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FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

293 points by rietta 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago
Keep an eye on the would-be profiteers. Why would VCs like Fred Wilson land on the side of the FBI and parrot their position despite certainly knowing better? Because there are billions of dollars of government investment money being lined up to implement the wishful thinking key escrow and other back-door schemes. Even if back-doored encryption is doomed in the market, co-investors will be rewarded.
- mikekij 11y ago
  As naive as it may be, I had never considered this. I think Fred is a trustworthy enough guy that he may not consciously be thinking about profiteering, but I can't figure out any other reason a tech investor would support back doors.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Shrewd plays or profiteering from idiocy... call it what you like. Look at the people on this forum who know a great deal about security. Some like to portray themselves as thoughtfully open minded - that they are seeking a solution. They make respectful noises about legal traditions. They know it boils down to exhuming the corpse of key escrow and rebranding it. But they are in a position to profit.
CiPHPerCoder 11y ago
So we've moved from the clipper chip to, prospectively in the near future, the Clapper chip. History is trying to repeat itself, but this time we have legal precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160315-jefferson.html https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160315-jefferson.html All this sort of tactic will do is result in irreparable damage to the tech sector and the US economy. No murders, rapes, child abductions, terrorist plots to destroy buildings, or whatever other specters they summon to haunt us will be prevented.
- wyldfire 11y ago
  > On October 15, 2003, almost nine years after Bernstein first brought the case, the judge dismissed it and asked Bernstein to come back when the government made a "concrete threat". I guess the threat's technically not here yet, but seems like it's right around the corner. djb, pack your bags for the ninth circuit.
jpgvm 11y ago
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncompromised systems. The only thing this sort of system is good for is enhancing the reach of the surveillance apparatus. That is, spying on innocent people. As for why they want to do this.. no-one knows but it's awfully concerning.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
  - jpgvm 11y ago
    Like I said it's not about the average person, it's about someone with something to hide. Those with something to hide will always go the extra distance. The issue I take with the FBI approach is it will have no effect on those that have stuff to hide but destroy any semblance privacy for those that don't. Terrorists will use GPG, citizens will use their backdoored iPhone full disk encryption and everyone but the terrorists lose.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      Oh. I misinterpreted what you were saying to mean "it doesn't matter because we have GPG."
    - Aelinsaar 11y ago
      That's a problem too. Right now people with something to hide don't stand out amidst a background of similar encryption. If they suddenly have to switch to something relatively more exotic, that alone would be a coup for people in signals intelligence, don't you think?
taf2 11y ago
So... the FBI is essentially arguing we should all keep our doors unlocked because they have had to do some investigations in the past where they came to a home that was locked and it was hard for them to enter the home.
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  Or that you can get a lock on your door, so long as it's one of a short list of locks where they have a spare key. This has been tried, and works about as well as you might expect: https://theintercept.com/2015/09/17/tsa-doesnt-really-care-luggage-locks-hacked/ https://theintercept.com/2015/09/17/tsa-doesnt-really-care-l...
- onion2k 11y ago
  The FBI want to have a giant warehouse that houses a copy of every house key but we don't need to worry because no one will ever manage to break in to the warehouse.
  - Benjammer 11y ago
    And everyone with legitimate access to the warehouse will be 100% trustworthy no matter what for the entire span of time they are granted access, and nobody without legitimate access will ever be allowed in, even someone like a co-worker of someone with access, and even under the full supervision of someone with legitimate access.
    - f00b4r123 11y ago
      An even stronger guarantee: That the definition of trustworthy and "good guy" are unchanging, and even in a dystopian future where a rogue actor is in control of government, those keys are safe because they understand the morality of the people who created them.
      - ethbro 11y ago
        I'd say something to invoke Godwin's law, but it seems pretty clear that genocidal governments that sweep into power love having access to copious amounts of detailed records.
coldcode 11y ago
The FBI director is hanging out on a very long limb and sawing away. Even if you mandated in the US that everyone only use HTTP and no encryption everyone will just use it from other countries. Even if one country on earth has one competent programmer implement one secure framework everyone will use it. This is beating a dead horse long after its been cremated.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  All you have to do is look at Korean banking to see that Rube Goldberg machines with questionable security practices can easily become standard with the "correct" legal apparatus in place.
pgpkkg 11y ago
Interestingly, the prominent VC Fred Wilson recently came out in favor of this as well, going so far as to label those who believe strong encryption should be legal "absolutists". Anybody know if USV is investing in a startup that's planning to get the government to mandate the use of broken crypto? Anybody know of startups that are planning to work in this area?
lossolo 11y ago
Rest of the world will just do encryption in their hardware/software. Good luck to USA tech companies if this law will be enforced.
tshtf 11y ago
In the future, the few years following Snowden's revealations may be viewed as the golden years of strong cryptography: A time when service providers and application developers began taking these issues seriously. We're moving into a new era now. All it may take is a single attack in the US to drive the legislative and judicial branches to roll back all the fantastic improvements we've seen over the past few years.
- graycat 11y ago
  They can "roll back" for mass marketed products but not for some simple, open source software in standard C that someone runs on an old PC with PC/DOS, no hard disk and no network connection. So, when turn the power off, the PC forgets everything about the de/encryption. The only non-volatile storage is on diskette. If worried, then just burn those. With the encryption done, the output is just a base 64 file of gibberish safe to mail to the NYT, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. And with no attempts at security, can use products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft can send such data with no problem. The little command line programs on PC/DOS? Easy enough for middle school students to use; when that was state of the art computing, middle school students did use it.
  - tjgq 11y ago
    And then they will outlaw the possession of said standard C software, as well as of computer hardware that does not comply with government-mandated eavesdropping. And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. Even if the Base64 data is just a sequence of completely random bits - because who would keep sequences of random bits around, unless they're a terrorist trying to hide something? I'm sorry, but I don't think pushing encryption down into the underworld is a viable solution to the problem. There's no limit to the bad laws that the government can pass. The only real long-term solution is to recognize encryption as a right, otherwise we'll only keep seeing these repeated attempts to outlaw it.
    - graycat 11y ago
