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I have never met anyone who understands what cryptography is, and supports the FBI. As far as I can tell, the only reason they have any support at all is becaus

I have never met anyone who understands what cryptography is, and supports the FBI. As far as I can tell, the only reason they have any support at all is because they confuse people and muddy the waters. Edit: What I meant by "supports the FBI" is "supports the FBI on this issue". If you understand encryption and support the FBI in a general sense, but think they are wrong on this issue, then you aren't a counterpoint.

dsacco 9y ago
> I have never met anyone who understands what cryptography is, and supports the FBI. I understand cryptography and I broadly support the activities of the FBI. You have now “met” such a person. It’s fully possible to simultaneously support opposing concepts like end-to-end encryption for users and the organizational imperatives of the FBI. A nuanced perspective might consider that citizens and the FBI have separate prerogatives and competing incentives with respect to private encryption, and this is perfectly fine. A consequence of an organization optimized to reduce crime is its natural zeal for greater control over things that grant criminals freedom. Secure cryptography represents thermodynamically incontrovertible freedom of communication, which is intrinsically antagonistic to control. In the abstract, any organization striving to (in effect) reduce the rights of criminals will produce friction with the rights of citizens in general. But that doesn’t make the organization’s goals incoherent or evil, it means there must be a system of checks and balances. The ideal goal is one of compromise - we want to reduce net criminality, but we want to increase privacy. We have that compromise because open, end-to-end encryption (and private companies willing to implement it securely) is available to us. But the existence of arms race between parties does not indicate that one party’s overarching goals shouldn’t be supported. One party desires greater control, the other desires greater freedom. Both can coexist despite their competing incentives.
- kqr 9y ago
  I think in this case a slippery slope counterargument is not obviously wrong. According to the UN, a person's correspondance is sacred and each and every one has a universal right not to have the privacy of their correspondance breached. Why are we now debating the privacy of encrypted correspondance from a baseline of no privacy for unencrypted correspondance? What says we will not continue to accept more and more, as long as it is only a small step from status quo?
  - gregmac 9y ago
    > What says we will not continue to accept more and more, as long as it is only a small step from status quo? The Overton Window [1] says this is exactly what will happen. There's a great video [2] about how this applies to Trump (which is where I first heard about it) and gives a good example of what "shifting the Overton Window" looks like. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-hzc6blGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-hzc6blGI
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    A person's papers and correspondence is similarly sacred under the US Constitution. The problem is that digital paper isn't paper, and while you can be charged with a felony for bypassing a computer's access controls, the law doesn't respect those controls at all. Your electronic documents have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected.
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      >Your electronic documents have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected. Which is funny, because paper correspondance does not have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    According to the UN, a person's correspondance is sacred and each and every one has a universal right not to have the privacy of their correspondance breached. The Fourth Amendment says the same thing. It has been under relentless attack from the Supreme Court, but one senses a change in the weather...
- MrLeap 9y ago
  This line of reasoning is disturbing to me. I don't want to live in a world where there's effectively a traffic camera pointed at the contents of my phone. Bandying apologetics regarding how limited it's used and how badly it's needed won't change my mind. Would you consent to having a microphone embedded in your driver's license that the FBI could "only turn on if they really needed it"? When the people with power get to define the meaning of the constraints on their power, their power is without constraints. It disgusts me when companies and individuals are press ganged into being enforcement arms of the government. In my opinion, it takes a certain blindness to history or a level of sociopathy to be fine with this.
