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If the government wins any of these court battles, it's only a matter of time until one-way encryption is outlawed. It follows logically that if criminals/terro
by jessegreathouse 11y ago
If the government wins any of these court battles, it's only a matter of time until one-way encryption is outlawed. It follows logically that if criminals/terrorists can't use iPhones to securely communicate, then they'll just move on to the next convenient encryption app. The government will continue to order companies to break their one-way encryption until the government realizes they're playing musical chairs and then they'll issue an executive order to ban one-way encryption outright. The precedent allowing them to do so, will be all of these initial court battles vs Apple, whatsapp, and whoever else gets defeated. In the wake of these events regular people, like you and me, will be harmed by hackers and commercial companies exploiting this new world without one-way encryption.
- schoen 11y agoI don't recognize your use of "one-way encryption". Did you mean something like end-to-end encryption?
- thavalai 11y agoLooks like it means that the encryption cannot be reverse-engineered: http://help.penzu.com/pro/what-is-one-way-encryption/ http://help.penzu.com/pro/what-is-one-way-encryption/
- CyberDildonics 11y agoI thought that was just called encryption.
- mirimir 11y agoRight. With decent end-to-end encryption, third parties can't circumvent without compromising devices or software. Systems where providers can secretly push compromised software aren't secure. Obviously. There are many eyes on the GnuPG code, for example. But even with Apple and Facebook, PR and financial consequences for backdoors would arguably be huge. Consider how much global business US providers have already lost, just over suspicion raised by Snowden's stuff.
- CiPHPerCoder 11y ago> One way encryption is a mathematical function that takes a variable-length input string and converts it into a fixed-length binary sequence. So, a hash function and not encryption? Got it. Sarcasm aside, we really need to start using the correct terms. https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/08/you-wouldnt-base64-a-password-cryptography-decoded https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/08/you-wouldnt-base64-a-pass... Cryptography ||\ | \`- Hash Functions | `- Secret-Key Cryptography | |\ | \`- Secret-Key Encryption | `- Secret-Key Authentication \ \ `- Public-Key Cryptography |\ \`- Public-Key Encryption `- Public-Key Authentication Hashing is NOT encryption.
- 15155 11y ago"One-way encryption" is a terrible term - they mean "encryption that the encryptor cannot decrypt upon demand." So, asymmetric cryptography.
- eru 11y agoIf you have good hashing, you can build encryption, though.
- CiPHPerCoder 11y agoAnd if you have a good block cipher you can build a hash function. Encryption is a reversible, keyed transformation of a message. If you cannot reverse it, it is not encryption. Calling it encryption just introduces confusion.
- eru 11y agoI concur.
- AckSyn 11y agoOne time pad perhaps
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- yazaddaruvala 11y agoAnyone have any insights into why the commonly used guns argument is not good enough for encryption? If we ban guns(encryption), only the criminals will have it. The only thing I can think of is that the majority of people who advocate for encryption are anti-gun, and don't want to give strength to that argument?
- newjersey 11y agoWell, my perception of the gun lobby is that a big part of the effort is centralized. At least that's my impression after reading the nytimes article. I don't have any insight into the gun lobby so I can't tell whether it is any accurate. http://nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-the-gospel-of-guns.html http://nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-qu... I fear the gun argument is further weakened by the fact that civilians can't have big anti-aircraft guns in their backyard pointed towards the sky. I bet I can't operate a decent early warning radar in my backyard without running afoul of some zoning ordinance or another.
- steve19 11y agoYour perception is wrong. The gun lobby is crazyily grassroots. The NRA is demonized, but their spending in lobbying is low (their income is relatively low and they have a lot of other elements such as training and certification) and less than the gun control lobby since Bloomberg (and some silicon Valley VCs) began to lobby. There is only one reason the NRA has influence: members and sympathizers will vote on thier recommendations, they have a lot of members and the NRA will always endorse the most sympathetic candidate to thier cause regardless of party affiliation. The pro encryption lobby could emulate this. Lobby groups like the eff need more members and crucially need members to vote for who they recommend regardless of the candidates other views ie. vote for Trump if he said he was pro encryption.
- schoen 11y ago> Lobby groups like the eff need more members and crucially need members to vote for who they recommend EFF is a 501(c)(3) organization and is forbidden to endorse or oppose political candidates. That is different from NRA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association#Organizational_structure_and_finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association#Org...
- chongli 11y agoFBI Director James Comey already went before Congress and was rejected. I'd say the possibility of him succeeding in the future is even lower, given the way this case has played out. He effectively tried to make an end-run around the legislature by going through the courts with an extremely old law. The powers in Congress did not appreciate this at all and had a lot of very pointed questions for him at his last hearing before the House Judiciary Committee[0]. [0] http://qz.com/628745/i-have-no-idea-the-fbi-director-at-the-apple-judiciary-hearing-gets-schooled-on-security-tech-by-a-congressman/ http://qz.com/628745/i-have-no-idea-the-fbi-director-at-the-...
