FBI Director: Without Compromise on Encryption, Legislation May Be the 'Remedy' (cyberscoop.com) 393
An anonymous reader shares a report: FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday that unless the U.S. government and private industry are able to come to a compromise on the issue of default encryption on consumer devices, legislation may be how the debate is ultimately decided. "I think there should be [room for compromise]," Wray said Wednesday night at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado. "I don't want to characterize private conversations we're having with people in the industry. We're not there yet for sure. And if we can't get there, there may be other remedies, like legislation, that would have to come to bear." Wray described the issue of "Going Dark" because of encryption as a "significant" and "growing" problem for federal, state and local law enforcement as well as foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He claims strong encryption on mobile phones keeps law enforcement from gaining access to key evidence as it relates to active criminal investigations. "People are less safe as a result of it," he said.
"People are less" (Score:5, Insightful)
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The little bitch is saying "do what we want or we'll make a law forcing you to do what we want".
Christopher Wray is a weak-ass piece of shit who is trying to make a power grab. Someone ought to beat the shit out of that wimp.
Re:"People are less" (Score:5, Insightful)
People are less safe because we wear non-transparent clothes. We are less safe because are houses aren't made of glass.
Re:"People are less" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but less safe than WHAT?
Sure, some people might have their safety compromised by encryption stopping law enforcement.
But how many people's safety is going to be endangered by mandating lack of encryption or that encryption violate MATH and back doors be put in "just for the good guys"? Because those back doors WILL be found and WILL be used! And not just by the "good guys". If there IS any such thing.
There is NO such thing as perfect safety. And anyone selling you that is blowing smoke up your ass. With a leaf blower.
Given the choice between freedom and safety, I'll take freedom. Thanks.
Re:"People are less" (Score:4, Insightful)
When the government fear the people, there is democracy... the other way around, there is tyranny.
20 years ago there where no phones which contained "mother-loads of evidence". Yet criminals were caught.
"Finding" this self-incriminating evidence should be banned altogether, just as you can use the 5th amendment. Anything you say to law enforcement _will_ be used against you, anything in your favor is just "hearsay" and non-admissible. Governments have no intrinsic right to know everything about you.
There are plenty of crooked politicians and corporations to keep law enforcement busy for years. They are not interested in justice, just statistics and fat pensions.
Re:"People are less" (Score:4, Interesting)
"People are less safe as a result of it," he said.
It's true. People are less safe in a free and open society.
~Safety~
~Liberty~.
Choose one.
They promise free schooling, free healthcare, free food, free housing, and work. You can get that anywhere. We call it a "prison".
What only a free and open society can provide is the opportunity to pursue whatever dream you have to the best of your ability, and leave success or failure up to you and the choices you make.
Not to mention (referring to Weay's comments) the simple fact that if governments can crack/access it, so can criminals. After all, "government" and "criminal" are synonymous in all practical sense.
Strat
Re:"People are less" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stupid. Even if legislation came to bear, there is still open source, free and openly available encryption. The cat is out of the bag. Further more, there are phones moving across political boundaries. Are you going to mandate foreigners disable encryption when they enter the country?
Encryption is ALWAYS available. (Score:5, Insightful)
"... there is still open source, free and openly available encryption."
"... there are phones moving across political boundaries."
Many people in government and in management of private companies have NO knowledge of technical issues. That doesn't prevent them from having what they consider to be a strong and sensible opinion. They don't recognize they are ignorant.
ALSO: Back doors are not an answer. They will ALWAYS eventually be compromised.
Re:"People are less" (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you considered the impact on your economy? Why, tell me, should I store my data in your insecure country? Why should I do business in your country when I have to pretty much assume that anyone can intercept my communication? Furthermore, how easy do you intentionally make it for foreign competitors to spy on sensitive data and communication of your companies?
And that's just the tip of the ice berg.
You are crippling your economy in this time and age if you disallow encryption. Communication via the internet cannot be beat in terms of speed and price. Yes, it is possible to establish mostly secure communication without opening your communication to eavesdropping, but the cost alone would ruin your chance to be competitive internationally.