      > And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." For encryption as a recognized right, no, that's asking a bit much of the US political system. BTW, for the person receiving the base 64 code (that's the way JPGs, etc. are sent in e-mail), first go through base 64 decoding and, then, apply the receiver's private key to that to decode back to the secret message, e.g., where and when the boy and his girlfriend are going to meet and carve their initials on a tree. Base 64 is in the internet standard for e-mail and there is called MIME for multi-media internet mail extensions. So, the idea of MIME is to permit sending pictures, audio, movies, etc. So, in arithmetic, base 10 has digits 0-9, that is, 10 digits. Base 16 has, right, 16 digits, 0-9-A-F. Base 2 has, you guessed it, 2 digits, 0-1. Well, presto, bingo, base 64 has 64 digits, 0-9, a-z, etc., all simple, ordinary printable characters such as e-mail had been sending right along. Well, with 6 bits, can count from 0 to 63, that is, have 64 different patterns. So, given a stream of bits, can replace each 6 of them with one of the base 64 digits. And there is a simple solution for what to do with any few bits left over. So, that is how to take any stream of bits and 'encode' it to just printable characters easy to send via e-mail. A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious.
kylehotchkiss 11y ago
Sort of a bummer that lawmakers don't have a better understanding of encryption in general and what it protects. They'd condemn hackers breaking into phones/accounts and stealing important notes/pictures, but turn around and condemn the very technology preventing that from happening to _everybody_ Anybody here want to run for office and be a voice for tech rights?
- Aelinsaar 11y ago
  I'm not convinced that a lack of understanding isn't borne from a lack of giving a rat's ass to begin with. Why learn about something when your vote and influence are already bought and paid for?
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    > a lack of giving a rat's ass to begin with. Agreed... > your vote and influence are already bought and paid for? Overly cynical. The standard whipping boy for 'buying politicians' is Big Business, and Apple certainly qualifies as that. In fact, this is an affront to essentially every big business in the world with IP to protect.
    - undersuit 11y ago
      And all of those contractors that the NSA and the FBI work with, they are just too poor to even think about lobbying for more work in the shadow of Apple's influence. /s Big business is on both sides of this conflict.
    - gr3yh47 11y ago
      >In fact, this is an affront to essentially every big business in the world with IP to protect. it really isn't, because many of the biggest business want a greater degree of population control, and having access to all of every individuals info is a means to that end.
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
makecheck 11y ago
Remember how New York’s (physical) master keys became easily accessible[1] despite the fact that they were supposedly so carefully managed? All that effort, all that trouble, and now not only is there essentially no security at all but the master keys created a security hole that did not need to exist. The security of encryption is similarly proportional to the security of keys. The fewer things you have to secure, the easier it is to keep them secret. The “master key” concept in New York only served to create something of great value that people wanted to acquire, and massively increased the risk when that fell into the wrong hands. Obviously the same thing could happen with an encryption key, except it is worse because you don’t even have to be in the same country as the source of the key to acquire it or use it. [1] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pols-public-outraged-shocking-master-key-security-breach-subways-article-1.167499 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pols-public-outraged-sho...
- krzrak 11y ago
  Interesting article. I find amusing this (quite popular) type of argumentation: > "This is a serious security breach," said Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), who heads the Council's Public Safety Committee. "We know terrorists are planning to attack our subways, and the MTA and NYPD better find these magical morons quickly, and then make them disappear for a year in jail." Like the only thing between terrorists and the subway platforms is that they can't afford ticket, so they have to go through the staff gate.
  - anexprogrammer 11y ago
    But that is so revealing of the mindset. * We can have strong encryption just for the good guys * We can have master keys that only approved staff will use * We can block all the bad things on the internet and it'll be like they don't exist * If we have a back door into an encrypted device, only the good guys will use it It's like no politician ever read about crime. Staff can't be blackmailed or bribed. No one working for the govt ever used resources for their own ends. No govt agency ever tried to blackmail an inconvenient public figure. Because a terrorist once made a terrible attempt at a bomb in his trainers, quick, we'd better make millions of people remove their shoes at airports. Clearly no terrorist has the wit to try a different approach. The list is so damn long, yet people who really should know better get it wrong with depressing regularity. Are most politicians really that stupid? What are their advisers advising FFS?
Tepix 11y ago
If all US crypto is backdoored, the rest of the world and the criminals will use non-US crypto. The FBI also wants to infiltrate communities of human rights activists. There are many reasons not to overly trust them.
- ex3ndr 11y ago
  Our Project (actor.im) already started to adopt russian encryption.
  - Tepix 11y ago
    Open source encryption should do the trick, if a backdoor gets added, just fork it.
italophil 11y ago
This sounds like the equivalent to the TSA approved locks for luggage. Just decoration and no real protection at all.
- DamnYuppie 11y ago
  The funny thing is that if you transport firearms you CAN'T use TSA locks. Which I find very funny, it is as if they are saying we don't trust our own people.
cubano 11y ago
How is this even news anymore? It is utterly and completely unsurprising that all the government agencies involved in law enforcement on all levels will fight a never-ending fight against anything that impedes their ability to do what they think their job is. They don't care about privacy or any of that, and see restrictions to getting full access to all data as we see bugs in our systems that keep them from running correctly.
- Gracana 11y ago
  News doesn't have to be surprising to make headlines.
grandalf 11y ago
Comey's argument makes sense at first. Why not have a trusted escrow provider keep keys safe, and also respond to court orders when necessary. It feels almost like a checks and balances kind of argument, the kind that Americans find persuasive with our three-branch government. The problem is that we now know that the government has the goal of unlawful surveillance without oversight from courts, the legislature, or the public. There is essentially an ongoing "by any means necessary" attack on civil liberties. Why should we think that the government is not planning to infiltrate the escrow services and preemptively capture all keys? There has been a profound breach of trust (revealed by Snowden) and we must insist upon the rule of law and basic democratic transparency before we consent to any further risks. I try not to be cynical but I am thinking that the trend we are on is leading to strong crypto being largely criminalized. I am hoping that our decentralized systems adapt to this threat and offer solutions that cannot be shut down (like Bitcoin and Ethereum). Incidentally, if Apple seems likely to lose the battle over a back door, it ought to offer an Ethereum smart contract that will unlock one phone every day, require a key provided by each member of congress (with 100% consent required to unlock a device), and publish all unlock key requests on the Ethereum blockchain after a 30 day delay in case an investigation is in progress. This protects against mass surveillance, but offers a very small back door with full transparency and no potential for large scale use (or abuse).
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  So what do you do when the "trusted" escrow provider gets hacked, just like OPM was, and countless US corporations who've had customer records and credit card numbers stolen? What's the point of using encryption if you're going to put the keys in the hands of some unaccountable entity which is easily hacked? You might as well not use it at all then.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    I didn't argue any of those things. I think you missed the subtlety of my comment.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > The problem is that we now know that the government has the goal of unlawful surveillance without oversight from courts, the legislature, or the public … There has been a profound breach of trust (revealed by Snowden) and we must insist upon the rule of law … Nothing Snowden alleges is illegal or unconstitutional, despite his and his supporters' repeated assertions. 'I don't like it' does not imply 'it is illegal and unconstitutional.' Neither the law nor the constitution forbids all bad things (nor does either mandate all good things, but that's another issue). You are correct, of course, that one major issue is that States cannot be trusted to respect their citizens' liberties. Another is that States cannot be trusted to take care of their own data: an escrowed key will shortly become a leaked key. > Incidentally, if Apple seems likely to lose the battle over a back door, it ought to offer an Ethereum smart contract that will unlock one phone every day, require a key provided by each member of congress (with 100% consent required to unlock a device), and publish all unlock key requests on the Ethereum blockchain after a 30 day delay in case an investigation is in progress. That doesn't make sense, since the Congress is the legislative branch and it is the executive which actually does things. What could make sense is a smart contract which is unlocked by the judiciary. But we're a long, long way from enforced smart contracts which do things like handle succession of new members &c. I can't wait until we're there, someday, but it'll take a good long while.
