4 ms·

Does this surprise anyone? Nevermind that this all an exercise in charging windmills. How woeful it is, too. Billions of tax dollars spent in trying to defea

by ra1n85 11y ago

Does this surprise anyone? Nevermind that this all an exercise in charging windmills. How woeful it is, too. Billions of tax dollars spent in trying to defeat the inevitable. All with a "constitutional scholar" as a president. It's like the Prohibition of the 21st century, just tinged with free speech and notes of a surveillance state.

cmurf 11y ago
The alternative view is the president is giving FBI enough rope to hang themselves. The president doesn't need to get into every single battle.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > The president doesn't need to get into every single battle. True. But there's some debate over whether this is about one phone or about all phones. And the President did weigh in on the wider issue, which is, how to keep people safe in a world with strong encryption. He discussed it at SXSW and also in follow up comments by his Press Secretary [1]. He is convinced there is a way to guarantee warranted access to decrypt data. He does not understand that encryption technology is words on paper that anyone could write or make use of through free and open source software and apps. [1] https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s
  - cmurf 11y ago
    It isn't really clear what the president believes, because all of these statements are glittering generalities. In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter, because aside from a full break crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale. And Exhibits A through G show the government has a lot of problems keeping large amounts of data secure. So escrow won't happen. The user doesn't know the key. And the user thus far can't be compelled to hand over a KEK via their passphrase. Governments owning exploits is arguably them not protecting the public by withholding important security information. All of this leads to reduced trust. So I choose to think they know more than they let on. And this is about getting clear buy in from the public for whatever policy emerges. Because established policy is harder to unwind legally, and when the public is screaming for heads to roll this isn't good for our trust model. It's simply better for FBI to air the dirty laundry this way. The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.
    - studentrob 11y ago
      > In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists. Law enforcement then believes we technologists are being disobedient and aren't doing our civic duty. That has a cost. Law enforcement needs to understand that they can't rely on this data so heavily in the future. We pay them to keep us safe and I'd prefer that they figure out how to do their job the right way sooner than later. > crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale No doubt > So I choose to think they know more than they let on Feel free. I think their understanding of encryption tech is incomplete. I do think Comey is being less than truthful about his intentions to access "just this one phone". But I also feel it's our job to keep people informed so we don't play this mindless, pointless finger pointing game and get down to doing things the right way. If technologists do not teach the lay person how technology works, and we say everyone must research it themselves, then I believe we will take longer to move forward as a trustful society. > The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth. I completely agree it's the public we want to educate here to make sure this is the last crypto war, and that it ends with this case. We're only hurting ourselves by letting these buffoons have the biggest voice.
      - jerf 11y ago
        "While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists." This is one of those "correlation isn't causation" cases here... the President isn't leading them to that conclusion, there's an independent belief about that from, well, pretty much everybody other than experts in the field that there must be a middle ground.
        studentrob 11y ago
