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There's no down-side for the FBI here. Even if they lose in courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, they're going to lobby in Congress for anti-crypto-in-phon
by kabdib 11y ago
There's no down-side for the FBI here. Even if they lose in courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, they're going to lobby in Congress for anti-crypto-in-phones (and probably all devices).
And they won't stop doing that. (It sucks that we're the ones paying for that lobbying, but that's kind of beside the point).
If Crypto Wars II goes in favor of privacy versus surveillance, expect Crypto Wars III. And IV. That's the thing about bad actors who are embedded in the state, they can afford to just keep trying. And at some point there will be some Big Event that will result in very bad knee-jerk legislation, or someone will slip in a ban on consumer crypto right next to something unrelated like waterways legislation, and we'll be back on the road to the Supremes again at best. The most secure "enclave" doesn't help you if you can't legally make the product.
I don't have a solution other than to change the makeup of the FBI and other actors, somehow.
- sounds 11y agoPart of the surveillance side's strategy is to keep it a relatively obscure footnote until it's a done deal. Apple is making it into something a lot more mainstream. Hopefully other participants in the privacy side hopefully can capitalize on this to push it even further into the mainstream.
- jrnichols 11y agoFeinstein is already trying to. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-legislation-idUSKCN0WB2QC http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-legislati...
- studentrob 11y agoThat woman is so clueless. Her ideas are easy to debunk. She thinks tech companies like Apple must have access to encrypted data since they sell targeted ads. She mentions this when she questions Lynch on the DOJ budget hearing [1]. She fails to see the difference between iPhone data on disk and Facebook posts. Obama, meanwhile, doesn't have much better understanding of the tech world. He characterizes Facebook posts as "public" [2]. While I agree it is better that citizens think of online data as public, FB is most definitely not all public. It just isn't set up with the protections being put in place on the iPhone. [1] http://www.c-span.org/video/?406201-1/attorney-general-loretta-lynch-testimony-justice-department-operations http://www.c-span.org/video/?406201-1/attorney-general-loret... (seek to 51:00) [2] http://www.snappytv.com/tc/1159970 http://www.snappytv.com/tc/1159970
- kabdib 11y agoFeinstein was prominently anti-crypto in the Clipper Chip / Crypto Wars I. She's been doing this for over 20 years. I don't think she's clueless. What she knows and what she says are probably very different. Political power has little to do with displays of technical competence.
- studentrob 11y agoPerhaps I overstated it. I have only seen a few videos of her recently and I got the impression other senators in the room don't really take her seriously anymore. Maybe she was knowledgeable during CW I but her argument makes no sense in this particular case. Plus, I do believe you can be an influential person without really knowing what you're talking about. That's politics.