10 ms·

> Because ultimately, no matter what technical solutions you can come up with force and law always trump those. That's a very important point that I think many

by acabal 11y ago

> Because ultimately, no matter what technical solutions you can come up with force and law always trump those. That's a very important point that I think many who champion technical solutions conveniently set aside. Remember that in the US in the 90s--in other words, not that long ago--PGP was illegal and Phil Zimmerman was criminally investigated for developing and distributing it. Today PGP and GPG are some of the most powerful encryption tools we have available to us--tools that Snowden says we can still trust. If someone makes a better tool, or if these tools start to bother governments again, then governments could just declare them illegal. Then you're faced with the question of: "Do I encrypt my mail and risk a SWAT team blowing up my front door and shooting my dog, then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a protracted legal battle against the full might of the US government, or do I just forget about it?" The tech genie is out of the bottle, and the answer isn't more tech--it's getting people, and thus governments, to understand and champion these tools just like we do.

mirimir 11y ago
Right. In Vinge's True Names, all network traffic is monitored by governments. So it's necessary to use cover traffic and steganography, in addition to encryption. That's where Tor seems headed, with ever better pluggable transports for bridges, and maybe even ephemeral website-like bridges from AWS etc. But eventually, it may be necessary to get serious about steganography. With pervasive streaming HD video, covert channels providing even 0.1% of throughput would be workable. The harder challenge would be plausible deniability. If the steganography fails and that SWAT team arrives, you want them to discover that you've been compromised by covert-channel botnets. Just like every other user and server on the Internet.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Yes this works in fiction novels, in real life it usually doesn't work. I could list the reasons why, but show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. One big hurdle is that there are too many flaws in complex systems, and you have to mess up just once and that includes flaws in your technology for them to get whatever they are after. Perfection does not exist in reality. Using any sort of excessive technology makes you stand out as a target that's in need to introspection. All complexity has costs associated with it, to set up all of this is time consuming and expensive. etc. etc.
  - wyager 11y ago
    >show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. You mean like how people can anonymously buy drugs on the internet? It's working fine. It's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      There's no "anonymously" there. Maybe buyers use Bitcoins, and maybe they've mixed them well enough to hide the money trail. But for the most part, they provide meatspace mail addresses. To sellers who truly are anonymous. Who may be LEA. Who may ship illegal drugs at homeopathic dilution, and SWAT right after delivery.
      - wavefunction 11y ago
        Governments are concerned with entrepreneurs engaged through the net. Because governments are made up of former dealer/slangers who went "legit" liek bushes and others of that ilk
      - wyager 11y ago
        And yet, despite all these worst-case scenarios you've outlined, it works great most of the time (from what I hear).
        mirimir 11y ago
        It didn't work out so well for Curtis Green.[0] > Starting in April 2012, a DEA undercover agent in Maryland (the UC), began communicating with Ulbricht about selling illegal drugs on Silk Road. That agent was one of several assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force. The UC claimed to be a smuggler who specialized in moving substantial quantities of illegal drugs. In December 2012, Ulbricht set out to find a drug dealer on Silk Road who could purchase large quantities of drugs from the UC and directed his administrators, including Green, to assist. Green assisted the UC to establish contact with a buyer, who was an established seller of drugs on Silk Road (the Vendor). The UC and the Vendor negotiated a deal for one kilogram of cocaine for approximately $27,000 in Bitcoin, a digital currency that has no association with a national government, is difficult to track, and easy to move online. > Without the knowledge of either Ulbricht or the UC, Green agreed to act as a middle-man for the Vendor and take delivery of drugs. As a result, the Vendor provided Green’s address to the UC as the place to which the cocaine was to be delivered. On January 17, 2013, an undercover U.S. Postal Inspector delivered the cocaine [very highly cut] to Green at his residence. Shortly after Green accepted delivery of the cocaine, federal agents with the HSI, DEA, U.S. Postal Inspectors and the U.S. Secret Service executed a search warrant at Green’s residence and recovered the kilogram of cocaine. U.S. Secret Service agents also conducted a forensic examination of Green’s computers and digital media seized during the search. [0] http://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/administrator-silk-road-website-and-drug-vendor-plead-guilty-drug-conspiracy http://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/administrator-silk-road-we...
jsprogrammer 11y ago