If you think the Chinese are stealing your trade secrets now already that you CAN encrypt, you ain't seen nothing yet.
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how many times does this have to be debunked? (Score:2, Insightful)
This guy sounds like one of those out of touch eurotrash politicians. STFU and be better at your job asshat.
Re:how many times does this have to be debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
He might just be admitting that if they can't convince the companies to do what they want, Congress will have to pass a law ordering them to stop trying, which will totally solve the problem.
He's not in Congress, he's in the Executive Branch, so there is no reason to think that he thinks he'd be choosing which type of legislation is needed to fix the problem. And anyways, according to the Constitution there might be only one direction that Congress can even move to settle it! They're certainly not going to pass a law telling us what content can be produced on a press.
So either way..... we don't have privacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
And we wonder why the United States Government won't pass a law protecting our personal data.
Re:So either way..... we don't have privacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So either way..... we don't have privacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be that they just want a law that they can use to charge people even if they have no real evidence of any other crimes, like the "Lying to the FBI" laws.
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Re:So either way..... we don't have privacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The level of encryption US brands had the staff to work on is not of good quality.
So the FBI can get into it all as it always did.
The legal side is the real question for the FBI.
Collect it all and then never tell lawyers, press, other police, experts?
That fully protects FBI crypto methods from human rights lawyers, political activist media, cults, faith groups, police who give information to criminals, gov/mil staff with a split loyalty to the USA.
The down side is the risk then needed to create another way to start an investigation. To get a plea bargain, create an informant.
The other way is to go full NSA and DEA. Let the USA know everyone is getting collected on domestically and with public/private partnerships.
Two very different methods that have the US gov totally in all communications.
One will see a person confronted with their cell phone use.
Another method will see full parallel construction, the use of informants to hide the collect it all US crypto ability.
A huge internal struggle in the FBI. To collect and collect on every hop of communications for years and always win.
To get human rights lawyers looking over sensitive US domestic collection methods, collection results and ensuring such methods are talked about.
Does the FBI want to be as skilled as the GCHQ was at keeping methods hidden for decades? Total winning but nobody will ever know.
Have key evidence and active criminal investigation methods sold and given away by lawyers, cult members, criminals, police working with criminals?
To have US ISP and big brand staff know how the FBI breaks crypto and sell such methods to criminals, other nations?
To have police and city workers under watch by any criminal groups, cults able to buy the same crypto collection methods?
Once junk US crypto is broken for police, everyone interesting can afford a key.
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I'm afraid that many companies already do so, as a matter of course. Cisco has become infamous for the backdoors embedded in their hardware. The "Clipper Chip" of the 1990's was an attempt to do exactly this at a hardware level, and was discarded only when it was discovered that the "law enforcement agency field" checksum too short and people could generate their own, genuinely private keys without direct detection. The newer "Trusted Computing" technology for individual host encryption and software was des
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Because they've shown that they can't. The DoD can't keep plans for its next gen weapon systems out of enemy hands, and our government writ large has the retaining capacity of a sieve with regards to general data.
For God's sake, they can't even keep the coke from disappearing from the evidence locker.
Legislation can't stop open source (Score:5, Interesting)
When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will
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Charset: utf-8
qANQR1DDDQQJAwKQIuGxR9ku8L/SQgH6kXzdtVHv9IwDWcZVsGX5G2UZje9L8VoC
Y6faoCNMAg+Zq8S92arz+DV/yEsZo3jBoCFZBsOPqXOO8ATiMmoSQA==
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Actually it can. The solution: give us the key or go to jail. Or even better, give us the key or we'll hit you with this $5 wrench. https://xkcd.com/538/
Re:Legislation can't stop open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with "give us the key or go to jail" is...what if you don't have the key?
What's to stop someone sending me some encrypted communication with a public key that I don't have access to?
Re:Legislation can't stop open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Your choice.
