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‘Five Eyes’ Nations Quietly Demand Government Access to Encrypted Data

478 points by aaronharnly 8y ago

macawfish 8y ago
Fascism.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post like this. Even if you're right, an unsubstantive single-word comment is not the thing to post—and certainly not that word, which leads to the nether regions of the internet barrel. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pizzazzaro 8y ago
  I want you to know up front that I agree with you - this is such, from the very people we were warned about, and we should oppose it wherever it exists. But... Do you care to elaborate why this is Fascism? Why we should care? Or most importantly... How do you respond to this instance of "Fascism"? Any ideas? Suggestions? Pointers? Calling it out is nice, but "calling Hitler a Nazi" is just an obvious Tautology. I expect better on HN.
arkadiyt 8y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898498
- dang 8y ago
  Yes. Normally we'd mark this one as a dupe of that one, but it seems to be taking this story a while to ripple through the system as people become aware that that document was published and try to figure out what it means. Since the NYT article does contain some new information as well as more background, we'll leave it up.
mactavish88 8y ago
Surely the final solution to this problem is a community-based one - one that decentralises the tech giants? I'm still struggling to figure out why a cohesive, widespread, community-driven solution hasn't emerged yet. Anybody have any ideas as to why?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 8y ago
  - winner-take-all economics created the giants - similar forces drive techies: would you rather make Facebook for free or for a billion dollars? - tech culture doesn't understand community building - some censorship / legal control is absolutely necessary lest you become the child porn network, or crown in spam
  - mirimir 8y ago
    > some censorship / legal control is absolutely necessary lest you become the child porn network, or crown in spam Arguably, "becom[ing] the child porn network" is the only proof that you can't be compromised. Because assholes will eventually migrate to the most secure options.
    - adventured 8y ago
      The assholes migrated to TOR. They were wrong, their migration didn't act as a proof. You can always be compromised a dozen different ways if you're breaking the law (in the US) and your adversary has the resources and reach of the US Federal Government. You're fucked, period, if they're on to you and determined. We keep seeing this demonstrated over and over and over again. There are always flaws somewhere.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        As I read the evidence, you're only fucked if your OPSEC is weak. Sure there have been lots of high-profile takedowns. But I only know of one case where a bug in Tor per se compromised users. That was CMU exploitation of the relay-early bug. That's how they got PlayPen. And then they ran it as a honeypot, serving phone-home malware, and nailed lots of users. But in every other case that I'm aware of, OPSEC failure led to pwnage. Freedom Hosting. Silk Road 1. Sheep Marketplace. So can you point to another case where defects in Tor design or practice got people pwned? I doubt it. But even so, I am concerned that the absence of such news just reflects parallel construction. And finally, it's not enough to just rely on Tor. In my opinion, one should always use Tor through a nested VPN chain, comprising servers from at least three different VPN providers. That way, adversaries must compromise both Tor and the VPN services. Also, it's crucial to never run servers in places that can be associated with you. Because the more traffic there is, especially if an adversary can control traffic flow, the easier it is to do traffic correlation.
mirimir 8y ago
As I see it, any system that can be compromised to pwn malefactors - even the most conceivably horrible terrorists and criminals - cannot be trusted. And notwithstanding all the slander and conspiracy theory, Tor is perhaps the only working example of a compromise-resistant system. Unless it actually is backdoored, anyway. Obviously, the Five Eyes don't see it that way. But I gotta wonder how commonly Tor is used among TLAs, and how the debate goes, if it is. Because this would destroy Tor. Unless operators were totally anonymous, and relays only stayed up until targeted.
- jedberg 8y ago
  I thought it was decided that tor was already compromised, because the five eyes intelligence apparatus already controls more than 50% of the exit nodes, giving them almost complete insight into where all the traffic originates?
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Gotta cite for that? And actually, your comment makes no sense. Controlling exits shows where traffic goes. Exits don't connect directly with users, but rather through middle relays, and either entry guards or bridges. So adversaries either need data from all three relays in circuits, or they must control both ends, and be able to signal through circuits. That's how CMU researchers pwned users and .onion sites, using the relay-early bug, which allowed intra-circuit signaling.