PGP/GPG are tools we have because the technical solution trumped attempts at force and law. Governments can do nothing to stop it. They have no control over mathematical realities. Force and law have no bearing on mathematics. A technical solution will always trump a violent or political solution.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Government force and law have no bearing on plant biochemistry, either. But they can punish those in possession of illegal plants. They can even punish those with illegal substances in their bodies. Just sayin' ;)
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    They'll have to outlaw crypto first. And it's hard to put this genie back to the bottle, given that it's somewhat out already. To outlaw but not make virtually anyone guilty (because some stuff like TLS is extremely common) is a hard task alone, and any attempts at this would be surely fiercely countered.
    - mtgx 11y ago
      Some politicians and government officials are already saying companies like Apple and Google are aiding terrorists. They don't necessarily have to outlaw it. They can just put such pressure on the providers of the biggest services, in order for them to use weaker encryption.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Governments can use force to make you reveal your private keys. It doesn't have to be legal. NSA's mass surveillance isn't legal but they are still doing it, which proves that the government is above the law.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    If it is 'impossible' for your key to be revealed...technical trumps force/law/politics once again.
gozo 11y ago
While I agree that technical solutions aren't enough, the point isn't only to achieve security. It is to raise the stakes to the point that the government has to do things that general public doesn't support to keep their capabilities. Right now it's mostly a walkover in favor of the NSA.
drdaeman 11y ago
No. The tech genie is only half out and it must continue to get out. Preferably before the legal solution comes out. We have crypto, but it's not even remotely ubiquitous. Consider yourself - how many of your peers would you be able to send OpenPGP-encrypted email message today? The important thing to worry is that once some lawmaking passes and and journalists will happily announce the legal battle's won and the spies won't spy anymore (ha!) most will be happy about this, and continue to ignore any technical issues. That is, stay easy targets until the next scandal. Both technical and legal solutions are important. We just can't ditch one and say that it's not important anymore - neither works well without the other.
Decade 11y ago
The tech genie is out of the bottle, and the answer isn't more tech--it's getting people, and thus governments, to understand and champion these tools just like we do. No, the answer includes better tech. OpenSSH and LibreSSL are doing good work in removing insecure codecs. HTTP/2 looks like it should do well, because no client implementation accepts plaintext. I’m hoping that protocols like OTR and Darkmail become more widespread. PGP is basically unusable. You can use it to dump secrets on journalists, after you have trained the journalist. You can’t use it to lead a quiet, private life. I tried. It’s not integrated with anything, and nobody else uses it. It’s fatally flawed. Being riddled with fatal flaws is an aspect PGP shares with the lucrative Certificate Authority system, with S/MIME, with the DNS security system, with IPsec, with cell phone encryption. Worse, actual solutions are orthogonal to big business interests. Decentralized trust? Google has no need for this; Google has its own intermediate CA (which, through the totally broken CA model, means Google can issue valid TLS and S/MIME certificated for any domain in the world). Federated content sharing? Facebook has no need for this; Facebook needs all your data to keep it safe for you, and also to analyze and monetize it. What we need is to follow the article’s plea: Truly understand that the network is hostile, and design our systems to make security the easy default. And drop insecure protocols already, wherever there is a viable alternative.
- gonzo 11y ago
  > Being riddled with fatal flaws is an aspect PGP shares with the lucrative Certificate Authority system, with S/MIME, with the DNS security system, with IPsec, with cell phone encryption. which fatal flaws are present in "IPsec"?
  - mtgx 11y ago
    He may be referring to this: https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg12325.html https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg12...
- mtrimpe 11y ago
  Amen; I'm still flabbergasted by programmers not acknowledging that it's entirely possible to create a programming language which embeds our concept of privacy in cryptographic reality. All you would need for this is to model each user's interaction with the system as a statement, where a statement could be either code or data, and then sign and encrypt these statements by default and encrypt the statement's decryption key with recipients' public keys as needed. This might sound esoteric but we could already do this today just by taking something like Unison [1] and adding this encryption layer. As geeks we should really own up to the fact that it's perfectly feasible to do this... and get working on it. P.S. For a fun fact; at it's core such a language would pretty much be what John McCarthy described as 'the language for the year 2015.' [2] [1] http://unisonweb.org http://unisonweb.org [2] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3180 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3180
rmc 11y ago
> Do I encrypt my mail and risk a SWAT team blowing up my front door and shooting my dog That's a best case. Worse case is they shoot you.

