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The government's story has been "we need a way to access people's data so we can catch pedophiles, drug dealers and terrorists" and it seems there is a widely h
by spuz 11y ago
The government's story has been "we need a way to access people's data so we can catch pedophiles, drug dealers and terrorists" and it seems there is a widely held belief that in order to do this, they would need to either ban encryption or weaken it sufficiently to make it effectively useless. However, as far as I can tell, backdoors into your phone or your desktop PC already exist. All the government has to do is convince Apple, Google, MS or Ubuntu to provide an 'official' update to a target computer, wait for the user to accept (or the OS to accept it automatically) and they have full reign over your device.
Many people say that opening our devices to a special chosen set of good guys is equivalent to opening them to all the bad guys as well. If that's the case, surely we're already vulnerable given most commonly used devices update automatically?
The only purpose I can see for attacking encryption in general is to enable mass surveillance. The government have in fact not been specific about what they are actually asking for, but if they want selective ability to search digital devices, they already have it. If they want further powers, then we need to ask them what they need them for.
- IlPeach 11y agoOr simply start instilling the idea into ignorant people's minds that crypto is bad and just keep repeating that until it becomes a "truth", or gain votes or leverage on the right occasion when needed with "we told you so".
- spuz 11y agoI'm not sure that's a wise strategy. Try telling the users of Ashley Madison that encryption is a bad thing. For each of the government's examples of where encryption enables criminals to do criminal things, the public are going to hear about the cases where lack of encryption enables criminals to do criminal things. There's just as equal a chance in my opinion that raising the issue in the consciousness of the public that they turn against the government and demand stronger encryption rather than less. The NSA and GCHQ were able to gain significant powers in the last decade primarily by staying under the radar of public awareness. That is why the leaks we heard in 2013 were so significant. Now the cat's out of the bag, it might be the government are left with no choice but to use propaganda to convince the public to give them what they want but there's no guarantee that it will work.
- rue 11y agoNot exactly. Apple, for example, has already begun encrypting so that they themselves can’t decrypt the data. And that’s exactly how it should be.