mikekij 11y ago
It seems as though the tech community (myself included) uniformly agrees that the FBI's requests are unreasonable. Is there someone with a sound technological understanding of encryption that thinks we should have some back door / key escrow / master key? I've seen that Fred Wilson and other USV partners seem to think the FBI's requests are reasonable, and usually I trust their analysis. But this whole thing just seems like such a bad idea.
Animats 11y ago
We need to have the FBI's entire internal records copied and held by a third party in the judicial branch, so that they can be examined under court order when necessary.
jkot 11y ago
Great, 10GB file filled with random data will be illegal in another country.
ionised 11y ago
I look forward to seeing how the FBI plans to prevent people from all over the globe using PGP.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chatmasta 11y ago
The FBI can whine about this all they want. I hope that the lawmakers interpret it as the FBI spitting in their face, because that's exactly what's happening. We have had this debate already -- in the 1990s -- and this was the result: "A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." [0] The FBI can lobby to change that, but that's not what they're doing. They're lobbying that OTHER laws (e.g. the All Writs Act) enable what they want. Frankly, that's absurd... how can a 1789 law overrule a 1994 law when you're talking about modern technology? Ironically, the FBI is creating incentives for new tech startups to incorporate outside of the USA. If you're building a product which depends on reliable encryption in order to be valuable, why the fuck would you incorporate in the USA?!? You would alienate foreign customers who are suspicious of the US legal/surveillance apparatus. And you would be entering a murky legal landscape where it seems increasingly likely that, if your startup ever becomes big enough to be a target, the government will require some kind of key escrow or it will shut down your business or even jail you. In the face of that much uncertainty, it seems like it would be asinine to incorporate in the USA. Maybe there is space in the market for a business to commoditize offshore incorporation. Make setting up a Seychelles corporation as easy as setting up a US LLC. Build in as many legal protection mechanisms as possible, e.g. owning the corporation via a trust that you are the sole executioner of. [0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/usc_sec_47_00001002----000-.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/usc_sec_47_00001002----...
- likeatlas 11y ago
  Maybe there is space in the market for a business to commoditize offshore incorporation. Like https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas except outside the US.
saosebastiao 11y ago
I think an interesting approach that could be taken by Apple is to concede to letting the FBI have a master key, so long as they hold an insurance policy that covers the damages in the case of a key leak, including but not limited to the potential damage to Apple's brand and market value, and the same damages to all of Apple's customers that relied on their security. That would force the FBI to reconcile the costs of maintaining a multi-trillion dollar insurance policy with the expected value of a potential reduction in terrorism. When it comes to the US government, money seems to talk louder than anything else...seems like it could possibly work.
- autotune 11y ago
  I, for one, would gladly enjoy having to pay for the insurance policy in the form of taxes out of my paycheck to cover the stupidity of having a master key system in place, not to mention when the premiums skyrocket after said key gets stolen and all of our iPhones get breached. /s
  - saosebastiao 11y ago
    That's exactly the point. Apple agreeing to their demands in exchange for a reasonable insurance of the potential risks would force the FBI to reconcile their unreasonable demands with the public. I would imagine that the biggest cheerleaders of the FBI's side in the general public are Republicans. Can you imagine them ever supporting this?
Jemmeh 11y ago
Yeah, I bet having to get a warrant to search houses makes their job harder, too. I:
hackuser 11y ago
As much as I object in principle, it's an interesting technological puzzle. I've been wondering about a hardware-based solution: * A fuse that when broken reduces the cost of cracking the security from 'impossible' to something an organization with large resources, such as the FBI, can do in a day. * When the fuse is broken, a message is displayed to the user indicating it. At least, the device might not boot, tipping off the user that something is wrong. _ It would meet these requirements (am I overlooking any important ones)? * Nobody could mass-crack the devices. To crack it, you would need the device in your possession and a day of significant computing power. * It would require a significant investment of resources, so it wouldn't be done for trivial issues. * Users would know when their device has been cracked: It would have to be out of their possession for 24 hours and they would be notified. _ The question is, could such a thing be implemented in a way that it couldn't be hacked (without great difficulty)?
- grandalf 11y ago
  See my other comment in this thread for a solution
andrewla 11y ago
It's not clear to me where this article gets the idea of what the FBI wants. I haven't seen anything from the FBI or from Comey that indicates that they want to place limits on future cryptographics systems. It even seems like Comey is aware that the particular technique he is asking Apple to use will not apply to future phones made by Apple, and that the reality is that cryptography will soon reach the point where the FBI will not be able to rely on decrypting data as part of their investigative approach. Yes, if Apple creates this exploit, then that exploit will potentially be available to other state actors and criminal enterprises. But only for iPhones older than the 5s. Fundamentally, as other commenters have pointed out, this is not creating a backdoor -- this is using an existing backdoor to install a bigger backdoor. It is, of course, possible that in the future even newer iPhones might find themselves vulnerable to unauthorized decryption, but really, the FBI's ask in this particular case really is narrow in scope, because it does only apply to older phones. I don't see the slippery slope here that many people seem to think exists. The slope begins and ends with a phone released in 2013. All any person (criminal or otherwise) has to do is buy a newer iPhone, and then this whole discussion no longer applies.
- chillacy 11y ago
  The issue isn't a technical one as much as a legal one. If the FBI can get the government to interpret the All Writs Act the way they want (any private entities must do what the govt says to aid a criminal investigation unless explicitly forbidden by law) to force Apple to write a custom version of iOS for them this time, the fear is that they can use the same law to install backdoors in ongoing versions. Legally there would be precedence for Apple to have to allow investigators to access other phones as well by means of making Apple write code to do so, which in the future could mean tracking location, turning on microphones and cameras, etc.
  - Azkar 11y ago
    Exactly. The slope begins with a phone released in 2013, but it doesn't end, ever - unless we can set the precedent now that Apple doesn't have to do this kind of thing.
  - 11y ago
stegosaurus 11y ago