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Fuck you, go to jail.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article214948205.html
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You say this like its a bug and not a feature
Re:Legislation can't stop open source (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why steganography [wikipedia.org] exists. Don't make it obvious you have something to protect, unless you have a literal stronghold to actually protect it with.
P.S. BTW, I assume you meant to say "with a public key associated with a private key that I don't have access to?", because I am generous. The way you prevent that from happening is you revoke your public key once you don't have access to your private key. (And the way you do that is by generating revocation certificate and keep it somewhere safe before you lost access to your private key.)
Re:Legislation can't stop open source (Score:4, Interesting)
If anyone wants to play around with steganography the program openpuff is a good place to start. Sorry I don't have a link as it is blocked at work.
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Drink your ovaltine?
Son of a bitch!
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> Dude get real, they'd have to make written language illegal.
Shh, don't give them ideas!
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Math doesn't have it. If there's a shared key to all our communications, it will sooner or later leak and it will render all encrypted data wide open. Also, I presume that for some reasons Christopher Wray doesn't keep a copy of the keys to his house at some government agency, no?
Governments and often unrelated companies are less privy to our private lives as a result of it. FTFY.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Funny)
FBI Dimwit Christopher Wray: "I'll have you know that I am admiral and my ship has the right of way!"
Math: "I am a lighthouse..."
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Brilliant.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not necessarily what he is asking. What the FBI asked Apple originally to do is provide them the service of unlocking the phone, the FBI didn't even demand the technology to allow them to do it themselves. They just wanted Apple to do it on, with a court order.
Apple having a key to unlock your phone doesn't fundamentally cause any more of a security hole than them having keys to sign updates and to authenticate their update servers, because pretty much everyone accepts updates. If their existing keys are compromised and someone pushes a rootkit update you'll have no security either, you obviously trust Apple to safeguard those keys. Why wouldn't you trust them with one more?
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How did they ever solve a case (Score:5, Insightful)
before smartphones came along? Why do they not get that the people don't want them to be able to utilize new technology to make solving crimes any easier than before?
Everyone is guilty of something. The only way the system works is if the balance between cost of prosecution and magnitude of the crime worth prosecuting remains stable (or given that we already incarcerate far more than most, shifts a bit in favor of crime). If prosecution becomes cheaper and easier, we can quickly become a police state without changing any laws.
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Depends on the crime. The city and state police had a really good crime solution rate until the 1960's.
Then the USA was flooded with crime. Drugs, cash and other factors changed many parts of US culture.
The FBI did try to help communities.
Have a bank robbery problem? Talk to all bank staff and get them to notice strangers. Have a system ready to get more evidence when a bank was getting looked over and then later what to during and after getting robbed.
The
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Have a bank robbery problem? Talk to all bank staff...
The study of the spread of Communist groups all over the USA...
One of these things is not like the other.
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Hmm, so what happened in the 60s that caused all that crime - prohibition maybe? Lets criminalize the possession of many widely used recreational substances, and suddenly we have a huge crime problem, create massive black markets and the violence associated with them. The gang warfare. The militarization of police in order to be able to compete.
All of that was completely predictable - it all happened when we tried alcohol prohibition, and continued getting worse until that was repealed. You have to ask y
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Drugs and the payments to ensure the drugs could move. The criminal pathways between Canada and up past CA.
That needed local and federal police not to investigate. A lot of federal informants and investigations had to be paid or stopped.
Good people in the FBI tried to study the problem, track the cash and flow of people drugs. The spread of Communism and its funding links to the drug trade.
The very way the USA worked changed with the money drugs u
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>The only way the system works is if the balance between cost of prosecution and magnitude of the crime worth prosecuting remains stable
An alternative would be to enforce the law at all times and for all people, with no exceptions of any kind - the public backlash from that would be sufficient (in a legitimate democracy) to severely prune the law to the point that obeying all the laws at all times is actually an relatively easy thing to do.
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I think the problem is far more insidious than just an entrenched system - a system of unevenly applied laws, especially when the laws are so overreaching as to criminalize everyone, is a system in which those with power can arbitrarily punish anyone for any reason, using whatever crimes they've committed as the excuse.