        For sure! I definitely believe people can make up their own minds, and hopefully most will. All I'm saying is we all don't have time to learn about every scientific advance and the surrounding laws and implications. We entrust a lot of that to others. And sometimes, through lack of knowledge, we can be swung by fear. My fear, since I don't know much about how law enforcement operates, is that law enforcement already feels disrespected by the public, and they will blame technologists for failing to catch terrorists instead of doing the best they can at their jobs. The rise in portable social media has amplified situations where they make mistakes. They need to quickly improve the quality of their service in order to maintain our trust. On top of that, if Apple builds a more secure device, they may soon find that they no longer have access to as much information as they had for the last 5 years. Like any boss, the President is supposedly the best suited and most informed. In this case he is the most informed on security issues balanced with civil liberties, and so he holds some convincing power over those who may not be as informed as he is, which includes all levels of the DOJ and the general public. It'd be nice if he knew a few more details about encryption and could either share those facts with the world so we can all understand a little bit more about the future, or at least stop acting like there is something tech companies can do to help the government catch terrorists who use encryption to hide their communications. On an ad hoc basis there may be something tech companies could do with the NSA, like having a special forces tech group, but forcing all encryption software to do key escrow just isn't feasible when you consider open source and free software. Obama's rhetoric sounds like he wants some permanent solution in place via legislation. That isn't possible and he is misleading the public by implying it is.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    I think there's a lot of assumptions about the Prez being dumb here that aren't warranted. From the perspective of the FBI, free encryption tools like PGP have been around a long time, but they only started having investigations blocked by encryption very recently, as Valley tech firms started integrating it and enabling it by default. Even if the Prez knows that encryption tools have been available for decades, and I suspect he does, that isn't the cause of the current problems they're having. With respect to getting warranted access to encrypted data, key escrow is an old concept, so of course there is. Just because we in the tech community don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
    - studentrob 11y ago
      > With respect to getting warranted access to encrypted data, key escrow is an old concept, so of course there is. Just because we in the tech community don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Okay, let's say key escrow is used. There will be a lot of debate and new laws passed by Congress. After this, who in the public do you think will sign up to use the products Apple admits has been weakened by government? I think the public will just become more informed about encryption and more people will end up using various encryption apps that circumvent whatever measures the government puts in place with Apple. In other words, it'll be a big waste of time, and the main target, terrorists, will be the first ones to figure out the right ways to hide their communications.
      - aptwebapps 11y ago
        > After this, who in the public do you think will sign up to use the products Apple admits has been weakened by government? Nearly all of the people who would have otherwise bought those products.
        studentrob 11y ago
        Perhaps. Either way my larger concern is the message being sent to law enforcement by the higher ups. I mentioned this in another comment. Plus the fact that terrorists will be the first to use other encryption tech. So, yeah, it is a waste of time and the reason can only be that our higher ups are misinformed. I don't see any good reason they would know all this and lie about it. So they can catch a few common criminals? So they can fail at catching the smart terrorists? It doesn't add up.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    The President is wisely keeping his distance. He's made some statements seeking compromise, which allows him to avoid tipping his hand with respect to his actual thoughts while supporting a need to support law enforcement's needs and civil liberties. The FBI guy is the guy at whom rocks will be thrown when something bad happens. All of his actions are biased towards "doing
    - studentrob 11y ago
      Yeah I don't think the President will catch much more flak than he has, but I do think it is clear from his comments that he does not understand the technology. That is too bad because he could really help inform and prepare the country for the future if he could stand up and relay some hard truths to the public while suggesting ways we can deal with new threats that are coming. The last thing we want is a leader to throw up his hands and say, "I do not understand this threat, and I have no idea how we're going to deal with it". He almost choked up on words like this at SXSW [1]. He cannot see a way forward because he does not even understand the problem. [1] https://youtu.be/wfsIZioIpdI?t=46m https://youtu.be/wfsIZioIpdI?t=46m