Here is the source code for the Linux Kernel including dm-crypt: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/ https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.... Here is the source code for cryptsetup: https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup Here is the source code for GnuPG: http://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi http://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi I have these files on my hard drive. There are probably cryptographers that can recite the RSA/AES algorithms from memory. We have the Internet and general purpose computers. The only way you're getting rid of encryption is destroying all of that. I don't know why people feel the need to resort to arguments about economic damage, civil rights, whatever. This is the fucking _Internet_ we're talking about. This isn't some biscuit tin with a particular pattern that Uncle George really, really likes. It's the god damn Internet. You want to destroy one of the most beautiful creations humanity has ever seen, in the name of what? Stopping a few marathons being bombed? Is the entire government clinically insane? Would they turn the sky green if it gave them more power? Am I still living in reality?
- kenshaw 11y ago
  What most people probably don't realize is even if the government was somehow able to successfully outlaw cryptography and eliminated it completely from the face of the earth, it would do absolutely nothing to prevent future marathon bombings. The two simply aren't related, and there is nothing on this phone that is going to magically help the FBI, NSA, or any other TLA find and stop terrorists from acting.
vonklaus 11y ago
Many people want gun laws to change. For better or worse there will still be millions of guns on the street. So if you don't want "bad guys" to use guns or encryption it would be pretty impractical to go back in time and prevent these technological & regulatory forces that provided the means for them to exist,
jacquesm 11y ago
Ah, the twice-per-decade re-run of the Clipper Chip fiasco. I wasn't aware we were already due for one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
skybrian 11y ago
The problem with these slippery slope arguments is that they start treating unlocking a phone as the equivalent to breaking network encryption when technically they're not at all the same. Apparently the FBI wants you to think they're the same too? If so, don't let them away with it. Signing a software update with a private key you already have is using crypto as it was intended. We presume private keys can be kept secure with enough effort, or public key encryption doesn't work, https doesn't work, software updates don't work, game over. Any attempts to get private parties to turn over their private keys should be strongly resisted, but requiring them to sign something given a search warrant adds a procedural step that acts as a check on government power (they can verify that the search warrant is valid, minimize scope of the change, and fight it in court if necessary). Key escrow is a whole different thing, where they require a whole new system to be designed to preserve keys that would normally be destroyed. It's hard to preserve information when the user wants to destroy it (they can block network traffic and destroy the phone), resulting in all sorts of bad effects on system design and new vulnerabilities.
ihsw 11y ago
Every local police department will be able to break strong encryption at their own discretion. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is an inevitability. Let that sink in before we consider the validity of their proposal. Their escapades will not be limited to criminal investigations, but whatever they want. There will be no oversight and access will be unlimited.
SwimAway 11y ago
Watch the first video under 'further reading'. Many of those congressmen seem very biased and uneducated while deliberately misconstruing basic knowledge and law. Edit: wanted to commend congressmen Mr. Issa, Ms. Lofgren and Mr. Johnson.
tptacek 11y ago
They're right to want that, and the public is right to refuse them.
outworlder 11y ago
Let's imagine they succeed. So all strong encryption will need to have the keys stored "safely" somewhere. Perhaps at some government-controlled server, because we all know they are super secure. So, what happens once the keys eventually leak? When nation states AND terrorist organizations get the keys to unlock everyone's encryption? If "think of terrorists" is the rhetoric here, what happens when THEY have access to our devices?
malandrew 11y ago
If the FBI gets its way on this, quite simply the US will no longer deserve the technology industry it currently has. I for one would follow companies moving abroad to do the right thing and avoid these shenanigans entirely. On top of it being the right thing, it is also in Apple's economic interest to fight this since the US is but one market. They also happen to have enough cash to flat out threaten to move all affected products out of the US and have them built by a non-American subsidiary.
greenisland 11y ago
Nothing stops anyone from developing software that can be installed on mobile phones to encrypt this or that. This will be a type of Cold War between those with something to protect and those who want everything transparent. I will choose to encrypt outside of what they OS does and to hell with every other idea. Besides, all one has to do is encrypt, use one-time pads and keys are largely irrelevant.
bcheung 11y ago
I remember the government making the same arguments when PGP came around. All this has been ignored before and all this will be ignored again.
makmanalp 11y ago
Schenier, Hal Abelson, Adelman (from RSA) already wrote about key escrow almost 2 decades ago. From the text: > All key-recovery systems require the existence of a highly sensitive and highly-available secret key or collection of keys that must be maintained in a secure manner over an extended time period. These systems must make decryption information quickly accessible to law enforcement agencies without notice to the key owners. These basic requirements make the problem of general key recovery difficult and expensive -- and potentially too insecure and too costly for many applications and many users. > Attempts to force the widespread adoption of key-recovery encryption through export controls, import or domestic use regulations, or international standards should be considered in light of these factors. The public must carefully consider the costs and benefits of embracing government-access key recovery before imposing the new security risks and spending the huge investment required (potentially many billions of dollars, in direct and indirect costs) to deploy a global key recovery infrastructure. https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/archives/1997/04/the_risks_of_key_rec.html https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/archives/1997/04/the_r...
nske 11y ago
Scary that something so important will be determined by the perception of the vast majority of the public, who has no understanding of what's at stake. To most people arguments like "it will help us find terrorists and pedophiles" and flawed analogies with doors and keys are much more appealing, only because they are easy to understand, while the opposite arguments sound philosophical, alien or carry less weight because they contradict what "the experts" (i.e. the FBI) claim. But they shouldn't sound so: what's happening is wrong not just because of the practical fallacies of the pro-restrictions arguments -in which most discussions focus currently- it is wrong because the only way for government monitoring to be effective in the end, is to outright criminalise secure encryption by everyone. It should be blatantly obvious that the most dangerous of their claimed target group, wouldn't be dissuaded by the inconvenience of using custom/non-friendly software/hardware, so any lesser measure would be just useless. And on that premise, how can many people not see how wrong it would be if one day we are called criminals for exchanging a truly private message with someone? In what words and with what simple examples can you make non-technical people see how bad this reality would be and how far it can stretch to things that they do care about? And that even if it didn't, it would still be fundamentally wrong... Not a rhetorical question by the way, I've tried to participate in such discussions and failed miserably to be convincing -so any tips are appreciated.
mucker 11y ago
No FBI. Hell, not that long ago I started the work to become an agent. I love law. I love bad guys being put away. But you have _ZERO_ need for an escrow on strong encryption. It is perfectly legitimate that citizens don't give up their secrets. This is why we have discovery, warrants, and the Tenth Amendment (however riddled with holes it now is). The government has no compelling interest here.
gPphX 11y ago
Washington Post published TSA Master Keys https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_keys.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_ke...
gPphX 11y ago
Is this equivalent to FBI residing in your phone ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts#Modern_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts#Modern_relevan...