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How did they ever solve a case... before smartphones came along?
Whispering to each other, and passing coded messages... it was all illegal; don't you remember??
;)
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Oops, still forgot to uncheck the "Post Anonymously" box.
That much scotch. Salud.
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hddyf jfgrk jdgr yyhdy?
People have been recording things using pen, paper, and private codes and cyphers since before the United States even existed.
Beyond that, it was and still is harder to get a warrant for a locked drawer than for a smart phone.Encrypting the phone is just restoring the balance.
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SAY IT ALL WITH ME, NOW: (Score:5, Insightful)
When encryption has backdoors, then NO ONE will have encryption at all
You CANNOT have 'backdoors' in an encyption algorithm and still have effective encryption, goddamnit!
Clearly the FBI and Congress doesn't give a rat's ass whether or not anyone has secure systems or not, so long as they can stick their little brown noses into everyones business. Who cares if every computer in the country is easily hacked by even script kiddies, everyones identity is stolen, and everyones bank accounts drained and credit cards charged up? The Feds will have 'unbreakable' encryption, as will all elected officials and of course The Rich, they'll all be exempt from it, while the rest of us are wide open to whoever wants to victimize us.
Them, them, FUCK THEM.
Re:SAY IT ALL WITH ME, NOW: (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is that people like this guy have no clue what a "fact" is. He thinks it all comes down to power and that, given enough power, a certain "reality" can be enforced. It is a typical mental defect found in basically any fanatics. A still very instructive example of that is when the catholic church tried to force the world to be flat. They had absolutely no understanding that the shape of the planet did not care about them one bit and that all their power had zero influence on reality.
Still, people like that in position of power is a sign of a sick society. It is a severe problem.
Flat Earthers Deserve Less Credit Than You Give (Score:5, Informative)
This is untrue. Scholars in the middle ages were mistaken about many aspects of cosmology, to be sure, but the whole flat Earth business is a myth in more ways than one. First, it's important to understand that there were no official dogmas on these matters. But setting that fact aside (which requires a discussion of how dogma, canons, and councils work), there's a more directly relevant fact. The major Christian teachers during the middle ages treated the world as spherical [wikipedia.org]. Hell, even the guys who objected to Galileo in later years thought of the world as spherical.
The reasons for this have to with the Aristotelian physics to which the objectors to Galileo were regrettably too committed. To oversimplify their position: earth (dirt, minerals, etc.) and water goes down; air and fire go up. If the former go down from all directions and the latter go up, you cannot but have a spherical planet with airy, firey (and quintessential!) things above it. Indeed, the objection to Galileo is based partly on this Aristotelian understanding of the elements (How can the Earth be moving in a circular fashion if the natural motion of its primary constituent--earth--is simply down?). To be sure, we have a better understanding of physics today than did the scholastic disciples of Aristotle, but I hope you can see that even in their view a flat Earth is incoherent.
TL;DR: Neither the Church nor educated medieval folk in general bought into any flat Earth nonsense. This is merely a popular myth. Modern flat Earthers are even behind Aristotle [wikipedia.org] (d. 322 B.C.) on this one. Now, whether the spherical Earth was thought of as moving or fixed in the center of the universe is another story altogether...
P.s. I only offer this lengthy correction because sometimes I fear we give modern flat Earthers the appearance of having even more credit than they deserve. Conspiratorial minds can dismiss claims of what we can discover with government funded rockets and satellites. "No one believed this round earth stuff until the government forced it on us all and fabricated the evidence!" My response is something along the lines of, "Come on. Medieval people knew the Earth was round. Eratosthenes had a pretty good estimation of its size [wikipedia.org], given the limited tools he was working with. Come join the third century B.C., will you? Grab a pocket calculator and look down a well."
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It's not about brown noses, it's about brown shirts.
It's not about the rich, it's about the Reich.
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You can't compromise with reality but these people seem perfectly willing to ignore it completely.
