now is shared, especially with privatization. Right now various LEOs are using contractors to handle data collection and processing to avoid restrictions that may have guaranteed that the data was handled correctly and only used for a specific, mandated purpose.

New Face, Same Tired Old Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems we've heard this argument before. And debunked it. In past administrations. With other FBI directors. Is there some hiring requirement for FBI directors that they buy in to this bogus idea?

And?

[Sloppy]

Let's go a little crazy, with a goofy thought experiment. Suppose this weren't America, and as a society we generally agreed that we don't care at all about civil rights. Suppose we also thought that people who want to secure their computer storage and communication from criminals, snoops, nosy neighbors and insurance companies were being drama queens. Your own government is the only adversary that people ever want to protect their stuff from (criminals and foreign powers aren't real-life threats), and protecting yourself from your government is .. oh, let's just say that alone is highly suggestive of criminal intent. Just pretend you agree with Wray. No, please, do it.

But I need you to pretend one more thing. Pretend it's still 2019 in this alternative universe, so the genie is already out of the bottle, just like it is in real life.

What would you do about it? What can you?

I think the only reasonable answer is: Jack Shit.

The time for this discussion was in the 1940s, at the very latest. And for whatever reason, even after the authoritarian leadership needed during that most colossal of fuckups in all human history (WW2), America did still value civil rights "enough" (even as we told blacks to get to the back of the bus), so for whatever reason, Wray's opinions became irrelevant, way back then. Wray was born 70 years too late for his silly religion to not be mocked. He might as well be bitching about horseless carriages.

And that's the case even if you agree with him.

No unfettered spaces, like your memories!

[DRJlaw]

It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide...

Like in the memories within their own minds. After all, they both involve "memory!"

Just wait (probably quite a long time, if ever) for technology to be developed that can read memories, and watch the police state roll out the proverbial battering ram.

Against F'ed Trade

[Anonymous Coward]

His actual position is that the US will deal fairly with any other country that will offer a fair deal. Progressives are okay with shitty trade deals because Hillary, Nancy and Diane have all made loads of money from bad trade deals and progressives are lock stepped together like a human centipede.

Willing to commit acts of war??

[Tyrannosaur]

"We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."

wtf?? You are willing to hack into whatever you want no matter what some foreign government has to say about it? That's basically a declaration of war.

You can thank out politics for that

[rsilvergun]

it's the same reason Nancy Pelosi is the House Speaker even though she's got a 14% approval rating. The alternatives were worse.

That said, if we'd stop electing these yahoos we could stop these kind of "lesser of two evils" choices in the first place.

Re:You can thank out politics for that

[hduff]

That said, if we'd stop electing these yahoos we could stop these kind of "lesser of two evils" choices in the first place.

Decent, smart people are not big enough assholes to want to participate in the electoral and government leadership process because it is so horribly broken.

Re:You can thank out politics for that

[LynnwoodRooster]

Who was the alternative? Did President Trump nominate two candidates simultaneously?

Get leaded

[Anonymous Coward]

Any FBI director is a default traitor to the U.S. and should be executed in a public forum.
Any member of the FBI which is talking is lying.

History proves both of these facts to be irrefutable.

Wake up, and lets take down the Real Criminals.

Re: And if we give you the keys everyone will hav

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument you presented has been debunked on slashdot since forever.

Generalizations are exactly that: Generalizations.

[Futurepower(R)]

I'm over 70. I started programming Fortran on the CDC 6600.

A generalization is meant to express a common case. There can be many exceptions.

Re:Does this mean they are working on mind reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Devil's advocate - which society has a very low priority for law enforcement and how's it going?

Sure You Can

[hduff]

We can't compromise privacy to make it easier to catch criminals. Police have caught the bad guys doing old-fashioned police and detective work for years and years. Criminals are, fortunately, capable of stupid mistakes that will expose them. All the emotional sob stories law enforcement trots out to support their belief that taking away our privacy and freedom is a good thing are a sign of the desperation they feel and the lack of confidence in established police procedures they experience.

Try convincing either side to vote 3rd party.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite frankly I see Sanders as the biggest traitor among all these people. Aligning with the Democrats burned him with the conservatives, and the moderates/influence friendly population broke rank when he chose to promote Clinton over Trump, rather than recusing himself and saying 'Vote for who you believe is best for America, I know who I would vote for, but you should make that choice yourself.'