  - fmihaila 9y ago
    > I don't want to live in a world where there's effectively a traffic camera pointed at the contents of my phone. [...] Would you consent to having a microphone embedded in your driver's license that the FBI could "only turn on if they really needed it"? Not the GP, but I didn't read anything in dsacco's post that implies any of these. I understood it as saying that it's possible to understand the technology, and even have a strong pro-encryption and pro-privacy stance, without believing that FBI as an institution is fundamentally corrupt or motivated by malice. There is an inherent tension between the FBI's mission, citizen's rights, and the nature of encryption, and it looks like that tension might never be fully resolved. > When the people with power get to define the meaning of the constraints on their power, their power is without constraints. I fully agree, and I'm as convinced as you are of people's inability to restrain themselves once they have unchecked power. "Just trust us" always ends in disaster. > It disgusts me when companies and individuals are press ganged into being enforcement arms of the government. In my opinion, it takes a certain blindness to history or a level of sociopathy to be fine with this. This is the part I have trouble with; as I see it, there are more than two ways to characterize one's position on this issue than simply 'for or against', 'principled vs. sellout', or 'clear-eyed vs. blind'.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      > I understood it as saying that it's possible to understand the technology, and even have a strong pro-encryption and pro-privacy stance, without believing that FBI as an institution is fundamentally corrupt or motivated by malice. There is an inherent tension between the FBI's mission, citizen's rights, and the nature of encryption, and it looks like that tension might never be fully resolved. Yes, thank you. This explains my thinking more succinctly and clearly than I did :)
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  Well said. I credit that you've elevated this discussion out of the reductionism it has been started with. That said, I think if we are to approach the question of the FBI analytically/intellectually we might want to start by asking a few questions. 1. How should we measure the efficacy of the FBI? - Net lives saved / dollar spent? Is it a conflict of interest if we let the FBI self-report lives saved? 2. How do we account for the risks of the agency "going rogue" and not following the rule of law? For example, how can we quantify the risk to civil rights caused by the FBI-King suicide letter [1]? 3. When the FBI presents an argument that encryption is a problem, how can we measure whether it's a trade-off we [the people] want to make [safety vs privacy] unless we're presented with a proposal that articulates what credible threats may be prevented (how many lives saved, program cost)? 4. If the majority of citizens do not consider want to forgo their privacy for additional safety, should the FBI be beholden to respect the will of The People who hire it (via taxes)? 1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
  - cvwright 9y ago
    > 4. If the majority of citizens do not consider want to forgo their privacy for additional safety, If only it were so ... https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/18/more-surveillance-please-were-british/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/18/more-surveillance-pleas...
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  > I broadly support the activities of the FBI This heavily includes COINTELPRO.
- white-flame 9y ago
  > In the abstract, any organization striving to (in effect) reduce the rights of criminals will produce friction with the rights of citizens in general. Criminals are still citizens with rights, or else Due Process has no meaning. Striving to reduce the rights of any citizen is not a defensible goal for a US governmental organization. Rights should apply to all, or they're not really rights. The government steps in when rights are violated. > But that doesn’t make the organization’s goals incoherent or evil, it means there must be a system of checks and balances. It does make the organization's goals anti-constitutional. > The ideal goal is one of compromise - we want to reduce net criminality, but we want to increase privacy. No. No all the way. We don't and can't "reduce net criminality" directly. That drifts into implications of policing pre-crime, for which everybody in law enforcement wants surveillance as a magic bullet. Beyond "just" constitutional concepts, I think a lot of people would classify pre-crime surveillance, engagement, and enforcement as actual full blown Evil. The penal system of a free and civilized country should police actual wrongdoings; and should foster positive educational, cultural, and environmental shifts away from crime. Not destroy freedoms in the name of "protecting" them (when in reality their goal is increasing internal & external political metrics), as the ghastly hypocritical current systems do. This isn't some new balance to be discovered. It is a clear limitation of powers to prevent violations of rights that already represents a balance.