Exactly how much info do they want? (Score:2)
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They believe everyone else to be inferior to them and so unworthy of the right to keep a secret from them.
Less safe.. great argument.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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People are absolutely less safe by the use of backdoors in encryption. You don't give any random person on the street, do you now? When did it become a law that we give our house keys to the government?
Government mandated backdoors are absolutely and utterly untenable in a free society.
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Well, screwed the pooch on that preview, didn't we now. You don't give any random person your house key, do you now?
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The government don't need your house keys, they can legally break your door down and have the tools at their disposal to do so.
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A very binary issue (Score:5, Insightful)
They keep talking about "compromise" as if Tim Cook and Larry Page have everyone's encryption keys in a file on their laptops that they refuse to hand over for convicted mobsters. That sort of mindset just does not reflect the nature of the situation.
Here is what it ultimately boils down to:
1. The user - and only the user - has the encryption key.
2. Companies are compelled to sell devices that cannot be secured at all, because a 'master key' lives somewhere.
That's it. Those are the two options. There is no way for the phone to verify if there is a warrant, or if the person inputting the master key is truly a law enforcement agent or not, or any other way to ensure the individual using the master key is justified in doing so, or any means of discriminating between a hack and a court order.
If Wray would like to come up with a third option that doesn't ultimately fall into the category of one of the other two, he's welcome to try. Smarter people have failed.
Re:A very binary issue (Score:5, Insightful)
They keep talking about "compromise" as if Tim Cook and Larry Page have everyone's encryption keys in a file on their laptops that they refuse to hand over for convicted mobsters. That sort of mindset just does not reflect the nature of the situation.
These people have no understanding of reality. They are fanatics. They live in a fantasy-world where the powerful dictate reality and reality complies. They have no understanding of what a "fact" is and think they can just threaten it long enough and it will change.
It's not their job to prevent crime (Score:5, Informative)
It is not the job of the security services to prevent crime/terrorism/kiddie porn/copyright infringement/whatever. It is their job to investigate after the fact in order to convict those responsible. That's how our justice system works. The only justification for the ability to decrypt all encryption is for (attempted - in reality it will never work) prevention.
After a crime has been committed, in order to obtain evidence, the authorities can always obtain a warrant to compel a device owner to decrypt/unlock a device. If the owner refuses, that's what contempt of court is for. If the device owner is dead, who gives a fuck what's on the phone? If the owner (presumed criminal) is willing to sit in jail indefinitely for refusing to unlock/decrypt, that is an acceptable outcome.
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Ideological foes and white collar criminals sit in jail with bond revoked at the prosecutors whim. With the bait of turning in to a state witness and providing the goods (true or made up) to regain their freedom.
Our justice system due to the corrupt leadership at these entities is in danger. I see a time
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After a crime has been committed, in order to obtain evidence, the authorities can always obtain a warrant to compel a device owner to decrypt/unlock a device. If the owner refuses, that's what contempt of court is for. If the device owner is dead, who gives a fuck what's on the phone? If the owner (presumed criminal) is willing to sit in jail indefinitely for refusing to unlock/decrypt, that is an acceptable outcome.
You need to read this:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In other words, you can take what I have, but not what I know.
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In my view, encryption is a free speech issue - I have every right to encode my "speech" any way I wish, it's simply a very private language [wikipedia.org].
Anti-American. Anti-Democratic. (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, I don't give a rat's ass about what evidence you can or can't gather from devices. It isn't pertinent to the discussion. People should be able to have private conversations that you don't get access to under ANY circumstances for whatever damn reason they please. Go F yourself. You anti-american, anti-democratic, nazi, communist, dick-weed. YOU are the enemy of the people. The "criminals" and "terrorists" are the least of our problems. You are and your ilk are to be feared and removed from office. You are the danger. You are not the solution. You are the problem.
Encryption in unconstitutional. (Score:2, Funny)
For over two hundred years we didn't have cellphone encryption so there is no reason to start now! If we had a right to encrypted communications the founding fathers would have put it into the Bill of Rights. Just think of all the crimes that would never have been solved if people could have used encrypted cell phones. History has proven one thing the only way to solve crimes is by getting access to personal cell phone data.