293 points by rietta 11y ago

Keep an eye on the would-be profiteers. Why would VCs like Fred Wilson land on the side of the FBI and parrot their position despite certainly knowing better? Because there are billions of dollars of government investment money being lined up to implement the wishful thinking key escrow and other back-door schemes. Even if back-doored encryption is doomed in the market, co-investors will be rewarded.

mikekij 11y ago
As naive as it may be, I had never considered this. I think Fred is a trustworthy enough guy that he may not consciously be thinking about profiteering, but I can't figure out any other reason a tech investor would support back doors.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Shrewd plays or profiteering from idiocy... call it what you like. Look at the people on this forum who know a great deal about security. Some like to portray themselves as thoughtfully open minded - that they are seeking a solution. They make respectful noises about legal traditions. They know it boils down to exhuming the corpse of key escrow and rebranding it. But they are in a position to profit.

CiPHPerCoder 11y ago

So we've moved from the clipper chip to, prospectively in the near future, the Clapper chip. History is trying to repeat itself, but this time we have legal precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160315-jefferson.html https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160315-jefferson.html All this sort of tactic will do is result in irreparable damage to the tech sector and the US economy. No murders, rapes, child abductions, terrorist plots to destroy buildings, or whatever other specters they summon to haunt us will be prevented.

wyldfire 11y ago
> On October 15, 2003, almost nine years after Bernstein first brought the case, the judge dismissed it and asked Bernstein to come back when the government made a "concrete threat". I guess the threat's technically not here yet, but seems like it's right around the corner. djb, pack your bags for the ninth circuit.

jpgvm 11y ago

I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncompromised systems. The only thing this sort of system is good for is enhancing the reach of the surveillance apparatus. That is, spying on innocent people. As for why they want to do this.. no-one knows but it's awfully concerning.

emodendroket 11y ago
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
- jpgvm 11y ago
  Like I said it's not about the average person, it's about someone with something to hide. Those with something to hide will always go the extra distance. The issue I take with the FBI approach is it will have no effect on those that have stuff to hide but destroy any semblance privacy for those that don't. Terrorists will use GPG, citizens will use their backdoored iPhone full disk encryption and everyone but the terrorists lose.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    Oh. I misinterpreted what you were saying to mean "it doesn't matter because we have GPG."
  - Aelinsaar 11y ago
    That's a problem too. Right now people with something to hide don't stand out amidst a background of similar encryption. If they suddenly have to switch to something relatively more exotic, that alone would be a coup for people in signals intelligence, don't you think?

taf2 11y ago

So... the FBI is essentially arguing we should all keep our doors unlocked because they have had to do some investigations in the past where they came to a home that was locked and it was hard for them to enter the home.

SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
Or that you can get a lock on your door, so long as it's one of a short list of locks where they have a spare key. This has been tried, and works about as well as you might expect: https://theintercept.com/2015/09/17/tsa-doesnt-really-care-luggage-locks-hacked/ https://theintercept.com/2015/09/17/tsa-doesnt-really-care-l...
onion2k 11y ago
The FBI want to have a giant warehouse that houses a copy of every house key but we don't need to worry because no one will ever manage to break in to the warehouse.
- Benjammer 11y ago
  And everyone with legitimate access to the warehouse will be 100% trustworthy no matter what for the entire span of time they are granted access, and nobody without legitimate access will ever be allowed in, even someone like a co-worker of someone with access, and even under the full supervision of someone with legitimate access.
  - f00b4r123 11y ago
    An even stronger guarantee: That the definition of trustworthy and "good guy" are unchanging, and even in a dystopian future where a rogue actor is in control of government, those keys are safe because they understand the morality of the people who created them.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      I'd say something to invoke Godwin's law, but it seems pretty clear that genocidal governments that sweep into power love having access to copious amounts of detailed records.

coldcode 11y ago

The FBI director is hanging out on a very long limb and sawing away. Even if you mandated in the US that everyone only use HTTP and no encryption everyone will just use it from other countries. Even if one country on earth has one competent programmer implement one secure framework everyone will use it. This is beating a dead horse long after its been cremated.

emodendroket 11y ago
All you have to do is look at Korean banking to see that Rube Goldberg machines with questionable security practices can easily become standard with the "correct" legal apparatus in place.

pgpkkg 11y ago

Interestingly, the prominent VC Fred Wilson recently came out in favor of this as well, going so far as to label those who believe strong encryption should be legal "absolutists". Anybody know if USV is investing in a startup that's planning to get the government to mandate the use of broken crypto? Anybody know of startups that are planning to work in this area?

lossolo 11y ago

Rest of the world will just do encryption in their hardware/software. Good luck to USA tech companies if this law will be enforced.

tshtf 11y ago

In the future, the few years following Snowden's revealations may be viewed as the golden years of strong cryptography: A time when service providers and application developers began taking these issues seriously. We're moving into a new era now. All it may take is a single attack in the US to drive the legislative and judicial branches to roll back all the fantastic improvements we've seen over the past few years.

graycat 11y ago
They can "roll back" for mass marketed products but not for some simple, open source software in standard C that someone runs on an old PC with PC/DOS, no hard disk and no network connection. So, when turn the power off, the PC forgets everything about the de/encryption. The only non-volatile storage is on diskette. If worried, then just burn those. With the encryption done, the output is just a base 64 file of gibberish safe to mail to the NYT, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. And with no attempts at security, can use products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft can send such data with no problem. The little command line programs on PC/DOS? Easy enough for middle school students to use; when that was state of the art computing, middle school students did use it.
- tjgq 11y ago
  And then they will outlaw the possession of said standard C software, as well as of computer hardware that does not comply with government-mandated eavesdropping. And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. Even if the Base64 data is just a sequence of completely random bits - because who would keep sequences of random bits around, unless they're a terrorist trying to hide something? I'm sorry, but I don't think pushing encryption down into the underworld is a viable solution to the problem. There's no limit to the bad laws that the government can pass. The only real long-term solution is to recognize encryption as a right, otherwise we'll only keep seeing these repeated attempts to outlaw it.
  - graycat 11y ago
    > And then they will pass laws that force you to give up the encryption key to that Base64 data or face imprisonment. IMNAL, but my understanding is that such a law would run into rock solid, granite hard, iron clad parts of a little issue called the US Constitution. E.g., if the cops ask you a question, then you don't have to answer. The person's lawyer can just tell the cops that "My client has no idea what that base 64 gibberish is." For encryption as a recognized right, no, that's asking a bit much of the US political system. BTW, for the person receiving the base 64 code (that's the way JPGs, etc. are sent in e-mail), first go through base 64 decoding and, then, apply the receiver's private key to that to decode back to the secret message, e.g., where and when the boy and his girlfriend are going to meet and carve their initials on a tree. Base 64 is in the internet standard for e-mail and there is called MIME for multi-media internet mail extensions. So, the idea of MIME is to permit sending pictures, audio, movies, etc. So, in arithmetic, base 10 has digits 0-9, that is, 10 digits. Base 16 has, right, 16 digits, 0-9-A-F. Base 2 has, you guessed it, 2 digits, 0-1. Well, presto, bingo, base 64 has 64 digits, 0-9, a-z, etc., all simple, ordinary printable characters such as e-mail had been sending right along. Well, with 6 bits, can count from 0 to 63, that is, have 64 different patterns. So, given a stream of bits, can replace each 6 of them with one of the base 64 digits. And there is a simple solution for what to do with any few bits left over. So, that is how to take any stream of bits and 'encode' it to just printable characters easy to send via e-mail. A huge fraction of all Internet data is sent as base 64. So, base 64 data alone is nothing suspicious.

kylehotchkiss 11y ago

Sort of a bummer that lawmakers don't have a better understanding of encryption in general and what it protects. They'd condemn hackers breaking into phones/accounts and stealing important notes/pictures, but turn around and condemn the very technology preventing that from happening to _everybody_ Anybody here want to run for office and be a voice for tech rights?