  - cvwright 9y ago
    When they're asking for some ability to perform searches and collect evidence, that's not necessarily counter to the US constitution. Quite the opposite in fact. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment > Amendment IV > > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. You seem to be arguing against a strawman created by a limitation of our current technology. We don't have a way to give them limited access. Right now, we can give them everything, or we can give them nothing. But they're not asking for everything. So we should find a way to allow truly (technologically) limited access, and to make sure that those limits are tight.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
  >I understand cryptography Perhaps its logic that's your weak suit, then. >Both can coexist despite their competing incentives. You either have secure cryptography, or you don't. There is no middle ground.
- dumbneurologist 9y ago
  all human beings should be allowed to record their thoughts and communicate without those thoughts being surveilled. What is so different in 2018 that the ability to think and communicate in secret is somehow a threat to law enforcement? Law enforcement has always had to work hard to crack a case. Now that computers exist, they want to have a comprehensive record of everything that's ever been uttered, retroactively play back anything that the authority deems inappropriate, and make arrests on that basis. It is fascism in a can. There could be no clearer indication that political protections are inadequate to safeguard this than the current president, who has run amok without legal consequence (to date). I cannot understand how any thoughtful person can support anything more invasive than hard police work and a warrant... any legal case can be cracked with human tools, because no criminal operation has 100% operational security. The need to spy on the thoughts of innocence is an insane price for any extra crime fighting ability we get on top of this.
- specialist 9y ago
  I'm not buying. Why does the FBI need to decrypt the phone of a spree shooter? What could they possible learn, after the fact? What could they possible know that isn't more easily ascertained by other means? Every thing about every person is known in real time. If the NSA, FBI, whomever could not identify and thwart undesired behavior with existing tools (follow the money, network analysis, profiling, sentiment analysis, follow the bullets, etc, etc)... Well, they'd have to be unforgivably incompetent. [I believe they do all these obvious things. Which is why we've seen so few terrorist attacks. (If only they cared as much about spree shooters.)] Further, what enemy of the state is using COTS communication system? You'd have to be an incredibly stupid drug dealer, human trafficker, money launderer indeed to conduct business via iPhones. So if the panopticon doesn't and can't help defeat the bad guys, what's the point? Does the government really need to eavesdrop on the selfie nudes my teenagers are sending their friends?
  - thret 9y ago
    If supermarket chains can predict pregnancy based on shopping history, maybe one day mass murderers may be predicted by their behaviours as recorded in the contents of their phone?
    - specialist 9y ago
      Oh, oh, oh! I've seen this movie! The protagonists have a limited opportunity to go back in time and attempt to thwart the crime, prevent a catastrophe. Paradoxes! Unintended consequences! Regrets! Now all we need is a working time machine.
cvwright 9y ago
