6 ms·

No encryption was harmed in the making of this intercept

67 points by Khaine 9y ago

75dvtwin 9y ago
"Australia passed a metadata retention law that came into effect in April this year. It requires telecommunications companies and ISPs (i.e. carriage service providers, or CSPs) to keep a record of things like the IPs assigned to internet users (useful for matching against seized logs) as well as details around phone, SMS and email use. The PROBLEM is, people have moved towards offshore-based services that are not required, under Australian law, to keep such metadata. Think of iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Wickr and Telegram. ...." Wiretapping at its best. have not done historical analysis, but seems like much of the personal freedom reduction laws, start in Australia these days(if looking amongst English speaking countries). Closely followed by UK.
- fit2rule 9y ago
  Australia has long been the petri-dish for the new globalist elite to test their social engineering tools. It is, after all, one of the most successful white societies to have survived the empire. >Now look, I’m not advocating for these laws. I’m not. What I am trying to do is move the goalposts for this discussion. To me the goalposts have to be moved back to the public sphere, and what we should be doing is addressing the devolution happening in the computer world that results in users having absolutely no clue how to use their computers beyond opening up a single app and pouring all content into it. There is a fine balance between usability and uselessness, and its the user who is the most difficult component in this line.
ivanbakel 9y ago
A very good point. We've been obsessing over the security of the pipes - and rightly so - with the real assumption that our access to them is our own. The recent border holding phenomenon in the US come to mind when thinking about how much you really own your technological property. Maybe it's time to make free hardware the next major project.
peteretep 9y ago
Excellent article. Nothing irritates me more than hyperbole about politicians and law enforcement. Already we have people saying "Macron wants to ban encryption". All that said, LE hasn't helped itself at all with over-zealous and blunt-edged approaches so far -- cf FBI cracking iPhones, the NSA dragnet with little oversight. I don't mind the government being able to read my mail. I just want them to need a warrant first, that a judge has signed off on, and that's particular to me.
- rocqua 9y ago
  This article promotes the idea of companies pushing malicious updates to specific users. Malicious in the sense of circumventing E2E encryption without notifying the user and even doing this retroactively? Suppose then, that we get deterministic compilation and an open-source client for E2E encryption. It would then be possible (or rather, much easier) to detect such malicious updates. Should such protection be made illegal? I agree that there is no principled objection to access to communications provided there is a warrant. However, if this requires weakening security far beyond such points, it is no longer obvious that the trade of is worth it.
- Zak 9y ago
  Marcon wants to ban complete systems where the encryption and overall security is effective enough that the provider of said system cannot intercept messages for the government. While that's technically different, the effect is the same.
Zak 9y ago
> Do we believe that law enforcement bodies should have the authority to monitor the communications of people suspected of serious criminal offences? I actually believe they should not. They should have the authority to attempt to do so with proper oversight, but that in no way implies that they will necessarily succeed. I do not, however believe that they should have the authority to compel others to actively aid them. They should not, as the author suggests have the authority to compel Apple or Google to install malware on users' phones. If the police can do it themselves, with proper judicial oversight, or convince a software maker that spying on Osama bin Satan is worth compromising their principles, so be it. The idea that the ends justify the means tends to lead to some dark places and I submit that we should not start down those paths.
- Khaine 9y ago
  We've already gone down those paths. Societal expectations and legal precedent have been building for this since the 1880s where registers of telegram metadata were kept. I don't understand why everyone is so naive with respect to the internet. The Government's main argument is "Why should the internet be different from the 'real world'?" Telephone companies have had to comply with these kinds of government requests since telegrams were around. No-one I have heard has had a good serious argument against this. Saying no-one should have this power is great and all, but its waay to late. These powers to get access to this information with a warrant have been around in some form or another since before WW1.
  - AJ007 9y ago
    Certainly tracking telegrams is a far reach from today. Metadata tracks user's physical moves. Depending on web activity, it can even comes close to reconstructing what they are thinking. Who draws the line of what laws a commercial communication platform must follow and under which jurisdictions? There is no line because complying with the laws of one country your users are in will break the law of another. I believe he problem is the centralization of communication. There is no reason that these platforms can not be distributed networks running open source software. Any government, which does or does not respect basic human rights, would be free to attempt to intercept the communication and anyone else would be free to try to prevent it.
nattmat 9y ago
And when it is publicly known that the Apple, Samsung and Google compromises their operating systems, the adept criminals will flash their own operating system onto their phones. Apple and Samsung need to provide a worldwide infrastructure for handling requests from law enforcement all around the world (also in the less liberal regimes). How secure can this process really be by now. It doesn't matter that the coppers cannot reuse the exploits, they will just request and receive a new one instantly. Now criminals also have access to these services, since we now police corruption is a thing.
adekok 9y ago
What about being forced to hand over passwords? https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/01/fifth-amendement-passcodes-passwords-law/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/01/fifth-amendement-passcodes-pa... The Miami Herald reports that a child abuse suspect was jailed for six months for contempt of court after failing to reveal the correct passcode to his iPhone Why is he being forced to incriminate himself? 1) the information on the phone will change the charges against him and/or sentence. It would seem that a fifth amendment defence is appropriate, and legal 2) the information on the phone will not change the charges against him and/or sentence. In which case the information isn't needed. This whole debate for me can be summarized into one idea: Do you want other people to be able to watch everything you do?. If so, all bets are off. If not, the government shouldn't have the right to watch suspects, or to force people to incriminate themselves.
- dTal 9y ago
