4 ms·

FBI Announces Post-Election Attack on Encryption

44 points by elishagh1 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago
This appears to be an extraordinarily misleading reframing of a story AP ran last week: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf160/comey-fbi-wants-adult-conversation-device-encryption http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf... In particular: Comey was lamenting (albeit weakly) that the conversation had "dipped below public consciousness", and his plans where to return it there. Heavily editorialized pieces can be fine when they do their own reporting. But "The Dash Times" doesn't seem to have done that; rather, they seem to be refocusing other pieces --- and not entirely honestly --- in order to generate rageviews. (I am, of course, foursquare against key escrow).
- mattmaroon 10y ago
  That article seemed so suspect that I came and checked the comments.
  - cheap1 10y ago
    There should be an app to blacklist people with misleading headlines.
    - l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
      Looks like this is part of the disinformation method the US government likes to employ. I wonder how many HN stories posted are actually from people that are working for various governments.
- nkobeissi 10y ago
  Ugh, thank your for posting this, I opened up the comments section to post exactly the same thing. It's incredibly annoying how misleading this article is. I don't know what the HN rules are for dealing with things like this. It seems anything that links back to the "World Socialist Website" is just a waste of everyone's time.
graycat 10y ago
"Back doors to encryption"? IIRC, Zimmerman and his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) based on Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key encryption is open source without back doors. And the RSA paper is no doubt still on the shelves of the libraries. And it is in various books, e.g., IIRC one by B. Schneier. IIRC, the main number theory is just Fermat's little theorem in even elementary books on number theory. IIRC, breaking RSA is equivalent to being able to factor a large integer into a product of prime numbers. As soon as some mathematician finds how to do that quickly enough to be practical, likely we will hear about it via an Abel Prize of just the front page of the NYT. I haven't heard yet. Comey: Good luck on getting your back doors in DIY, roll your own, open source PGP RSA encryption! The open source part? That is much of why Zimmerman did his work.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  > Comey: Good luck on getting your back doors in DIY, roll your own, open source PGP RSA encryption! He doesn't have to. He just has to compromise the main commercial systems, which 99.99% of the world population uses. At that point, the very fact that you're one of 0.01% of the population using decent crypto makes you a target.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  Since it's all in printed books, it's all free (government protected) speech. Too bad for the government.
theandrewbailey 10y ago
> The wait to address encryption until 2017 comes because “next year we can have an adult conversation in this country” about it. Which means: we won't have a conversation about it, and simply start issuing warrants and orders to companies demanding they comply anyway. If you want to challenge it, here's a Kafkaesque process for you.
fatdog 10y ago
Any bets that the FBI has traded some discretion on the Clinton email scandal now for total support on surveillance and crypto when she gets in? Even if they haven't, if Clinton does get it they have a huge lever to hold over her if she is elected, and will likely become the FBI President. The republican nominee doesn't seem like much a civil liberties guy either. The big winner of the U.S. presidential election will be police.

44 points by elishagh1 10y ago

This appears to be an extraordinarily misleading reframing of a story AP ran last week: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf160/comey-fbi-wants-adult-conversation-device-encryption http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf... In particular: Comey was lamenting (albeit weakly) that the conversation had "dipped below public consciousness", and his plans where to return it there. Heavily editorialized pieces can be fine when they do their own reporting. But "The Dash Times" doesn't seem to have done that; rather, they seem to be refocusing other pieces --- and not entirely honestly --- in order to generate rageviews. (I am, of course, foursquare against key escrow).

mattmaroon 10y ago
That article seemed so suspect that I came and checked the comments.
- cheap1 10y ago
  There should be an app to blacklist people with misleading headlines.
  - l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
    Looks like this is part of the disinformation method the US government likes to employ. I wonder how many HN stories posted are actually from people that are working for various governments.
nkobeissi 10y ago
Ugh, thank your for posting this, I opened up the comments section to post exactly the same thing. It's incredibly annoying how misleading this article is. I don't know what the HN rules are for dealing with things like this. It seems anything that links back to the "World Socialist Website" is just a waste of everyone's time.

graycat 10y ago

"Back doors to encryption"? IIRC, Zimmerman and his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) based on Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key encryption is open source without back doors. And the RSA paper is no doubt still on the shelves of the libraries. And it is in various books, e.g., IIRC one by B. Schneier. IIRC, the main number theory is just Fermat's little theorem in even elementary books on number theory. IIRC, breaking RSA is equivalent to being able to factor a large integer into a product of prime numbers. As soon as some mathematician finds how to do that quickly enough to be practical, likely we will hear about it via an Abel Prize of just the front page of the NYT. I haven't heard yet. Comey: Good luck on getting your back doors in DIY, roll your own, open source PGP RSA encryption! The open source part? That is much of why Zimmerman did his work.

duncan_bayne 10y ago
> Comey: Good luck on getting your back doors in DIY, roll your own, open source PGP RSA encryption! He doesn't have to. He just has to compromise the main commercial systems, which 99.99% of the world population uses. At that point, the very fact that you're one of 0.01% of the population using decent crypto makes you a target.
theandrewbailey 10y ago
Since it's all in printed books, it's all free (government protected) speech. Too bad for the government.

theandrewbailey 10y ago

> The wait to address encryption until 2017 comes because “next year we can have an adult conversation in this country” about it. Which means: we won't have a conversation about it, and simply start issuing warrants and orders to companies demanding they comply anyway. If you want to challenge it, here's a Kafkaesque process for you.

fatdog 10y ago

Any bets that the FBI has traded some discretion on the Clinton email scandal now for total support on surveillance and crypto when she gets in? Even if they haven't, if Clinton does get it they have a huge lever to hold over her if she is elected, and will likely become the FBI President. The republican nominee doesn't seem like much a civil liberties guy either. The big winner of the U.S. presidential election will be police.