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So, there are two end positions - Apple/WhatsApp on one end and the FBI on the other. Is there a third one we aren't looking at? Obama and FBI director want a "

So, there are two end positions - Apple/WhatsApp on one end and the FBI on the other. Is there a third one we aren't looking at? Obama and FBI director want a "middle ground". Is there a middle ground? Since the US govt helped develop the technology behind WhatsApp encryption, now might be a good time to put money into developing a technology that creates a "middle ground".

greglindahl 11y ago
Many efforts have been started to have a middle ground, for example key escrow. However, key escrow might not be that different from allowing almost anyone to pwn your communications and data... that was a huge argument in the mid-1990s.
junto 11y ago
You have to trust the government to have a middle ground. It has been shown again and again that we cannot trust them. Even if we trust one government, it doesn't mean you can trust the next one. If the USG force the US tech companies to provide a backdoor, then the technology is out there in order for non-US tech companies to pick up where they have left off. It is a battle the USG cannot and should not win. Trust the maths. Thank you Snowden for showing us the light.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  Bingo. Obama, Clinton and the rest keep asking for Silicon Valley to find some workable compromise and getting frustrated at the "absolutism". But they don't have enough self insight to see that they're guilty of the exact same thing. In a world where governments were transparent and government employees were robustly held to account for transgressions of clearly written laws, I doubt many in the Valley would be putting so much effort into e2e encryption. It'd be like the world pre-Snowden, or the telcos, where companies just complied with warrants and orders and didn't see any big problem with that. The problem is the Snowden affair showed that governments are utterly incapable of handling the power they temporarily obtained via subterfuge, utterly uninterested in holding people like Clapper to account, and generally don't seem to care about whether the people trust them or not. Standoffs like this are the inevitable end result. If there was trust, there'd be a lot of technical solutions. Like just not employing E2E crypto to start with. SSL would be enough.
p01926 11y ago
The supposed middle ground is that you force the naval engineers to, against their will, build the submarine with just a few extra holes. Security is only as good as the weakest link. If you can bypass actual crypto and fallback to the world's justice systems, you've made a catestrophic compromise somewhere. In such a security system any crypto is pure deception. This is untenable in 2016.
- newjersey 11y ago
  I am deeply disappointed by President Obama's remarks: > President Obama echoed those remarks on Friday, saying technology executives who were “absolutist” on the issue were wrong. We can't always look at two extremes and try to go the middle way. If someone said asbestos causes cancer and someone else said but it is a good insulator and I need approval to put ten feet of asbestos in the walls of the school, we don't automatically try to say "well, ok apparently it is toxic so what about five feet?" No, we'd say we can't put asbestos as it is bad. It sounds very nice to be fair and balanced but sometimes the middle ground is not a good outcome. Not to mention seeking the middle ground in everything leaves us susceptible to Overton window. I don't know what to say other than that I am deeply disappointed.
KMag 11y ago
> Is there a middle ground? Look at how anti-drug-cartel and anti-terrorism laws have been applied in practice in the US. We've basically trained law enforcement and prosecutors that their jobs get magically easier by acquiring superpowers as long as they whisper the magic words "terrorism" and/or "drugs" (or "kiddieporn" ) three times. See civil forfeiture, for an instances of law enforcement routinely abusing superpowers it gains by whispering "drugs" three times before grabbing something. This sort of mission creep/misuse is a social problem that's immune to technical solutions. No matter how perfect key escrow is, it's in the career interests of law enforcement and prosecutors to socially engineer their way around the protections. We're not intentionally creating a Super Stasi, but we're accidentally creating lots of mini Super Stasis by law interpretations that allow bulk collection at an unprecedented level and poorly thought out career incentives for law enforcement and prosecutors. When there are no consequences for admittedly leaking the identity of an active undercover CIA asset for political reasons[0], there will be no consequences for leaking anyone's personal information for political reasons. The magic words used to include "communist", which allowed the FBI[1] way too much investigative power into the civil rights and feminist movements simply by whispering "communist, communist, communist.". The FBI's activities included actively interfering with the civil rights movement. There's also evidence that someone with access to the bug recordings from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel room tried blackmailing him into committing suicide[1]. Hopefully that was just one or two rogue agents. The inability of government agencies to secure their own systems, along with commercial pressures on companies, means that once these investigative powers are created, they're also available to any medium sized country. If you're on the political left, this means homosexuals in many countries are at risk. If you're on the political right, it means many Christians and other religious minorities in many countries are at risk. So, the middle ground is not about trusting the current FBI and current US intelligence services. It's about trusting all current and future FBI's and the the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of all medium-sized countries from here forward. As a minimum set of requirements, the middle ground would seem to require: 1. Not allowing a rogue US LEO to blackmail MLK by whispering "communist"/"terrorist" three times 2. Generally Technically solving the LEO/prosecutory social engineering problems of key escrow 3. Not putting sexual, religious, and political minorities in foreign countries at risk [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO EDIT: Forgot to actually include footnote.