Hi! Nice to meet you. I think (some of) what the FBI is asking for lately is actually not that unreasonable -- assuming we could do it right. Chris Wray, like Comey before him, is claiming that they only need a way to get into a few selected devices in "exceptional" circumstances for criminal investigations. Whenever the FBI/DOJ guys argue this point, they also make sure to say nice things about the value of encryption for protecting the public. Do they really believe the nice things they say? I have no idea, but for now I'm willing to take them at their word for the sake of the debate. Do they really want only a limited ability to access encrypted data? Again, I don't know. But suppose we could construct a truly limited mechanism that would give them the ability to recover only a small amount of encrypted data. Then we could call their bluff. If they still want more, they'd have to make the case to the public that they should have the all-seeing power that our community claims they're trying to get. We have some early work along these lines. I gave a talk about it at Enigma last week. https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2018/presentation/wright https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2018/presentation/wr...
- Jotra7 9y ago
  What do boots taste like, friend?
- yarrel 9y ago
  "But suppose we could construct a truly limited mechanism that would give them the ability to recover only a small amount of encrypted data. " Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh wait you're serious.
  - d4mi3n 9y ago
    Parent seems to be trying to encourage some real discussion on this topic. For those of us not well versed in crypto, could you elaborate on why this is problematic rather than being dismissive? Why is this not possible? How could we improve the situation? What are the risks?
    - echlebek 9y ago
anfedorov 9y ago
Sounds like you're in a bubble. There's reasonable people on both sides of this debate, even if some of them are wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNnVcp6NYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNnVcp6NYA
- yarrel 9y ago
  There may be reasonable people on both sides. There are however not people who are correct on both sides.
  - simonbyrne 9y ago
    There may not be "correct" people on either side. The world is a complicated place, full of kludges and compromises.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- benchaney 9y ago
  I'm not in a bubble. I have met many people who support the FBI's efforts on this issue. Just none of them understood encryption. Hayden is absolutely a reasonable person, but: 1. He agrees with me on this issue. 2. He makes a pretty strong argument that people who disagree with him (and by extension me) are being unreasonable.
  - anfedorov 9y ago
    OK, then perhaps Dunning–Kruger effect. Hayden does does not agree with you on this issue.
tptacek 9y ago
Hi! I have a reasonably solid understanding of cryptography; part of what I do professionally is break cryptosystems. I do not think that the condition where billion dollar companies ship products that deny the people the right to "every man's evidence" is a stable equilibrium. Something will have to give. Since I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, it seems unlikely to me that what's going to give is the state. That doesn't mean I think the FBI is on the right side of every (or even most) crypto debates. But I understand where they're coming from and foresee debates in the future where they'll be on the right side.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  What if it weren't "billion dollar companies" selling these phones, but hobbyists building them out of commodity parts? Where do you draw the line? I can build my own automatic rifle, which has no serial number and appears on no list, using parts purchased legally and a drill press. That being the case, how can "the state" police the function of personal general-purpose computing devices and not tie itself in knots?
  - idlewords 9y ago
    You can build yourself such a rifle, or maybe even ten of them, but you can't build and sell a billion. The points of control are pretty easy to find in a context where the Internet is run by a dozen large companies all headquartered in the United States.
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      But we're talking about relatively simple algorithms here. Not even iOS prevents you from, say, running crypto written in Javascript (as ill-advised as that is). Gun control is far easier than controlling AES.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        They don't want to control AES. I think they want the defaults used by commercial devices to be subject to court order. They can deal with the idea that suspects can arrange to protect their communications; they've been dealing with that for centuries. What they have a hard time with is when all communications everywhere are irrevocably protected without trying.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
natch 9y ago
I'm guessing you meant "supports the FBI's stance on the issue" but I could be wrong.
- benchaney 9y ago
  Yes. I thought that was obvious, but I have added an edit to clarify.
kpU8efre7r 9y ago
How about a cryptographer who works at the FBI?