Aelinsaar 11y ago
I'm not convinced that a lack of understanding isn't borne from a lack of giving a rat's ass to begin with. Why learn about something when your vote and influence are already bought and paid for?
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  > a lack of giving a rat's ass to begin with. Agreed... > your vote and influence are already bought and paid for? Overly cynical. The standard whipping boy for 'buying politicians' is Big Business, and Apple certainly qualifies as that. In fact, this is an affront to essentially every big business in the world with IP to protect.
  - undersuit 11y ago
    And all of those contractors that the NSA and the FBI work with, they are just too poor to even think about lobbying for more work in the shadow of Apple's influence. /s Big business is on both sides of this conflict.
  - gr3yh47 11y ago
    >In fact, this is an affront to essentially every big business in the world with IP to protect. it really isn't, because many of the biggest business want a greater degree of population control, and having access to all of every individuals info is a means to that end.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago

makecheck 11y ago

Remember how New York’s (physical) master keys became easily accessible[1] despite the fact that they were supposedly so carefully managed? All that effort, all that trouble, and now not only is there essentially no security at all but the master keys created a security hole that did not need to exist. The security of encryption is similarly proportional to the security of keys. The fewer things you have to secure, the easier it is to keep them secret. The “master key” concept in New York only served to create something of great value that people wanted to acquire, and massively increased the risk when that fell into the wrong hands. Obviously the same thing could happen with an encryption key, except it is worse because you don’t even have to be in the same country as the source of the key to acquire it or use it. [1] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pols-public-outraged-shocking-master-key-security-breach-subways-article-1.167499 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pols-public-outraged-sho...

krzrak 11y ago
Interesting article. I find amusing this (quite popular) type of argumentation: > "This is a serious security breach," said Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), who heads the Council's Public Safety Committee. "We know terrorists are planning to attack our subways, and the MTA and NYPD better find these magical morons quickly, and then make them disappear for a year in jail." Like the only thing between terrorists and the subway platforms is that they can't afford ticket, so they have to go through the staff gate.
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  But that is so revealing of the mindset. * We can have strong encryption just for the good guys * We can have master keys that only approved staff will use * We can block all the bad things on the internet and it'll be like they don't exist * If we have a back door into an encrypted device, only the good guys will use it It's like no politician ever read about crime. Staff can't be blackmailed or bribed. No one working for the govt ever used resources for their own ends. No govt agency ever tried to blackmail an inconvenient public figure. Because a terrorist once made a terrible attempt at a bomb in his trainers, quick, we'd better make millions of people remove their shoes at airports. Clearly no terrorist has the wit to try a different approach. The list is so damn long, yet people who really should know better get it wrong with depressing regularity. Are most politicians really that stupid? What are their advisers advising FFS?

Tepix 11y ago

If all US crypto is backdoored, the rest of the world and the criminals will use non-US crypto. The FBI also wants to infiltrate communities of human rights activists. There are many reasons not to overly trust them.

ex3ndr 11y ago
Our Project (actor.im) already started to adopt russian encryption.
- Tepix 11y ago
  Open source encryption should do the trick, if a backdoor gets added, just fork it.

italophil 11y ago

This sounds like the equivalent to the TSA approved locks for luggage. Just decoration and no real protection at all.

DamnYuppie 11y ago
The funny thing is that if you transport firearms you CAN'T use TSA locks. Which I find very funny, it is as if they are saying we don't trust our own people.

cubano 11y ago

How is this even news anymore? It is utterly and completely unsurprising that all the government agencies involved in law enforcement on all levels will fight a never-ending fight against anything that impedes their ability to do what they think their job is. They don't care about privacy or any of that, and see restrictions to getting full access to all data as we see bugs in our systems that keep them from running correctly.

Gracana 11y ago
News doesn't have to be surprising to make headlines.

grandalf 11y ago

Comey's argument makes sense at first. Why not have a trusted escrow provider keep keys safe, and also respond to court orders when necessary. It feels almost like a checks and balances kind of argument, the kind that Americans find persuasive with our three-branch government. The problem is that we now know that the government has the goal of unlawful surveillance without oversight from courts, the legislature, or the public. There is essentially an ongoing "by any means necessary" attack on civil liberties. Why should we think that the government is not planning to infiltrate the escrow services and preemptively capture all keys? There has been a profound breach of trust (revealed by Snowden) and we must insist upon the rule of law and basic democratic transparency before we consent to any further risks. I try not to be cynical but I am thinking that the trend we are on is leading to strong crypto being largely criminalized. I am hoping that our decentralized systems adapt to this threat and offer solutions that cannot be shut down (like Bitcoin and Ethereum). Incidentally, if Apple seems likely to lose the battle over a back door, it ought to offer an Ethereum smart contract that will unlock one phone every day, require a key provided by each member of congress (with 100% consent required to unlock a device), and publish all unlock key requests on the Ethereum blockchain after a 30 day delay in case an investigation is in progress. This protects against mass surveillance, but offers a very small back door with full transparency and no potential for large scale use (or abuse).