  Sounds like the contempt was due to deliberately handing over the wrong passcode and playing innocent, rather than a principled refusal to self-incriminate. Being held in contempt for such shenanigans is entirely appropriate. Of course if it really was a mistake that's hugely problematic.
adekok 9y ago
FTA: (a cop could) ask them to devise a way to retrieve the requested data from that device. Like, say, pushing a signed update to the target handset that will be tied to that device’s UDID (Unique Device Identifier). That way there’s no chance the coppers can intercept that update and re-use it on whomever they want I'm amazed at the naiveness of this approach. Sure, it looks good on paper: "Cops can't use wiretap for user X against user Y". But using technical means to prevent illegal behavior by police seems to be entirely the wrong approach. How about instead not giving the police the means to break the law? Or, why stop with device-specific checks? Why not just force the APP to do a UDID lookup to a police-controlled server, where it can control who gets wiretapped? If the companies don't comply, throw the executive in jail for "contempt of court"! After all, we're out to get the bad guys! Apple and others are right to fight this nonsense. They should take every possible step to ensure that they themselves can't help the police side-step the law. It not only protects their users, it protects themselves, too.
- luke-stanley 9y ago
  Remotely installing apps works fine with Android. What stops Google from being compelled to deploy an app for a user or millions of them? Probably not much, and the user probably has no control over it, right?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jasode 9y ago
I think Patrick Gray's essay actually adds more confusion. His effort to clarify the confusion by differentiating the layers between "metadata" vs "encryption" is technically correct but the extra details ends up obscuring what governments want: cleartext Yes, I agree with Patrick that framing the arguments on "math of encryption" is misguided. Yes, it leads to thinking that legislators are stupid similar to trying to pass a bill to redefine the value of pi.[1] Let's be clear.... the lawmakers actually don't care if the most powerful supercomputers at NSA/GCHAQ can't crack WhatsApp's latest 2048-bit-quantum-elliptical-encryption used in conjunction with Apple iOS tamperproof enclave chip. All that math doesn't matter. It's a mistake to think that government is retarded because "math is irreversible". That smugness makes people lose sight of the ultimate goal: the cleartext. If getting that cleartext means new laws that require all Android/Apple phones include a software keyboard interceptor (the onscreen keyboard) to log keystrokes and send the cleartext to a government server, then so be it. Such a keystroke logger would then make the "irreversible math" a moot point. Tldr: Don't frame the policy in terms of "encryption". Instead, focus on the "cleartext". >The first problem actually has very little to do with end-to-end encryption and a lot more to do with access to messaging metadata. This is true, but it's misleading because we know that governments eventually want more than the just the metadata. >Now it’s all very well and good for WhatsApp to argue that it doesn’t have the technical means to do so, which is a response that has lead to all sorts of tangles in Brazil’s courts, but the Australian law will simply say “we don’t care. Get them.”. This line dances close to what we really should be discussing (the cleartext). If you find yourself grumbling "the government wants to weaken encryption!", it means you're thinking like a computer scientist. On the other hand if you imagine, "if there was a new algorithm for _stronger encryption_ but it didn't matter because all the cleartext was available for monitoring", it means you're thinking like the government. >Do we believe that law enforcement bodies should have the authority to monitor the communications of people suspected of serious criminal offences? This question is another way of framing it which is closer to the aims of the government. They want to monitor the cleartext. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
- resf 9y ago
  Anybody who cares about the privacy of their communication can still use an open source stack. So yes it works as a tool for oppression and for catching extremely inept criminals, but it doesn't do much else for national security.
kerkeslager 9y ago
The alternatives proposed aren't any better. If we are to believe that law enforcement has Trojans that can bypass encryption, then we must believe that they aren't reporting the security flaws which allow the installation of these Trojans. These security flaws are not limited to law enforcement--terrorists can use them just as effectively as law enforcement can. So what the argument boils down to is: we shouldn't worry about law enforcement undermining security because law enforcement had already fundamentally undermined security? I don't buy it.
RubyPinch 9y ago
> Let me put this bluntly: If [weakening of encryption] is what the government winds up suggesting, then by all means hand me a bullhorn [...] well how else would you interpret the statement that Australian law supersedes math? - - - That aside, "We do not share customer data with 3rd parties, as it is not possible due to end-to-end encryption, except when we send things in plaintext, because of our moral obligation to the Australian government" is going to be a greaaaat addition to privacy policies for Australian companies. Going to go real well for international business.
Canada 9y ago
Just as spying through eavesdropping on plaintext was defeated through technical means, pushing malicious updates will also be defeated. Tech companies will have to declare that their update mechanisms contain no means to apply updates without user consent, and when updates are sent they will publish the hash. Security researchers will independently verify such claims by reverse engineering. Then whoever some government wants to spy on cannot be tricked into installing a malicious update, as suggested by this blog post. Governments are just going to have to accept that fact that their ability to intercept private communication and recover private documents will be reduced to zero in the near future, as it should be.
KlownAttourney 9y ago
Thank you for the clarification, it was necessary, given that the EFF article was somewhat hyperbolic in claiming that Malcolm Turnbull wanted to ban end-to-end encryption. When Turnbull argues that police powers of intervention in the 'real world' should be reflected in the digital world let's not forget: - the digital realm is on a completely new scale and therefore cannot be compared to 'old school' police work because computer intervention can be automated and executed practically instantaneously and conducted without any human witnesses. - privacy is a fundamental human right - encryption algorithms that prohibit 3rd party intervention will be significantly more secure than those that allow it, probably by several orders of magnitude. - why should we entrust the government with 'big brother' powers that could potentially fall into the hands of the terrorists themselves? What the Australian PM advocated makes about as much sense as former Ronald Reagan's proposed 'star wars' project: a scary, impractical, technological nightmare, motivated by the quest for global domination.