dsacco 9y ago

> I have never met anyone who understands what cryptography is, and supports the FBI. I understand cryptography and I broadly support the activities of the FBI. You have now “met” such a person. It’s fully possible to simultaneously support opposing concepts like end-to-end encryption for users and the organizational imperatives of the FBI. A nuanced perspective might consider that citizens and the FBI have separate prerogatives and competing incentives with respect to private encryption, and this is perfectly fine. A consequence of an organization optimized to reduce crime is its natural zeal for greater control over things that grant criminals freedom. Secure cryptography represents thermodynamically incontrovertible freedom of communication, which is intrinsically antagonistic to control. In the abstract, any organization striving to (in effect) reduce the rights of criminals will produce friction with the rights of citizens in general. But that doesn’t make the organization’s goals incoherent or evil, it means there must be a system of checks and balances. The ideal goal is one of compromise - we want to reduce net criminality, but we want to increase privacy. We have that compromise because open, end-to-end encryption (and private companies willing to implement it securely) is available to us. But the existence of arms race between parties does not indicate that one party’s overarching goals shouldn’t be supported. One party desires greater control, the other desires greater freedom. Both can coexist despite their competing incentives.

kqr 9y ago
I think in this case a slippery slope counterargument is not obviously wrong. According to the UN, a person's correspondance is sacred and each and every one has a universal right not to have the privacy of their correspondance breached. Why are we now debating the privacy of encrypted correspondance from a baseline of no privacy for unencrypted correspondance? What says we will not continue to accept more and more, as long as it is only a small step from status quo?
- gregmac 9y ago
  > What says we will not continue to accept more and more, as long as it is only a small step from status quo? The Overton Window [1] says this is exactly what will happen. There's a great video [2] about how this applies to Trump (which is where I first heard about it) and gives a good example of what "shifting the Overton Window" looks like. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-hzc6blGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-hzc6blGI
- Spooky23 9y ago
  A person's papers and correspondence is similarly sacred under the US Constitution. The problem is that digital paper isn't paper, and while you can be charged with a felony for bypassing a computer's access controls, the law doesn't respect those controls at all. Your electronic documents have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    >Your electronic documents have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected. Which is funny, because paper correspondance does not have to be in your home or in your direct control to be protected.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  According to the UN, a person's correspondance is sacred and each and every one has a universal right not to have the privacy of their correspondance breached. The Fourth Amendment says the same thing. It has been under relentless attack from the Supreme Court, but one senses a change in the weather...
MrLeap 9y ago
This line of reasoning is disturbing to me. I don't want to live in a world where there's effectively a traffic camera pointed at the contents of my phone. Bandying apologetics regarding how limited it's used and how badly it's needed won't change my mind. Would you consent to having a microphone embedded in your driver's license that the FBI could "only turn on if they really needed it"? When the people with power get to define the meaning of the constraints on their power, their power is without constraints. It disgusts me when companies and individuals are press ganged into being enforcement arms of the government. In my opinion, it takes a certain blindness to history or a level of sociopathy to be fine with this.
- fmihaila 9y ago
  > I don't want to live in a world where there's effectively a traffic camera pointed at the contents of my phone. [...] Would you consent to having a microphone embedded in your driver's license that the FBI could "only turn on if they really needed it"? Not the GP, but I didn't read anything in dsacco's post that implies any of these. I understood it as saying that it's possible to understand the technology, and even have a strong pro-encryption and pro-privacy stance, without believing that FBI as an institution is fundamentally corrupt or motivated by malice. There is an inherent tension between the FBI's mission, citizen's rights, and the nature of encryption, and it looks like that tension might never be fully resolved. > When the people with power get to define the meaning of the constraints on their power, their power is without constraints. I fully agree, and I'm as convinced as you are of people's inability to restrain themselves once they have unchecked power. "Just trust us" always ends in disaster. > It disgusts me when companies and individuals are press ganged into being enforcement arms of the government. In my opinion, it takes a certain blindness to history or a level of sociopathy to be fine with this. This is the part I have trouble with; as I see it, there are more than two ways to characterize one's position on this issue than simply 'for or against', 'principled vs. sellout', or 'clear-eyed vs. blind'.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    > I understood it as saying that it's possible to understand the technology, and even have a strong pro-encryption and pro-privacy stance, without believing that FBI as an institution is fundamentally corrupt or motivated by malice. There is an inherent tension between the FBI's mission, citizen's rights, and the nature of encryption, and it looks like that tension might never be fully resolved. Yes, thank you. This explains my thinking more succinctly and clearly than I did :)
alexandercrohde 9y ago