Grishnakh 11y ago
So what do you do when the "trusted" escrow provider gets hacked, just like OPM was, and countless US corporations who've had customer records and credit card numbers stolen? What's the point of using encryption if you're going to put the keys in the hands of some unaccountable entity which is easily hacked? You might as well not use it at all then.
- grandalf 11y ago
  I didn't argue any of those things. I think you missed the subtlety of my comment.
zeveb 11y ago
> The problem is that we now know that the government has the goal of unlawful surveillance without oversight from courts, the legislature, or the public … There has been a profound breach of trust (revealed by Snowden) and we must insist upon the rule of law … Nothing Snowden alleges is illegal or unconstitutional, despite his and his supporters' repeated assertions. 'I don't like it' does not imply 'it is illegal and unconstitutional.' Neither the law nor the constitution forbids all bad things (nor does either mandate all good things, but that's another issue). You are correct, of course, that one major issue is that States cannot be trusted to respect their citizens' liberties. Another is that States cannot be trusted to take care of their own data: an escrowed key will shortly become a leaked key. > Incidentally, if Apple seems likely to lose the battle over a back door, it ought to offer an Ethereum smart contract that will unlock one phone every day, require a key provided by each member of congress (with 100% consent required to unlock a device), and publish all unlock key requests on the Ethereum blockchain after a 30 day delay in case an investigation is in progress. That doesn't make sense, since the Congress is the legislative branch and it is the executive which actually does things. What could make sense is a smart contract which is unlocked by the judiciary. But we're a long, long way from enforced smart contracts which do things like handle succession of new members &c. I can't wait until we're there, someday, but it'll take a good long while.

mikekij 11y ago

It seems as though the tech community (myself included) uniformly agrees that the FBI's requests are unreasonable. Is there someone with a sound technological understanding of encryption that thinks we should have some back door / key escrow / master key? I've seen that Fred Wilson and other USV partners seem to think the FBI's requests are reasonable, and usually I trust their analysis. But this whole thing just seems like such a bad idea.

Animats 11y ago

We need to have the FBI's entire internal records copied and held by a third party in the judicial branch, so that they can be examined under court order when necessary.

jkot 11y ago

Great, 10GB file filled with random data will be illegal in another country.

ionised 11y ago

I look forward to seeing how the FBI plans to prevent people from all over the globe using PGP.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chatmasta 11y ago

The FBI can whine about this all they want. I hope that the lawmakers interpret it as the FBI spitting in their face, because that's exactly what's happening. We have had this debate already -- in the 1990s -- and this was the result: "A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." [0] The FBI can lobby to change that, but that's not what they're doing. They're lobbying that OTHER laws (e.g. the All Writs Act) enable what they want. Frankly, that's absurd... how can a 1789 law overrule a 1994 law when you're talking about modern technology? Ironically, the FBI is creating incentives for new tech startups to incorporate outside of the USA. If you're building a product which depends on reliable encryption in order to be valuable, why the fuck would you incorporate in the USA?!? You would alienate foreign customers who are suspicious of the US legal/surveillance apparatus. And you would be entering a murky legal landscape where it seems increasingly likely that, if your startup ever becomes big enough to be a target, the government will require some kind of key escrow or it will shut down your business or even jail you. In the face of that much uncertainty, it seems like it would be asinine to incorporate in the USA. Maybe there is space in the market for a business to commoditize offshore incorporation. Make setting up a Seychelles corporation as easy as setting up a US LLC. Build in as many legal protection mechanisms as possible, e.g. owning the corporation via a trust that you are the sole executioner of. [0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/usc_sec_47_00001002----000-.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/usc_sec_47_00001002----...

likeatlas 11y ago
Maybe there is space in the market for a business to commoditize offshore incorporation. Like https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas except outside the US.

saosebastiao 11y ago

I think an interesting approach that could be taken by Apple is to concede to letting the FBI have a master key, so long as they hold an insurance policy that covers the damages in the case of a key leak, including but not limited to the potential damage to Apple's brand and market value, and the same damages to all of Apple's customers that relied on their security. That would force the FBI to reconcile the costs of maintaining a multi-trillion dollar insurance policy with the expected value of a potential reduction in terrorism. When it comes to the US government, money seems to talk louder than anything else...seems like it could possibly work.

autotune 11y ago
I, for one, would gladly enjoy having to pay for the insurance policy in the form of taxes out of my paycheck to cover the stupidity of having a master key system in place, not to mention when the premiums skyrocket after said key gets stolen and all of our iPhones get breached. /s
- saosebastiao 11y ago
  That's exactly the point. Apple agreeing to their demands in exchange for a reasonable insurance of the potential risks would force the FBI to reconcile their unreasonable demands with the public. I would imagine that the biggest cheerleaders of the FBI's side in the general public are Republicans. Can you imagine them ever supporting this?

Jemmeh 11y ago

Yeah, I bet having to get a warrant to search houses makes their job harder, too. I:

hackuser 11y ago

As much as I object in principle, it's an interesting technological puzzle. I've been wondering about a hardware-based solution: * A fuse that when broken reduces the cost of cracking the security from 'impossible' to something an organization with large resources, such as the FBI, can do in a day. * When the fuse is broken, a message is displayed to the user indicating it. At least, the device might not boot, tipping off the user that something is wrong. _ It would meet these requirements (am I overlooking any important ones)? * Nobody could mass-crack the devices. To crack it, you would need the device in your possession and a day of significant computing power. * It would require a significant investment of resources, so it wouldn't be done for trivial issues. * Users would know when their device has been cracked: It would have to be out of their possession for 24 hours and they would be notified. _ The question is, could such a thing be implemented in a way that it couldn't be hacked (without great difficulty)?

grandalf 11y ago
See my other comment in this thread for a solution

andrewla 11y ago

It's not clear to me where this article gets the idea of what the FBI wants. I haven't seen anything from the FBI or from Comey that indicates that they want to place limits on future cryptographics systems. It even seems like Comey is aware that the particular technique he is asking Apple to use will not apply to future phones made by Apple, and that the reality is that cryptography will soon reach the point where the FBI will not be able to rely on decrypting data as part of their investigative approach. Yes, if Apple creates this exploit, then that exploit will potentially be available to other state actors and criminal enterprises. But only for iPhones older than the 5s. Fundamentally, as other commenters have pointed out, this is not creating a backdoor -- this is using an existing backdoor to install a bigger backdoor. It is, of course, possible that in the future even newer iPhones might find themselves vulnerable to unauthorized decryption, but really, the FBI's ask in this particular case really is narrow in scope, because it does only apply to older phones. I don't see the slippery slope here that many people seem to think exists. The slope begins and ends with a phone released in 2013. All any person (criminal or otherwise) has to do is buy a newer iPhone, and then this whole discussion no longer applies.

chillacy 11y ago
The issue isn't a technical one as much as a legal one. If the FBI can get the government to interpret the All Writs Act the way they want (any private entities must do what the govt says to aid a criminal investigation unless explicitly forbidden by law) to force Apple to write a custom version of iOS for them this time, the fear is that they can use the same law to install backdoors in ongoing versions. Legally there would be precedence for Apple to have to allow investigators to access other phones as well by means of making Apple write code to do so, which in the future could mean tracking location, turning on microphones and cameras, etc.
- Azkar 11y ago
  Exactly. The slope begins with a phone released in 2013, but it doesn't end, ever - unless we can set the precedent now that Apple doesn't have to do this kind of thing.
- 11y ago

stegosaurus 11y ago

Here is the source code for the Linux Kernel including dm-crypt: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/ https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.... Here is the source code for cryptsetup: https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup Here is the source code for GnuPG: http://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi http://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi I have these files on my hard drive. There are probably cryptographers that can recite the RSA/AES algorithms from memory. We have the Internet and general purpose computers. The only way you're getting rid of encryption is destroying all of that. I don't know why people feel the need to resort to arguments about economic damage, civil rights, whatever. This is the fucking _Internet_ we're talking about. This isn't some biscuit tin with a particular pattern that Uncle George really, really likes. It's the god damn Internet. You want to destroy one of the most beautiful creations humanity has ever seen, in the name of what? Stopping a few marathons being bombed? Is the entire government clinically insane? Would they turn the sky green if it gave them more power? Am I still living in reality?

