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Well, to be fair, it is a huge problem for the director of the FBI. His job is to investigate potential crimes by gathering lots of evidence and doing lots of

Well, to be fair, it is a huge problem for the director of the FBI. His job is to investigate potential crimes by gathering lots of evidence and doing lots of analysis. The popularity of encryption is making it increasingly difficult for him to gather the evidence that he needs. The problem (for him) is that encryption is a tremendous help to everyone else, and we don't (yet?) have a way to protect our data from criminals and from overzealous or corrupt cops, without also deterring legitimate investigations.

gozur88 9y ago
The FBI still has a pretty extensive toolset when they need it. No amount of encryption is going to save you from a listening device planted in the area of your super secret phone calls.
- freedomben 9y ago
  True, but (at least for now) planting a listening device requires significant effort and a warrant. Chances are they will have to be pretty interested in you before going through that kind of effort/expense. Storing and sifting mountains of data and metadata from everybody, and mining it and mapping it, just waiting for somebody to do something wrong is just too tempting to resist. That said tho, I tend to believe that most encryption is crackable due to mistakes made during implementation, or mistakes made by the user. In a cryptanalysis class I took my mind was blown by how easy it an be to decode cipher text using simple statistical analysis, especially if some of the plaintext is known.
bhhaskin 9y ago
We also need to protect our data from the government and mega corporations.
freedomben 9y ago
Haha, very true, and good perspective. Although if I had more confidence that the FBI isn't being misused as a weapon by politicians members of leadership with their own agenda (cough Comey cough), I might be more willing to permit them visibility.
BLKNSLVR 9y ago
Semantics, but it's a "huge, huge problem" for the director of the FBI for reasons of politics - having to essentially lie about it in public. The director doesn't do investigations, evidence gathering, or analysis. The other situation in which it's a "huge, huge problem" is when there is communication they'd like to access that is encrypted. What we don't know, among many other things, is: 1) How often do they come up against encrypted comms? 2) Can "traditional" work yield results that would make the encrypted comms less vital to the investigation? 3) What's the scale of the crime they're investigating when encrypted comms are encountered? 4) Are they investigating after a crime has already been committed? If so, then the damage is already done. (Yes, reconstruction of the lead-up may be useful) Breaking encryption is not going to be a silver bullet, but trying to sell it as such is their "huge, huge problem".

gozur88 9y ago

The FBI still has a pretty extensive toolset when they need it. No amount of encryption is going to save you from a listening device planted in the area of your super secret phone calls.

freedomben 9y ago
True, but (at least for now) planting a listening device requires significant effort and a warrant. Chances are they will have to be pretty interested in you before going through that kind of effort/expense. Storing and sifting mountains of data and metadata from everybody, and mining it and mapping it, just waiting for somebody to do something wrong is just too tempting to resist. That said tho, I tend to believe that most encryption is crackable due to mistakes made during implementation, or mistakes made by the user. In a cryptanalysis class I took my mind was blown by how easy it an be to decode cipher text using simple statistical analysis, especially if some of the plaintext is known.

bhhaskin 9y ago

We also need to protect our data from the government and mega corporations.

freedomben 9y ago

Haha, very true, and good perspective. Although if I had more confidence that the FBI isn't being misused as a weapon by politicians members of leadership with their own agenda (cough Comey cough), I might be more willing to permit them visibility.

BLKNSLVR 9y ago

Semantics, but it's a "huge, huge problem" for the director of the FBI for reasons of politics - having to essentially lie about it in public. The director doesn't do investigations, evidence gathering, or analysis. The other situation in which it's a "huge, huge problem" is when there is communication they'd like to access that is encrypted. What we don't know, among many other things, is: 1) How often do they come up against encrypted comms? 2) Can "traditional" work yield results that would make the encrypted comms less vital to the investigation? 3) What's the scale of the crime they're investigating when encrypted comms are encountered? 4) Are they investigating after a crime has already been committed? If so, then the damage is already done. (Yes, reconstruction of the lead-up may be useful) Breaking encryption is not going to be a silver bullet, but trying to sell it as such is their "huge, huge problem".