by acabal 11y ago

mirimir 11y ago

Right. In Vinge's True Names, all network traffic is monitored by governments. So it's necessary to use cover traffic and steganography, in addition to encryption. That's where Tor seems headed, with ever better pluggable transports for bridges, and maybe even ephemeral website-like bridges from AWS etc. But eventually, it may be necessary to get serious about steganography. With pervasive streaming HD video, covert channels providing even 0.1% of throughput would be workable. The harder challenge would be plausible deniability. If the steganography fails and that SWAT team arrives, you want them to discover that you've been compromised by covert-channel botnets. Just like every other user and server on the Internet.

x5n1 11y ago
Yes this works in fiction novels, in real life it usually doesn't work. I could list the reasons why, but show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. One big hurdle is that there are too many flaws in complex systems, and you have to mess up just once and that includes flaws in your technology for them to get whatever they are after. Perfection does not exist in reality. Using any sort of excessive technology makes you stand out as a target that's in need to introspection. All complexity has costs associated with it, to set up all of this is time consuming and expensive. etc. etc.
- wyager 11y ago
  >show me a case where it actually worked and we can talk further. You mean like how people can anonymously buy drugs on the internet? It's working fine. It's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    There's no "anonymously" there. Maybe buyers use Bitcoins, and maybe they've mixed them well enough to hide the money trail. But for the most part, they provide meatspace mail addresses. To sellers who truly are anonymous. Who may be LEA. Who may ship illegal drugs at homeopathic dilution, and SWAT right after delivery.
    - wavefunction 11y ago
      Governments are concerned with entrepreneurs engaged through the net. Because governments are made up of former dealer/slangers who went "legit" liek bushes and others of that ilk
    - wyager 11y ago
      And yet, despite all these worst-case scenarios you've outlined, it works great most of the time (from what I hear).
      - mirimir 11y ago
        It didn't work out so well for Curtis Green.[0] > Starting in April 2012, a DEA undercover agent in Maryland (the UC), began communicating with Ulbricht about selling illegal drugs on Silk Road. That agent was one of several assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force. The UC claimed to be a smuggler who specialized in moving substantial quantities of illegal drugs. In December 2012, Ulbricht set out to find a drug dealer on Silk Road who could purchase large quantities of drugs from the UC and directed his administrators, including Green, to assist. Green assisted the UC to establish contact with a buyer, who was an established seller of drugs on Silk Road (the Vendor). The UC and the Vendor negotiated a deal for one kilogram of cocaine for approximately $27,000 in Bitcoin, a digital currency that has no association with a national government, is difficult to track, and easy to move online. > Without the knowledge of either Ulbricht or the UC, Green agreed to act as a middle-man for the Vendor and take delivery of drugs. As a result, the Vendor provided Green’s address to the UC as the place to which the cocaine was to be delivered. On January 17, 2013, an undercover U.S. Postal Inspector delivered the cocaine [very highly cut] to Green at his residence. Shortly after Green accepted delivery of the cocaine, federal agents with the HSI, DEA, U.S. Postal Inspectors and the U.S. Secret Service executed a search warrant at Green’s residence and recovered the kilogram of cocaine. U.S. Secret Service agents also conducted a forensic examination of Green’s computers and digital media seized during the search. [0] http://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/administrator-silk-road-website-and-drug-vendor-plead-guilty-drug-conspiracy http://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/administrator-silk-road-we...

jsprogrammer 11y ago

PGP/GPG are tools we have because the technical solution trumped attempts at force and law. Governments can do nothing to stop it. They have no control over mathematical realities. Force and law have no bearing on mathematics. A technical solution will always trump a violent or political solution.