67 points by Khaine 9y ago

"Australia passed a metadata retention law that came into effect in April this year. It requires telecommunications companies and ISPs (i.e. carriage service providers, or CSPs) to keep a record of things like the IPs assigned to internet users (useful for matching against seized logs) as well as details around phone, SMS and email use. The PROBLEM is, people have moved towards offshore-based services that are not required, under Australian law, to keep such metadata. Think of iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Wickr and Telegram. ...." Wiretapping at its best. have not done historical analysis, but seems like much of the personal freedom reduction laws, start in Australia these days(if looking amongst English speaking countries). Closely followed by UK.

fit2rule 9y ago
Australia has long been the petri-dish for the new globalist elite to test their social engineering tools. It is, after all, one of the most successful white societies to have survived the empire. >Now look, I’m not advocating for these laws. I’m not. What I am trying to do is move the goalposts for this discussion. To me the goalposts have to be moved back to the public sphere, and what we should be doing is addressing the devolution happening in the computer world that results in users having absolutely no clue how to use their computers beyond opening up a single app and pouring all content into it. There is a fine balance between usability and uselessness, and its the user who is the most difficult component in this line.

ivanbakel 9y ago

A very good point. We've been obsessing over the security of the pipes - and rightly so - with the real assumption that our access to them is our own. The recent border holding phenomenon in the US come to mind when thinking about how much you really own your technological property. Maybe it's time to make free hardware the next major project.

peteretep 9y ago

Excellent article. Nothing irritates me more than hyperbole about politicians and law enforcement. Already we have people saying "Macron wants to ban encryption". All that said, LE hasn't helped itself at all with over-zealous and blunt-edged approaches so far -- cf FBI cracking iPhones, the NSA dragnet with little oversight. I don't mind the government being able to read my mail. I just want them to need a warrant first, that a judge has signed off on, and that's particular to me.

rocqua 9y ago
This article promotes the idea of companies pushing malicious updates to specific users. Malicious in the sense of circumventing E2E encryption without notifying the user and even doing this retroactively? Suppose then, that we get deterministic compilation and an open-source client for E2E encryption. It would then be possible (or rather, much easier) to detect such malicious updates. Should such protection be made illegal? I agree that there is no principled objection to access to communications provided there is a warrant. However, if this requires weakening security far beyond such points, it is no longer obvious that the trade of is worth it.
Zak 9y ago
Marcon wants to ban complete systems where the encryption and overall security is effective enough that the provider of said system cannot intercept messages for the government. While that's technically different, the effect is the same.