greglindahl 11y ago

Many efforts have been started to have a middle ground, for example key escrow. However, key escrow might not be that different from allowing almost anyone to pwn your communications and data... that was a huge argument in the mid-1990s.

junto 11y ago

You have to trust the government to have a middle ground. It has been shown again and again that we cannot trust them. Even if we trust one government, it doesn't mean you can trust the next one. If the USG force the US tech companies to provide a backdoor, then the technology is out there in order for non-US tech companies to pick up where they have left off. It is a battle the USG cannot and should not win. Trust the maths. Thank you Snowden for showing us the light.

mike_hearn 11y ago
Bingo. Obama, Clinton and the rest keep asking for Silicon Valley to find some workable compromise and getting frustrated at the "absolutism". But they don't have enough self insight to see that they're guilty of the exact same thing. In a world where governments were transparent and government employees were robustly held to account for transgressions of clearly written laws, I doubt many in the Valley would be putting so much effort into e2e encryption. It'd be like the world pre-Snowden, or the telcos, where companies just complied with warrants and orders and didn't see any big problem with that. The problem is the Snowden affair showed that governments are utterly incapable of handling the power they temporarily obtained via subterfuge, utterly uninterested in holding people like Clapper to account, and generally don't seem to care about whether the people trust them or not. Standoffs like this are the inevitable end result. If there was trust, there'd be a lot of technical solutions. Like just not employing E2E crypto to start with. SSL would be enough.

p01926 11y ago

The supposed middle ground is that you force the naval engineers to, against their will, build the submarine with just a few extra holes. Security is only as good as the weakest link. If you can bypass actual crypto and fallback to the world's justice systems, you've made a catestrophic compromise somewhere. In such a security system any crypto is pure deception. This is untenable in 2016.

newjersey 11y ago
I am deeply disappointed by President Obama's remarks: > President Obama echoed those remarks on Friday, saying technology executives who were “absolutist” on the issue were wrong. We can't always look at two extremes and try to go the middle way. If someone said asbestos causes cancer and someone else said but it is a good insulator and I need approval to put ten feet of asbestos in the walls of the school, we don't automatically try to say "well, ok apparently it is toxic so what about five feet?" No, we'd say we can't put asbestos as it is bad. It sounds very nice to be fair and balanced but sometimes the middle ground is not a good outcome. Not to mention seeking the middle ground in everything leaves us susceptible to Overton window. I don't know what to say other than that I am deeply disappointed.

KMag 11y ago

> Is there a middle ground? Look at how anti-drug-cartel and anti-terrorism laws have been applied in practice in the US. We've basically trained law enforcement and prosecutors that their jobs get magically easier by acquiring superpowers as long as they whisper the magic words "terrorism" and/or "drugs" (or "kiddieporn" ) three times. See civil forfeiture, for an instances of law enforcement routinely abusing superpowers it gains by whispering "drugs" three times before grabbing something. This sort of mission creep/misuse is a social problem that's immune to technical solutions. No matter how perfect key escrow is, it's in the career interests of law enforcement and prosecutors to socially engineer their way around the protections. We're not intentionally creating a Super Stasi, but we're accidentally creating lots of mini Super Stasis by law interpretations that allow bulk collection at an unprecedented level and poorly thought out career incentives for law enforcement and prosecutors. When there are no consequences for admittedly leaking the identity of an active undercover CIA asset for political reasons[0], there will be no consequences for leaking anyone's personal information for political reasons. The magic words used to include "communist", which allowed the FBI[1] way too much investigative power into the civil rights and feminist movements simply by whispering "communist, communist, communist.". The FBI's activities included actively interfering with the civil rights movement. There's also evidence that someone with access to the bug recordings from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel room tried blackmailing him into committing suicide[1]. Hopefully that was just one or two rogue agents. The inability of government agencies to secure their own systems, along with commercial pressures on companies, means that once these investigative powers are created, they're also available to any medium sized country. If you're on the political left, this means homosexuals in many countries are at risk. If you're on the political right, it means many Christians and other religious minorities in many countries are at risk. So, the middle ground is not about trusting the current FBI and current US intelligence services. It's about trusting all current and future FBI's and the the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of all medium-sized countries from here forward. As a minimum set of requirements, the middle ground would seem to require: 1. Not allowing a rogue US LEO to blackmail MLK by whispering "communist"/"terrorist" three times 2. Generally Technically solving the LEO/prosecutory social engineering problems of key escrow 3. Not putting sexual, religious, and political minorities in foreign countries at risk [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(politician) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO EDIT: Forgot to actually include footnote.