by ra1n85 11y ago

cmurf 11y ago

The alternative view is the president is giving FBI enough rope to hang themselves. The president doesn't need to get into every single battle.

studentrob 11y ago
> The president doesn't need to get into every single battle. True. But there's some debate over whether this is about one phone or about all phones. And the President did weigh in on the wider issue, which is, how to keep people safe in a world with strong encryption. He discussed it at SXSW and also in follow up comments by his Press Secretary [1]. He is convinced there is a way to guarantee warranted access to decrypt data. He does not understand that encryption technology is words on paper that anyone could write or make use of through free and open source software and apps. [1] https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s https://youtu.be/LRR2B5f82e0?t=38m25s
- cmurf 11y ago
  It isn't really clear what the president believes, because all of these statements are glittering generalities. In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter, because aside from a full break crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale. And Exhibits A through G show the government has a lot of problems keeping large amounts of data secure. So escrow won't happen. The user doesn't know the key. And the user thus far can't be compelled to hand over a KEK via their passphrase. Governments owning exploits is arguably them not protecting the public by withholding important security information. All of this leads to reduced trust. So I choose to think they know more than they let on. And this is about getting clear buy in from the public for whatever policy emerges. Because established policy is harder to unwind legally, and when the public is screaming for heads to roll this isn't good for our trust model. It's simply better for FBI to air the dirty laundry this way. The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    > In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists. Law enforcement then believes we technologists are being disobedient and aren't doing our civic duty. That has a cost. Law enforcement needs to understand that they can't rely on this data so heavily in the future. We pay them to keep us safe and I'd prefer that they figure out how to do their job the right way sooner than later. > crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale No doubt > So I choose to think they know more than they let on Feel free. I think their understanding of encryption tech is incomplete. I do think Comey is being less than truthful about his intentions to access "just this one phone". But I also feel it's our job to keep people informed so we don't play this mindless, pointless finger pointing game and get down to doing things the right way. If technologists do not teach the lay person how technology works, and we say everyone must research it themselves, then I believe we will take longer to move forward as a trustful society. > The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth. I completely agree it's the public we want to educate here to make sure this is the last crypto war, and that it ends with this case. We're only hurting ourselves by letting these buffoons have the biggest voice.
    - jerf 11y ago
      "While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists." This is one of those "correlation isn't causation" cases here... the President isn't leading them to that conclusion, there's an independent belief about that from, well, pretty much everybody other than experts in the field that there must be a middle ground.
      - studentrob 11y ago
        For sure! I definitely believe people can make up their own minds, and hopefully most will. All I'm saying is we all don't have time to learn about every scientific advance and the surrounding laws and implications. We entrust a lot of that to others. And sometimes, through lack of knowledge, we can be swung by fear. My fear, since I don't know much about how law enforcement operates, is that law enforcement already feels disrespected by the public, and they will blame technologists for failing to catch terrorists instead of doing the best they can at their jobs. The rise in portable social media has amplified situations where they make mistakes. They need to quickly improve the quality of their service in order to maintain our trust. On top of that, if Apple builds a more secure device, they may soon find that they no longer have access to as much information as they had for the last 5 years. Like any boss, the President is supposedly the best suited and most informed. In this case he is the most informed on security issues balanced with civil liberties, and so he holds some convincing power over those who may not be as informed as he is, which includes all levels of the DOJ and the general public. It'd be nice if he knew a few more details about encryption and could either share those facts with the world so we can all understand a little bit more about the future, or at least stop acting like there is something tech companies can do to help the government catch terrorists who use encryption to hide their communications. On an ad hoc basis there may be something tech companies could do with the NSA, like having a special forces tech group, but forcing all encryption software to do key escrow just isn't feasible when you consider open source and free software. Obama's rhetoric sounds like he wants some permanent solution in place via legislation. That isn't possible and he is misleading the public by implying it is.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  I think there's a lot of assumptions about the Prez being dumb here that aren't warranted. From the perspective of the FBI, free encryption tools like PGP have been around a long time, but they only started having investigations blocked by encryption very recently, as Valley tech firms started integrating it and enabling it by default. Even if the Prez knows that encryption tools have been available for decades, and I suspect he does, that isn't the cause of the current problems they're having. With respect to getting warranted access to encrypted data, key escrow is an old concept, so of course there is. Just because we in the tech community don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    > With respect to getting warranted access to encrypted data, key escrow is an old concept, so of course there is. Just because we in the tech community don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Okay, let's say key escrow is used. There will be a lot of debate and new laws passed by Congress. After this, who in the public do you think will sign up to use the products Apple admits has been weakened by government? I think the public will just become more informed about encryption and more people will end up using various encryption apps that circumvent whatever measures the government puts in place with Apple. In other words, it'll be a big waste of time, and the main target, terrorists, will be the first ones to figure out the right ways to hide their communications.
    - aptwebapps 11y ago
      > After this, who in the public do you think will sign up to use the products Apple admits has been weakened by government? Nearly all of the people who would have otherwise bought those products.
      - studentrob 11y ago
        Perhaps. Either way my larger concern is the message being sent to law enforcement by the higher ups. I mentioned this in another comment. Plus the fact that terrorists will be the first to use other encryption tech. So, yeah, it is a waste of time and the reason can only be that our higher ups are misinformed. I don't see any good reason they would know all this and lie about it. So they can catch a few common criminals? So they can fail at catching the smart terrorists? It doesn't add up.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  The President is wisely keeping his distance. He's made some statements seeking compromise, which allows him to avoid tipping his hand with respect to his actual thoughts while supporting a need to support law enforcement's needs and civil liberties. The FBI guy is the guy at whom rocks will be thrown when something bad happens. All of his actions are biased towards "doing
  - studentrob 11y ago
    Yeah I don't think the President will catch much more flak than he has, but I do think it is clear from his comments that he does not understand the technology. That is too bad because he could really help inform and prepare the country for the future if he could stand up and relay some hard truths to the public while suggesting ways we can deal with new threats that are coming. The last thing we want is a leader to throw up his hands and say, "I do not understand this threat, and I have no idea how we're going to deal with it". He almost choked up on words like this at SXSW [1]. He cannot see a way forward because he does not even understand the problem. [1] https://youtu.be/wfsIZioIpdI?t=46m https://youtu.be/wfsIZioIpdI?t=46m