Zak 9y ago

> Do we believe that law enforcement bodies should have the authority to monitor the communications of people suspected of serious criminal offences? I actually believe they should not. They should have the authority to attempt to do so with proper oversight, but that in no way implies that they will necessarily succeed. I do not, however believe that they should have the authority to compel others to actively aid them. They should not, as the author suggests have the authority to compel Apple or Google to install malware on users' phones. If the police can do it themselves, with proper judicial oversight, or convince a software maker that spying on Osama bin Satan is worth compromising their principles, so be it. The idea that the ends justify the means tends to lead to some dark places and I submit that we should not start down those paths.

Khaine 9y ago
We've already gone down those paths. Societal expectations and legal precedent have been building for this since the 1880s where registers of telegram metadata were kept. I don't understand why everyone is so naive with respect to the internet. The Government's main argument is "Why should the internet be different from the 'real world'?" Telephone companies have had to comply with these kinds of government requests since telegrams were around. No-one I have heard has had a good serious argument against this. Saying no-one should have this power is great and all, but its waay to late. These powers to get access to this information with a warrant have been around in some form or another since before WW1.
- AJ007 9y ago
  Certainly tracking telegrams is a far reach from today. Metadata tracks user's physical moves. Depending on web activity, it can even comes close to reconstructing what they are thinking. Who draws the line of what laws a commercial communication platform must follow and under which jurisdictions? There is no line because complying with the laws of one country your users are in will break the law of another. I believe he problem is the centralization of communication. There is no reason that these platforms can not be distributed networks running open source software. Any government, which does or does not respect basic human rights, would be free to attempt to intercept the communication and anyone else would be free to try to prevent it.

nattmat 9y ago

And when it is publicly known that the Apple, Samsung and Google compromises their operating systems, the adept criminals will flash their own operating system onto their phones. Apple and Samsung need to provide a worldwide infrastructure for handling requests from law enforcement all around the world (also in the less liberal regimes). How secure can this process really be by now. It doesn't matter that the coppers cannot reuse the exploits, they will just request and receive a new one instantly. Now criminals also have access to these services, since we now police corruption is a thing.

adekok 9y ago

What about being forced to hand over passwords? https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/01/fifth-amendement-passcodes-passwords-law/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/01/fifth-amendement-passcodes-pa... The Miami Herald reports that a child abuse suspect was jailed for six months for contempt of court after failing to reveal the correct passcode to his iPhone Why is he being forced to incriminate himself? 1) the information on the phone will change the charges against him and/or sentence. It would seem that a fifth amendment defence is appropriate, and legal 2) the information on the phone will not change the charges against him and/or sentence. In which case the information isn't needed. This whole debate for me can be summarized into one idea: Do you want other people to be able to watch everything you do?. If so, all bets are off. If not, the government shouldn't have the right to watch suspects, or to force people to incriminate themselves.

dTal 9y ago
Sounds like the contempt was due to deliberately handing over the wrong passcode and playing innocent, rather than a principled refusal to self-incriminate. Being held in contempt for such shenanigans is entirely appropriate. Of course if it really was a mistake that's hugely problematic.

adekok 9y ago

FTA: (a cop could) ask them to devise a way to retrieve the requested data from that device. Like, say, pushing a signed update to the target handset that will be tied to that device’s UDID (Unique Device Identifier). That way there’s no chance the coppers can intercept that update and re-use it on whomever they want I'm amazed at the naiveness of this approach. Sure, it looks good on paper: "Cops can't use wiretap for user X against user Y". But using technical means to prevent illegal behavior by police seems to be entirely the wrong approach. How about instead not giving the police the means to break the law? Or, why stop with device-specific checks? Why not just force the APP to do a UDID lookup to a police-controlled server, where it can control who gets wiretapped? If the companies don't comply, throw the executive in jail for "contempt of court"! After all, we're out to get the bad guys! Apple and others are right to fight this nonsense. They should take every possible step to ensure that they themselves can't help the police side-step the law. It not only protects their users, it protects themselves, too.

luke-stanley 9y ago
Remotely installing apps works fine with Android. What stops Google from being compelled to deploy an app for a user or millions of them? Probably not much, and the user probably has no control over it, right?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jasode 9y ago