mirimir 11y ago
Government force and law have no bearing on plant biochemistry, either. But they can punish those in possession of illegal plants. They can even punish those with illegal substances in their bodies. Just sayin' ;)
- drdaeman 11y ago
  They'll have to outlaw crypto first. And it's hard to put this genie back to the bottle, given that it's somewhat out already. To outlaw but not make virtually anyone guilty (because some stuff like TLS is extremely common) is a hard task alone, and any attempts at this would be surely fiercely countered.
  - mtgx 11y ago
    Some politicians and government officials are already saying companies like Apple and Google are aiding terrorists. They don't necessarily have to outlaw it. They can just put such pressure on the providers of the biggest services, in order for them to use weaker encryption.
enraged_camel 11y ago
Governments can use force to make you reveal your private keys. It doesn't have to be legal. NSA's mass surveillance isn't legal but they are still doing it, which proves that the government is above the law.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  If it is 'impossible' for your key to be revealed...technical trumps force/law/politics once again.

gozo 11y ago

While I agree that technical solutions aren't enough, the point isn't only to achieve security. It is to raise the stakes to the point that the government has to do things that general public doesn't support to keep their capabilities. Right now it's mostly a walkover in favor of the NSA.

drdaeman 11y ago

No. The tech genie is only half out and it must continue to get out. Preferably before the legal solution comes out. We have crypto, but it's not even remotely ubiquitous. Consider yourself - how many of your peers would you be able to send OpenPGP-encrypted email message today? The important thing to worry is that once some lawmaking passes and and journalists will happily announce the legal battle's won and the spies won't spy anymore (ha!) most will be happy about this, and continue to ignore any technical issues. That is, stay easy targets until the next scandal. Both technical and legal solutions are important. We just can't ditch one and say that it's not important anymore - neither works well without the other.

Decade 11y ago

The tech genie is out of the bottle, and the answer isn't more tech--it's getting people, and thus governments, to understand and champion these tools just like we do. No, the answer includes better tech. OpenSSH and LibreSSL are doing good work in removing insecure codecs. HTTP/2 looks like it should do well, because no client implementation accepts plaintext. I’m hoping that protocols like OTR and Darkmail become more widespread. PGP is basically unusable. You can use it to dump secrets on journalists, after you have trained the journalist. You can’t use it to lead a quiet, private life. I tried. It’s not integrated with anything, and nobody else uses it. It’s fatally flawed. Being riddled with fatal flaws is an aspect PGP shares with the lucrative Certificate Authority system, with S/MIME, with the DNS security system, with IPsec, with cell phone encryption. Worse, actual solutions are orthogonal to big business interests. Decentralized trust? Google has no need for this; Google has its own intermediate CA (which, through the totally broken CA model, means Google can issue valid TLS and S/MIME certificated for any domain in the world). Federated content sharing? Facebook has no need for this; Facebook needs all your data to keep it safe for you, and also to analyze and monetize it. What we need is to follow the article’s plea: Truly understand that the network is hostile, and design our systems to make security the easy default. And drop insecure protocols already, wherever there is a viable alternative.

gonzo 11y ago
> Being riddled with fatal flaws is an aspect PGP shares with the lucrative Certificate Authority system, with S/MIME, with the DNS security system, with IPsec, with cell phone encryption. which fatal flaws are present in "IPsec"?
- mtgx 11y ago
  He may be referring to this: https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg12325.html https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg12...
mtrimpe 11y ago
Amen; I'm still flabbergasted by programmers not acknowledging that it's entirely possible to create a programming language which embeds our concept of privacy in cryptographic reality. All you would need for this is to model each user's interaction with the system as a statement, where a statement could be either code or data, and then sign and encrypt these statements by default and encrypt the statement's decryption key with recipients' public keys as needed. This might sound esoteric but we could already do this today just by taking something like Unison [1] and adding this encryption layer. As geeks we should really own up to the fact that it's perfectly feasible to do this... and get working on it. P.S. For a fun fact; at it's core such a language would pretty much be what John McCarthy described as 'the language for the year 2015.' [2] [1] http://unisonweb.org http://unisonweb.org [2] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3180 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3180

rmc 11y ago

> Do I encrypt my mail and risk a SWAT team blowing up my front door and shooting my dog That's a best case. Worse case is they shoot you.