5 ms·

It might help if one of them gets their personal information leaked because they used unencrypted technology in their private lives. I do suspect this won't hav

by donkeyd 11y ago

It might help if one of them gets their personal information leaked because they used unencrypted technology in their private lives. I do suspect this won't have any significant influence since they think the government will prevent the escrow from being hacked. Part of me hopes that there will be a significant data leak from whatever the NSA has stored. Maybe they'd realize that single point of failure sucks.

digikata 11y ago
There has been a significant leak of NSA data - that was Snowden. There have been significant leaks of the personal data of most (all?) applicants and holders of security clearances from OPM servers. So government is incapable of setting up systems to secure themselves. If backdoor access is required, it destroys the incentive for private industry to develop improved technology for privacy (is the argument that our technology is better going to sell when a back door is always available for access?). If better private technology were available then the government breaches would have been less likely. If better private technology were available then more commercial breaches would be stopped. We should be careful when the FBI is advocating a capability to help investigate events which occur vanishingly rarely (and for which they have many other tools and avenues) vs the integrity of infrastructure which affects a wide swath of public security. When one looks at the entire balance, requiring a backdoor has a high chance that it would lock us into much less secure state of affairs than if everyone is free to pursue and apply the best privacy/encryption measures possible.
cvwright 11y ago
> It might help if one of them gets their personal information leaked because they used unencrypted technology in their private lives This has already happened. An attacker going by the name Guccifer spent several years going around punking high ranking officials and ex-officials. Remember those goofy paintings of GW Bush's that hit the news a few years ago? Those were stolen and posted by Guccifer.

by donkeyd 11y ago

digikata 11y ago

There has been a significant leak of NSA data - that was Snowden. There have been significant leaks of the personal data of most (all?) applicants and holders of security clearances from OPM servers. So government is incapable of setting up systems to secure themselves. If backdoor access is required, it destroys the incentive for private industry to develop improved technology for privacy (is the argument that our technology is better going to sell when a back door is always available for access?). If better private technology were available then the government breaches would have been less likely. If better private technology were available then more commercial breaches would be stopped. We should be careful when the FBI is advocating a capability to help investigate events which occur vanishingly rarely (and for which they have many other tools and avenues) vs the integrity of infrastructure which affects a wide swath of public security. When one looks at the entire balance, requiring a backdoor has a high chance that it would lock us into much less secure state of affairs than if everyone is free to pursue and apply the best privacy/encryption measures possible.

cvwright 11y ago

> It might help if one of them gets their personal information leaked because they used unencrypted technology in their private lives This has already happened. An attacker going by the name Guccifer spent several years going around punking high ranking officials and ex-officials. Remember those goofy paintings of GW Bush's that hit the news a few years ago? Those were stolen and posted by Guccifer.