Well said. I credit that you've elevated this discussion out of the reductionism it has been started with. That said, I think if we are to approach the question of the FBI analytically/intellectually we might want to start by asking a few questions. 1. How should we measure the efficacy of the FBI? - Net lives saved / dollar spent? Is it a conflict of interest if we let the FBI self-report lives saved? 2. How do we account for the risks of the agency "going rogue" and not following the rule of law? For example, how can we quantify the risk to civil rights caused by the FBI-King suicide letter [1]? 3. When the FBI presents an argument that encryption is a problem, how can we measure whether it's a trade-off we [the people] want to make [safety vs privacy] unless we're presented with a proposal that articulates what credible threats may be prevented (how many lives saved, program cost)? 4. If the majority of citizens do not consider want to forgo their privacy for additional safety, should the FBI be beholden to respect the will of The People who hire it (via taxes)? 1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
- cvwright 9y ago
  > 4. If the majority of citizens do not consider want to forgo their privacy for additional safety, If only it were so ... https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/18/more-surveillance-please-were-british/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/18/more-surveillance-pleas...
FilterSweep 9y ago
> I broadly support the activities of the FBI This heavily includes COINTELPRO.
white-flame 9y ago
> In the abstract, any organization striving to (in effect) reduce the rights of criminals will produce friction with the rights of citizens in general. Criminals are still citizens with rights, or else Due Process has no meaning. Striving to reduce the rights of any citizen is not a defensible goal for a US governmental organization. Rights should apply to all, or they're not really rights. The government steps in when rights are violated. > But that doesn’t make the organization’s goals incoherent or evil, it means there must be a system of checks and balances. It does make the organization's goals anti-constitutional. > The ideal goal is one of compromise - we want to reduce net criminality, but we want to increase privacy. No. No all the way. We don't and can't "reduce net criminality" directly. That drifts into implications of policing pre-crime, for which everybody in law enforcement wants surveillance as a magic bullet. Beyond "just" constitutional concepts, I think a lot of people would classify pre-crime surveillance, engagement, and enforcement as actual full blown Evil. The penal system of a free and civilized country should police actual wrongdoings; and should foster positive educational, cultural, and environmental shifts away from crime. Not destroy freedoms in the name of "protecting" them (when in reality their goal is increasing internal & external political metrics), as the ghastly hypocritical current systems do. This isn't some new balance to be discovered. It is a clear limitation of powers to prevent violations of rights that already represents a balance.
- cvwright 9y ago
  When they're asking for some ability to perform searches and collect evidence, that's not necessarily counter to the US constitution. Quite the opposite in fact. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment > Amendment IV > > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. You seem to be arguing against a strawman created by a limitation of our current technology. We don't have a way to give them limited access. Right now, we can give them everything, or we can give them nothing. But they're not asking for everything. So we should find a way to allow truly (technologically) limited access, and to make sure that those limits are tight.
StanislavPetrov 9y ago
>I understand cryptography Perhaps its logic that's your weak suit, then. >Both can coexist despite their competing incentives. You either have secure cryptography, or you don't. There is no middle ground.
dumbneurologist 9y ago
all human beings should be allowed to record their thoughts and communicate without those thoughts being surveilled. What is so different in 2018 that the ability to think and communicate in secret is somehow a threat to law enforcement? Law enforcement has always had to work hard to crack a case. Now that computers exist, they want to have a comprehensive record of everything that's ever been uttered, retroactively play back anything that the authority deems inappropriate, and make arrests on that basis. It is fascism in a can. There could be no clearer indication that political protections are inadequate to safeguard this than the current president, who has run amok without legal consequence (to date). I cannot understand how any thoughtful person can support anything more invasive than hard police work and a warrant... any legal case can be cracked with human tools, because no criminal operation has 100% operational security. The need to spy on the thoughts of innocence is an insane price for any extra crime fighting ability we get on top of this.
specialist 9y ago
I'm not buying. Why does the FBI need to decrypt the phone of a spree shooter? What could they possible learn, after the fact? What could they possible know that isn't more easily ascertained by other means? Every thing about every person is known in real time. If the NSA, FBI, whomever could not identify and thwart undesired behavior with existing tools (follow the money, network analysis, profiling, sentiment analysis, follow the bullets, etc, etc)... Well, they'd have to be unforgivably incompetent. [I believe they do all these obvious things. Which is why we've seen so few terrorist attacks. (If only they cared as much about spree shooters.)] Further, what enemy of the state is using COTS communication system? You'd have to be an incredibly stupid drug dealer, human trafficker, money launderer indeed to conduct business via iPhones. So if the panopticon doesn't and can't help defeat the bad guys, what's the point? Does the government really need to eavesdrop on the selfie nudes my teenagers are sending their friends?
- thret 9y ago
  If supermarket chains can predict pregnancy based on shopping history, maybe one day mass murderers may be predicted by their behaviours as recorded in the contents of their phone?
  - specialist 9y ago
    Oh, oh, oh! I've seen this movie! The protagonists have a limited opportunity to go back in time and attempt to thwart the crime, prevent a catastrophe. Paradoxes! Unintended consequences! Regrets! Now all we need is a working time machine.