kenshaw 11y ago
What most people probably don't realize is even if the government was somehow able to successfully outlaw cryptography and eliminated it completely from the face of the earth, it would do absolutely nothing to prevent future marathon bombings. The two simply aren't related, and there is nothing on this phone that is going to magically help the FBI, NSA, or any other TLA find and stop terrorists from acting.

vonklaus 11y ago

Many people want gun laws to change. For better or worse there will still be millions of guns on the street. So if you don't want "bad guys" to use guns or encryption it would be pretty impractical to go back in time and prevent these technological & regulatory forces that provided the means for them to exist,

jacquesm 11y ago

Ah, the twice-per-decade re-run of the Clipper Chip fiasco. I wasn't aware we were already due for one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

skybrian 11y ago

The problem with these slippery slope arguments is that they start treating unlocking a phone as the equivalent to breaking network encryption when technically they're not at all the same. Apparently the FBI wants you to think they're the same too? If so, don't let them away with it. Signing a software update with a private key you already have is using crypto as it was intended. We presume private keys can be kept secure with enough effort, or public key encryption doesn't work, https doesn't work, software updates don't work, game over. Any attempts to get private parties to turn over their private keys should be strongly resisted, but requiring them to sign something given a search warrant adds a procedural step that acts as a check on government power (they can verify that the search warrant is valid, minimize scope of the change, and fight it in court if necessary). Key escrow is a whole different thing, where they require a whole new system to be designed to preserve keys that would normally be destroyed. It's hard to preserve information when the user wants to destroy it (they can block network traffic and destroy the phone), resulting in all sorts of bad effects on system design and new vulnerabilities.

ihsw 11y ago

Every local police department will be able to break strong encryption at their own discretion. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is an inevitability. Let that sink in before we consider the validity of their proposal. Their escapades will not be limited to criminal investigations, but whatever they want. There will be no oversight and access will be unlimited.

SwimAway 11y ago

Watch the first video under 'further reading'. Many of those congressmen seem very biased and uneducated while deliberately misconstruing basic knowledge and law. Edit: wanted to commend congressmen Mr. Issa, Ms. Lofgren and Mr. Johnson.

tptacek 11y ago

They're right to want that, and the public is right to refuse them.

outworlder 11y ago

Let's imagine they succeed. So all strong encryption will need to have the keys stored "safely" somewhere. Perhaps at some government-controlled server, because we all know they are super secure. So, what happens once the keys eventually leak? When nation states AND terrorist organizations get the keys to unlock everyone's encryption? If "think of terrorists" is the rhetoric here, what happens when THEY have access to our devices?

malandrew 11y ago

If the FBI gets its way on this, quite simply the US will no longer deserve the technology industry it currently has. I for one would follow companies moving abroad to do the right thing and avoid these shenanigans entirely. On top of it being the right thing, it is also in Apple's economic interest to fight this since the US is but one market. They also happen to have enough cash to flat out threaten to move all affected products out of the US and have them built by a non-American subsidiary.

greenisland 11y ago

Nothing stops anyone from developing software that can be installed on mobile phones to encrypt this or that. This will be a type of Cold War between those with something to protect and those who want everything transparent. I will choose to encrypt outside of what they OS does and to hell with every other idea. Besides, all one has to do is encrypt, use one-time pads and keys are largely irrelevant.

bcheung 11y ago

I remember the government making the same arguments when PGP came around. All this has been ignored before and all this will be ignored again.

makmanalp 11y ago

Schenier, Hal Abelson, Adelman (from RSA) already wrote about key escrow almost 2 decades ago. From the text: > All key-recovery systems require the existence of a highly sensitive and highly-available secret key or collection of keys that must be maintained in a secure manner over an extended time period. These systems must make decryption information quickly accessible to law enforcement agencies without notice to the key owners. These basic requirements make the problem of general key recovery difficult and expensive -- and potentially too insecure and too costly for many applications and many users. > Attempts to force the widespread adoption of key-recovery encryption through export controls, import or domestic use regulations, or international standards should be considered in light of these factors. The public must carefully consider the costs and benefits of embracing government-access key recovery before imposing the new security risks and spending the huge investment required (potentially many billions of dollars, in direct and indirect costs) to deploy a global key recovery infrastructure. https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/archives/1997/04/the_risks_of_key_rec.html https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/archives/1997/04/the_r...

nske 11y ago

Scary that something so important will be determined by the perception of the vast majority of the public, who has no understanding of what's at stake. To most people arguments like "it will help us find terrorists and pedophiles" and flawed analogies with doors and keys are much more appealing, only because they are easy to understand, while the opposite arguments sound philosophical, alien or carry less weight because they contradict what "the experts" (i.e. the FBI) claim. But they shouldn't sound so: what's happening is wrong not just because of the practical fallacies of the pro-restrictions arguments -in which most discussions focus currently- it is wrong because the only way for government monitoring to be effective in the end, is to outright criminalise secure encryption by everyone. It should be blatantly obvious that the most dangerous of their claimed target group, wouldn't be dissuaded by the inconvenience of using custom/non-friendly software/hardware, so any lesser measure would be just useless. And on that premise, how can many people not see how wrong it would be if one day we are called criminals for exchanging a truly private message with someone? In what words and with what simple examples can you make non-technical people see how bad this reality would be and how far it can stretch to things that they do care about? And that even if it didn't, it would still be fundamentally wrong... Not a rhetorical question by the way, I've tried to participate in such discussions and failed miserably to be convincing -so any tips are appreciated.

mucker 11y ago

No FBI. Hell, not that long ago I started the work to become an agent. I love law. I love bad guys being put away. But you have _ZERO_ need for an escrow on strong encryption. It is perfectly legitimate that citizens don't give up their secrets. This is why we have discovery, warrants, and the Tenth Amendment (however riddled with holes it now is). The government has no compelling interest here.

gPphX 11y ago

Washington Post published TSA Master Keys https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_keys.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_ke...

gPphX 11y ago

Is this equivalent to FBI residing in your phone ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts#Modern_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts#Modern_relevan...