Compromise my ass. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime any political type of any stripe says they just want compromise, what they mean is they want capitulation.
Not the Democrats (Score:2)
Keep voting for "tough on crime" politicians (Score:2, Insightful)
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FBI vs the NSA and Armed Forces (Score:5, Insightful)
Spies and soldiers (especially on the spy side) need as good or better security than I need to talk to my bank. The CIA, military and (Canadian) CSE know it's a trade-off. The FBI and RCMP pitch it as a trivial question with an obvious answer.
For every hard problem there is always one clear, obvious and simple answer.. and it's wrong .
As a citizen (Score:3)
FBI Director Christopher Wray's statement that "strong encryption on mobile phones keeps law enforcement from gaining access to key evidence" is in my case falling on deaf ears. I do not see a problem here. Things are just as they should be.
And FBI Director Christopher Wray can pound sand. And he IS the weasel I suspected he was.
Just my 2 cents
UK vs IRA (Score:2)
This despite not having the internet or computers.
Google "Numbers stations", again been around for decades.
This has ZERO to do with making anyone "safe", its all about being able to control the masses.
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numbers stations are for transmitting encrypted data.
If you don't have the right code book, it's impossible to decrypt.
What's that got to do with legislating against encryption?
I can understand where he's coming from.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people I know have no qualms about the way old-school wire-taps worked.
Law enforcement got a warrant from a judge, and only if the judge thought that there's enough reason to suspect the target is on to something, only THEN could they hook into a user's phone lines or open their mail. (or at least that's how it was supposed to work).
This, IMHO, seems like a good balance between the right to privacy and law enforcement needs, and has enough judicial oversight to not be easily abused.
I have no idea how one could implement a similar scheme nowadays. Backdoors are dangerous, and the oversight mechanisms have been broken for quite a while (just say "it's for national security!"). But having some means for the 'good' guys, with sufficient oversight, to be able to use surveillance to catch the baddies doesn't seem too bad to me?
Re:I can understand where he's coming from.. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way to let the government read your secure files without making it easier for other parties to do the same. The government you have today may not be the government you have tomorrow. That's two reasons why it is too bad. One should suffice...
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Most people I know have no qualms about the way old-school wire-taps worked
Most people are poorly informed and concerned with food, rent and family. It's a poor metric to use.
Wire taps were and probably still are abused. Warrantless surveillance by various parties, warrants issued in a 'rubber stamp' process that makes a joke of oversight and it's not just 'national security'. It's self identifying 'good guys' seeing the restrictions of oversight as something to be overcome so that they can catch the 'bad guys'.
It's not just the oversight mechanisms that are broken, there are sign
dd if=/dev/random of=/storage/2468-5569/Andriod/No (Score:2)
repeat for count=0..32
Your honor, those files contain only random bytes; there is nothing to decrypt.
What's the bar? What is PRIVATE? (Score:2)
Just what is the point of your position Christopher Wray?
Let us say that I want to discuss what should happen to Putin's (censored)?
Should that (censored subject) be available to Putin?
Weak crypto is WEAK! Really, Chris it is WEAK - that is why it is called Weak, Bad, Backdoored.
Sit in on a 2 hr lecture on Crypto before you decide what is best, Chris.
We don't want our thoughts exposed to Russia, or anyone not on our mail list - Chris.
Encryption export policy reversed? (Score:3)
Like the old export restrictions on strong cryptography, is USA going to ban imports of strong cryptography?
"I'm sorry, you can enter USA with your phone, it's too secure. Dispose of it or get back on the plane home"
There is nothing nice to say to these people. (Score:2)
No. And you should be hung for treason for pushing for it. As should anyone in office pushing for it. You are conspiring against the people of the United States and should just be convicted of treason, and hung for it. Publicly. Put me on the jury, I'd vote to convict you. I'm sure there are a lot of us who'd vote to convict you. Just leave us alone.