cvwright 9y ago

Hi! Nice to meet you. I think (some of) what the FBI is asking for lately is actually not that unreasonable -- assuming we could do it right. Chris Wray, like Comey before him, is claiming that they only need a way to get into a few selected devices in "exceptional" circumstances for criminal investigations. Whenever the FBI/DOJ guys argue this point, they also make sure to say nice things about the value of encryption for protecting the public. Do they really believe the nice things they say? I have no idea, but for now I'm willing to take them at their word for the sake of the debate. Do they really want only a limited ability to access encrypted data? Again, I don't know. But suppose we could construct a truly limited mechanism that would give them the ability to recover only a small amount of encrypted data. Then we could call their bluff. If they still want more, they'd have to make the case to the public that they should have the all-seeing power that our community claims they're trying to get. We have some early work along these lines. I gave a talk about it at Enigma last week. https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2018/presentation/wright https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2018/presentation/wr...

Jotra7 9y ago
What do boots taste like, friend?
yarrel 9y ago
"But suppose we could construct a truly limited mechanism that would give them the ability to recover only a small amount of encrypted data. " Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh wait you're serious.
- d4mi3n 9y ago
  Parent seems to be trying to encourage some real discussion on this topic. For those of us not well versed in crypto, could you elaborate on why this is problematic rather than being dismissive? Why is this not possible? How could we improve the situation? What are the risks?
  - echlebek 9y ago

anfedorov 9y ago

Sounds like you're in a bubble. There's reasonable people on both sides of this debate, even if some of them are wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNnVcp6NYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNnVcp6NYA

yarrel 9y ago
There may be reasonable people on both sides. There are however not people who are correct on both sides.
- simonbyrne 9y ago
  There may not be "correct" people on either side. The world is a complicated place, full of kludges and compromises.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
benchaney 9y ago
I'm not in a bubble. I have met many people who support the FBI's efforts on this issue. Just none of them understood encryption. Hayden is absolutely a reasonable person, but: 1. He agrees with me on this issue. 2. He makes a pretty strong argument that people who disagree with him (and by extension me) are being unreasonable.
- anfedorov 9y ago
  OK, then perhaps Dunning–Kruger effect. Hayden does does not agree with you on this issue.

tptacek 9y ago

Hi! I have a reasonably solid understanding of cryptography; part of what I do professionally is break cryptosystems. I do not think that the condition where billion dollar companies ship products that deny the people the right to "every man's evidence" is a stable equilibrium. Something will have to give. Since I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, it seems unlikely to me that what's going to give is the state. That doesn't mean I think the FBI is on the right side of every (or even most) crypto debates. But I understand where they're coming from and foresee debates in the future where they'll be on the right side.

jessaustin 9y ago
What if it weren't "billion dollar companies" selling these phones, but hobbyists building them out of commodity parts? Where do you draw the line? I can build my own automatic rifle, which has no serial number and appears on no list, using parts purchased legally and a drill press. That being the case, how can "the state" police the function of personal general-purpose computing devices and not tie itself in knots?
- idlewords 9y ago
  You can build yourself such a rifle, or maybe even ten of them, but you can't build and sell a billion. The points of control are pretty easy to find in a context where the Internet is run by a dozen large companies all headquartered in the United States.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    But we're talking about relatively simple algorithms here. Not even iOS prevents you from, say, running crypto written in Javascript (as ill-advised as that is). Gun control is far easier than controlling AES.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      They don't want to control AES. I think they want the defaults used by commercial devices to be subject to court order. They can deal with the idea that suspects can arrange to protect their communications; they've been dealing with that for centuries. What they have a hard time with is when all communications everywhere are irrevocably protected without trying.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

natch 9y ago

I'm guessing you meant "supports the FBI's stance on the issue" but I could be wrong.

benchaney 9y ago
Yes. I thought that was obvious, but I have added an edit to clarify.

kpU8efre7r 9y ago

How about a cryptographer who works at the FBI?