I think Patrick Gray's essay actually adds more confusion. His effort to clarify the confusion by differentiating the layers between "metadata" vs "encryption" is technically correct but the extra details ends up obscuring what governments want: cleartext Yes, I agree with Patrick that framing the arguments on "math of encryption" is misguided. Yes, it leads to thinking that legislators are stupid similar to trying to pass a bill to redefine the value of pi.[1] Let's be clear.... the lawmakers actually don't care if the most powerful supercomputers at NSA/GCHAQ can't crack WhatsApp's latest 2048-bit-quantum-elliptical-encryption used in conjunction with Apple iOS tamperproof enclave chip. All that math doesn't matter. It's a mistake to think that government is retarded because "math is irreversible". That smugness makes people lose sight of the ultimate goal: the cleartext. If getting that cleartext means new laws that require all Android/Apple phones include a software keyboard interceptor (the onscreen keyboard) to log keystrokes and send the cleartext to a government server, then so be it. Such a keystroke logger would then make the "irreversible math" a moot point. Tldr: Don't frame the policy in terms of "encryption". Instead, focus on the "cleartext". >The first problem actually has very little to do with end-to-end encryption and a lot more to do with access to messaging metadata. This is true, but it's misleading because we know that governments eventually want more than the just the metadata. >Now it’s all very well and good for WhatsApp to argue that it doesn’t have the technical means to do so, which is a response that has lead to all sorts of tangles in Brazil’s courts, but the Australian law will simply say “we don’t care. Get them.”. This line dances close to what we really should be discussing (the cleartext). If you find yourself grumbling "the government wants to weaken encryption!", it means you're thinking like a computer scientist. On the other hand if you imagine, "if there was a new algorithm for _stronger encryption_ but it didn't matter because all the cleartext was available for monitoring", it means you're thinking like the government. >Do we believe that law enforcement bodies should have the authority to monitor the communications of people suspected of serious criminal offences? This question is another way of framing it which is closer to the aims of the government. They want to monitor the cleartext. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

resf 9y ago
Anybody who cares about the privacy of their communication can still use an open source stack. So yes it works as a tool for oppression and for catching extremely inept criminals, but it doesn't do much else for national security.

kerkeslager 9y ago

The alternatives proposed aren't any better. If we are to believe that law enforcement has Trojans that can bypass encryption, then we must believe that they aren't reporting the security flaws which allow the installation of these Trojans. These security flaws are not limited to law enforcement--terrorists can use them just as effectively as law enforcement can. So what the argument boils down to is: we shouldn't worry about law enforcement undermining security because law enforcement had already fundamentally undermined security? I don't buy it.

RubyPinch 9y ago

> Let me put this bluntly: If [weakening of encryption] is what the government winds up suggesting, then by all means hand me a bullhorn [...] well how else would you interpret the statement that Australian law supersedes math? - - - That aside, "We do not share customer data with 3rd parties, as it is not possible due to end-to-end encryption, except when we send things in plaintext, because of our moral obligation to the Australian government" is going to be a greaaaat addition to privacy policies for Australian companies. Going to go real well for international business.

Canada 9y ago

Just as spying through eavesdropping on plaintext was defeated through technical means, pushing malicious updates will also be defeated. Tech companies will have to declare that their update mechanisms contain no means to apply updates without user consent, and when updates are sent they will publish the hash. Security researchers will independently verify such claims by reverse engineering. Then whoever some government wants to spy on cannot be tricked into installing a malicious update, as suggested by this blog post. Governments are just going to have to accept that fact that their ability to intercept private communication and recover private documents will be reduced to zero in the near future, as it should be.

KlownAttourney 9y ago

Thank you for the clarification, it was necessary, given that the EFF article was somewhat hyperbolic in claiming that Malcolm Turnbull wanted to ban end-to-end encryption. When Turnbull argues that police powers of intervention in the 'real world' should be reflected in the digital world let's not forget: - the digital realm is on a completely new scale and therefore cannot be compared to 'old school' police work because computer intervention can be automated and executed practically instantaneously and conducted without any human witnesses. - privacy is a fundamental human right - encryption algorithms that prohibit 3rd party intervention will be significantly more secure than those that allow it, probably by several orders of magnitude. - why should we entrust the government with 'big brother' powers that could potentially fall into the hands of the terrorists themselves? What the Australian PM advocated makes about as much sense as former Ronald Reagan's proposed 'star wars' project: a scary, impractical, technological nightmare, motivated by the quest for global domination.