He might not have won as a result, but if he'd done that and come back on the Independent ticket this coming election he might have a chance to win. As a doddering old democratic candidate he's just another part of the establishment and problem, instead of a true man of the people (ha, I doubt he ever really was.)

Hell, didn't stein and the green party offer him their seat if he took her as his VP? IF he'd done that he might have had a chance even if his platform was smaller, and definitely provided enough percentage points for the Greens to be a serious threat in this coming election. Sadly they remained sidelined as the even lefter kooks from the Democrats.

Anyone who supported either Trump or Clinton is...

[Anonymous Coward]

a traitor to the fundamental principles of this formerly adequate nation (it was NEVER as glorious as our propaganda proposed, and it's been shitting in world politics since the 1800s, in ways that came back to harm us decades later.)

By choosing to support Trump or Clinton 'because I can't let the other guy win', people chose immediate security over liberty and their own long term security. By sticking with the establishment choices, the people have consistently made clear they are easy to manipulate and all that is needed is two hated characters, one hated slightly less than the other to push whatever agenda they want.

Quite frankly, given both Clinton and Trumps ties to Russian business, and Wet Willy and Dickin Donald's little forays to Jeffery Epstein's mile high club and mansion, anyone supporting either is just as bad as those southern folk who were supporting that 'upright christian republican' who was perving on the underage girls. Or people who are still supporting the Catholic Church after all these sex abuse *CONVICTIONS* not just scandals.

Humanity is truly at a rotten point in its history.

As far as guns go: Fuck guns. The NRA should have supported encryption as a munition and claimed it was protected under the 2nd amendment. And while we're at it, drones, missiles, icbms, cannons, and explosives should all be legal too, because anything short of them has no chance of detering our government, or foreign governments in the case of either encroaching authoritarianism or World War 3.

Re:FBI Director Christopher Ray should...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody is off his meds again.

Re:FBI Director Christopher Ray should...

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What does impotent rage and simpering grievance look like?
A: That guy's comment history

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are the codes at the silos, however there is a second set of codes to actually authorise the message to go out to those silos to initiate the launch

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[Anonymous Coward]

the AACS used in Bluray has remained uncracked. What happened with Blurays is the keys were leaked. Quantum computing is also not just around the corner.

Re: You can't legislate software out of existence

[Anonymous Coward]

illegal encryption would be incredibly hard to prove. unless you know it is a particular encrypted piece of information it is no different to random noise.

Re: Let me translate this for willfull morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Electoral voting ensures *fairness* for everyone's vote.

It's bullshit. It should be one person = one vote. Why should your vote weigh more or less than mine just because of where you choose to live? The president's policies affect us both equally.

This is an incredibly idiotic statement

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like saying "We can't have wine that has alcohol". You can work on it all you want, but it's easy for people to make their own wine with alcohol and it's (relatively) easy for people to create an encryption tool with no back doors for law enforcement.

Re:FBI Director Christopher Ray should...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was busy giving the tool to your Mom. She said she never had such a satisfying fuck. She said that every time you try to fuck her, your tiny widdle pee-pee won't penetrate her because it lacks the necessary girth, length, and rigidity. She said you end up rubbing one out on a Kleenex and then swallowing said tissue. Nasty!

Also, when I was finished satisfying your Mom, I pounded your sister until she screamed in exhilaration! She said you routinely try to incestuously rape her, but, that she refuses you and you go in the corner and cry while beating yourself off with padded tweezers! Stop trying to rape your sister! Also, stop raping and molesting children you sick fuck!

You're dismissed!

— the pathetic living punchline that is impersonating gerald butler

Re:And if we give you the keys everyone will have

[jpaine619]

Yeah, but he's right.. The airmen in the silos could have launched the missiles all by themselves any time they wanted. The only codes required to physically launch the missiles were 8 zeros. To be fair, however, this system was rectified nearly 30 years ago.

Also, these silos were not connected to the internet. They were/are part of the DSN (Defense Service Network). My experience with them ends 20 years ago, so I haven't the slightest clue how they're operating now. But, as the cold war is over, I suspect that the need to have missiles that can be launched independently has long since passed.

Re:FBI Director Christopher Ray should...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry that your retarded uncle molested you while you were watching Children's Television Workshop and Mister Rogers. That must've been traumatic. But, please, don't take it out on other children. Get help now.

— the pathetic living punchline that is impersonating gerald butler