- ickwabe 11y agoWhat are we to make of these sorts of comments from Obama and Feinstein? It seems like there is strong backing by certain political interests to make it impossible for the average phone user to encrypt their own devices in such a way that the providers cannot access certain data. This dove-tails nicely with what some consider a war on general computing... http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-obama-idUSKCN0WD2KV http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-obama-idU... http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/262658-feinstein-vows-to-offer-encryption-piercing-bill http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/262658-feinstein-vow...
- chongli 11y agoThe Obama Administration simply will not throw their own (the FBI) under the bus. Fortunately for us the Democrats do not control congress so Obama is unlikely to get his wish here.
- intrasight 11y agoNor is Obama's position that of the larger Democrat party.
- progressive_dad 11y agoWell that's simply because they don't know any better. If they were privy to the security and policy briefings Obama received then they would SURELY support the president and senator Feinstein in securing their own liberty and freedom. All they would have to do is submit a FOIA request and wait 10 years...
- shmerl 11y agoIt won't be outlawed as long as public will be against it. It will be a political suicide for opponents of encryption. But only if public will be against it. Time will tell.
- awqrre 11y agoObama might outlaw it on his way out...
- shmerl 11y agoWhat would be the point for him to make a mess on his way out? Just to be nasty?
- mirkules 11y agoFurther the agenda of his political donors and pave the way for the successor. Or make it difficult for an adversarial successor to pass opposite laws.
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoIn the United States, the President doesn't pass laws. Obama has taken executive power to extremes during his term, but he can't do that.
- shmerl 11y agoDid the Congress authorize all that uncostitutional surveillance for example? I thought it was a secret court interpreting the law in secret on behalf of the executive power. So "passing laws" in such context is not a far fetched claim.
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoThat wouldn't require Obama to wait until just before leaving office. Anything done in secret has already been implemented. What the FBI is asking for could likely be done by the NSA already. The Feds want a publicly known law or ruling they can use as a club over private companies, so they don't have to break any more encryption; they want it all handed to them. And they're too shortsighted and pigheaded to see/admit the folly of what they're asking.
- songshu 11y agoWould there be a first amendment (freedom of speech) argument against such an outlawing? If you are not allowed to say things which the government doesn't understand, then your speech isn't free.
- cderwin 11y agoThe actual text of the Constitution is "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech", so I guess a first amendment argument comes down to the interpretation of "abridge" -- I would certainly think outlawing speech of a certain nature, i.e. encrypted speech, or authenticated speech, would be abridging that freedom. But I really don't really know how far removed the courts have taken the law from the original text.
- brudgers 11y agoNo sophisticated actor will use an app. Sophisticated actors being those who are unwilling to let Eve choose the encryption algorithm.
- bmelton 11y ago"they'll issue an executive order to ban one-way encryption outright" I want to point out the reasons for which that's impossible -- that the executive can't issue an EO that applies to the citizenry at large, and that there aren't any agencies that specifically regulate software companies, but as I can't find a loophole that hasn't been leveraged to render my arguments moot, I can't even convince myself that it couldn't be done. That said, on paper, executive orders are only applicable within the executive branch. E.g., the president can issue an order that commands his agency chiefs to interpret a law a certain way, or compel them to issue internal commands to change an action that they are otherwise charged with doing, but laws to which the citizenry must comply need be done via Congress.
- coldcode 11y agoPlus the impossibility of controlling apps, software and frameworks outside the US. All it takes is one person in one country building correct encryption and everyone uses that for illegal activities everywhere. It's not a matter of blocking holes in a dike; there is no dike.
- anantzoid 11y agoIf the government succeeds in this case, it'll be George Orwell's 1984 everywhere. A constant monitoring will be done on everyone irrespective of who they are. The terrorists will move on to another stream of communication (I think ISIS already has their own app), and only the innocent citizens will be left to be monitored by the FBI.
- XorNot 11y agoThis is the slippery slope fallacy: the current Apple court battle is so limited in scope that it cannot possibly create precedent for such broadranging actions, and those it might speak to would be subject to court oversight (i.e. you would require a separate writ for another phone, which would be equally subject to court challenge - it would not be a rubber stamp process, it would not be able to demand substantially different actions yet cite precedent). Unless there is a current lawsuit where an affirmative ruling would imply a general order to introduce backdoored encryption in an entire line of products, then it is not "a matter of time" - and thus is also the classic slippery slope fallacy - decision A does not decide decisions B, C and D without further consideration.