Phone tapping the old fashioned way (Score:5, Insightful)
Back before the days of cell phones, judges could give prosecutors the ability to (1) break into someone's house, (2) install a device like these [wikipedia.org] and then collect data.
You could also take someone's smart phone, root it, and install a surveillance software (with the same due process above). Even with encryption, if I have access to your phone (and it's unlocked -- figuring out a 6 key pass-code by spying isn't exactly James Bond's hardest mission) I would have access to your private key to decrypt said messages.
What law enforcement wants here are not the old rights they've always had -- but new ones. As the late Antonin Scalia wrote for the unanimous court regarding the unconstitutionality of planting a GPS device without a warrant [gcn.com]:
“What we apply is an 18th century guarantee against unreasonable searches, which we believe must provide at a minimum the degree of protection it afforded when it was adopted,”
Already failed (Score:3)
Any claims by the government that they can keep their hacking tools / backdoors secure were disproved by the Snowden data theft. Whatever the excuse, someone was able to steal extremely sensitive data from the NSA. Is there any real reason to think that other intelligence or law enforcement agencies would do a better job? So any tools the government has are likely to end up in the hands of other (possibly enemy) governments, and in the hands of organized crime.
The government has lost its credibility on this for a very long time.
So no, I do not believe the world will be a better place when no American's information is secure.
In addition, even if the government could be trusted to secure the information, I do not want to give them the power that that information represents. Governments can go bad, and open access to everyone secrets in the country is not a weapon that I trust in anyone's hands. I accept that the result of this is a higher rate of ordinary crime and terrorism. As things sit in the US now, that is a bargain that I am happy to accept.
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If this is the same incident I read about at the time, it actually made pi == 9....
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If this is the same incident I read about at the time, it actually made pi == 9....
Well, that sure puts an end to speculations about the curvature of the universe. Omega must be less than one.
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I had never heard of this, so this thread got me curious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
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They just read your mail illegally, instead.
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that is some weapons grade trolling -- kudos.
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That's like saying that because we had that big flood costing hundred of lives, it's necessary that everyone wears seatbelts!
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Spoken like a true amateur that failed (or never had) Crypto 101. You know why most home-brew crypto is never broken? Because the people that can do it do not want to waste the little time that usually takes. This situation changes when somebody is willing to pay for it, but you do not read about it in the scientific literature, because nobody cares.
Home-brew crypto stopped to be an option a few decades back.
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Hehehehe, I know enough to know how difficult it is to actually get right as it comes very much down to the details. Just throwing a few s-boxes that look good into a Feistel-network will _not_ cut it. Puts me far ahead of you, apparently. But I also have enough understanding to see how even absolute experts can fail at it. As examples, the AES competition or the password hashing challenge were quite instructive.
At this time, rolling your own crypto (unless you are one of maybe 100 people on the planet tha
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BTW, "be restricted"? That is some very uncommon use of language in civilian society. Are you a fed or with some other TLA? Would explain why you are maliciously trying to get people to shoot themselves in the foot. Anyways, you are pretty clearly part of the problem here.
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Why would a locked backdoor change anything when there's already a frontdoor with the same quality lock? Apple&co can just push an update to your phone to own your phone if they want ...
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The goal in most investigations seems to be collect everything (wildly invade peoples privacy) and then decide what is relevant later.
Which makes all evidence gathered inadmissible, as well as any further evidence found because of the illegally obtained evidence.
It's the best way to have a court case thrown out, the criminals walk free, and never able to be prosecuted for those crimes again.
Re: settled (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction - they want the ability to illegally invade our privacy *back* - they've been invading it at will for many decades, and for the last couple decades have been doing it at a scale and invasiveness to dwarf anything ever before seen in all but the most dystopian fantasies. The rise of encryption has been a direct response to that unbridled power grab, and now they're trying to cast off those unwelcome limits on their unsupervised power. I mean hell, when they flat out lie to Congress about their activities, repeatedly, you've got to realize that they are no longer in any way a legitimate government agency.