    - TrueDuality 8y ago
      I believe they're referring to the traffic analysis style attacks. You don't have to know the content of the traffic if you control the entry node and exit node, either the guard relay, or the hidden service by monitoring the size and timing of individual packets. This doesn't deanonymize on its own unless you control the hidden service, but can be used with other data to link anonymous identities to the IP connecting to the entry node. That being said, what they're referring to is pretty old research and I haven't heard about any evidence proving any agency controls a large amount of the network. For a more current account of modern attack methods against Tor this paper[1] is a pretty recent compilation of researched attacks. The Tor developers actively try to defend against these but you should still be careful, it isn't researched enough yet (read: Tor isn't that old) to defend against resource rich attackers. [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02816.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02816.pdf
ben_w 8y ago
Ultimately these governments can break security at any level. It’s not just the encryption or the apps — if they require the OS manufacturers to cooperate with them, they can record all user input and output. Likewise hardware manufacturers. It’s not just phones or computers, either — The UK was well known for having high CCTV density well before the proliferation of low-cost digital cameras; By my estimate is now well within government spending limits to put all movement under surveillance by putting cameras on every corner which combine ANPR and facial recognition to cover pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists; and laser diodes are so cheap every window, never mind person, can be surveilled with laser microscopes. This is also cheap enough for criminals to do it. I recently got (fake) scam blackmail emails demanding bitcoin under the threat that they had used my webcam to record me watching porn (duct tape over my webcam says they didn’t), but imagine a local crime gang doing that with a drone pointing at your window. We have to change a lot of stuff in out society very quickly to keep us all safe. We need a world where none of us need secrets, because very soon we won’t have the ability to keep them. We also need the ability to survive ourselves breaking the law, because the law was created with the (at the time reasonable) belief that only important violations would be brought to the attention of the authorities, because most of us can’t get through the day without violating several [1], and because even though current state-of-the-art A.I. can’t automatically enforce all those laws, we should assume that is coming. But not just what, also how fast it changes and how slow we react: How long ago was it demonstrated that keys can be duplicated from a single image taken by a telephoto lens? And how many keys have been made safe against it since? The only thing keeping us safe is that even the bad actors aren’t keeping up with the tech. That isn’t good, because it means that whoever does use it will look, what’s the phrase, “indistinguishable from magic”. [1] https://mises.org/library/decriminalize-average-man https://mises.org/library/decriminalize-average-man
- stedaniels 8y ago
  > By my estimate is now well within government spending limits to put all movement under surveillance by putting cameras on every corner which combine ANPR and facial recognition to cover pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists; and laser diodes are so cheap every window, never mind person, can be surveilled. That's a maybe. You are however vastly overestimating the time it would take for the UK government to go to tender over such a platform. Then you are overestimating by an order of magnitude the private sectors ability to deliver such a platform within a reasonable budget and within the next few decades. Have you looked at government infrastructure projects? Thankfully they set a reassuringly pitiful benchmark. For now.. I agree with the rest of your comment wholeheartedly.
mmxi 8y ago
I think this is quite similar to ad-blocking. If ads would have stayed small instead of becoming assholes, nobody would have adblockers. And if the intelligence agencys wouldn't spy on anyone but only with a court-order, encryption wouldn't be that interesting as well.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Not really. Before the 80s brought ubiquitous personal computers, and academic cryptography became a thing, the NSA and its friends had pretty much a monopoly on strong encryption. That is, encryption was implemented by dedicated hardware. There weren't that many manufacturers, and they were under intense pressure to only sell strong encryption to the NSA and friends, and sell backdoored stuff to everyone else. So anyway, we went through this in the 90s (the Clipper Chip). That died down, in part because terrorists and criminals weren't really using much encryption. But now we have iPhones with strong encryption, and TLAs and LEOs are seriously freaked.
vikiomega9 8y ago
As an aside, I recently came across the argument that programs like Five Eyes were designed because of mass infiltration of immigrants/others who are not designed for Western ideas/government and that it's the price that people pay for relegation of their freedoms. So I might have been living under a rock but this argument is on the alt-right for what it's worth but I'm not entirely sure how to process it. In the sense that there's far too much irony and the lack of a unified framework of laws that work towards humanity maybe? (Sorry for the incoherent thought but I had to get this off my chest)
- lozenge 8y ago
  That doesn't really make sense to me. Five eyes, and intelligence agencies, collect information that has nothing to do with people in their countries. For example the US tapping Merkel's phone or bugging the Copenhagen climate talks. It is done to gain diplomatic, military and economic advantage. You can sample them on Wikileaks.
  - vikiomega9 8y ago
    Isn't PRISM and other related programs part of Five eyes? I guess my point was more that as the US moves away from it's War on Terror the next natural target is on ideology
    - tumetab1 8y ago
      Not really since that target probably doesn't support the selling of more guns to the USA agencies.
- seanhunter 8y ago
  Don't think there's any connection between 5 eyes and immigration. The Five Eyes refers to intelligence cooperation between the major English-speaking nations. That arose directly out of them having been allies in WW2 and facing a common adversary (the Soviet Bloc) in the cold war. In WW2, they didn't have as deep collaboration with many other Nato powers because France was occupied and Italy and Germany were the enemy they were fighting. It was natural for this close cooperation to continue from there.
motohagiography 8y ago
Of course they are going to ask, and legislators will weigh the political cost/benefit to it. My impression from the previous crypto wars and the skirmishes that have followed is, as technologists, we take a very tactical view of technology, and underestimate the intentions of people who understand power and politics the way we understand information systems. The way we see the security of a system, they see the sovereignty of a state. Just as incompleteness in our code can yield system level compromises, incompleteness in their ability to apply their rules to their territories and domains also yields compromises that makes the whole system untrustworthy. I don't agree with what I perceive as their Hobbes-ean need for total control, where I think the localized, depth first absolute authority of a state becomes malignant when it is applied breadth first and in totality to all aspects of life, but you can sympathize with the urge without agreeing with it. They should be mindful that post-Snowden, no matter how large the field we live in, people have seen the walls and bars at the perimeter, and that broad perception is likely a greater source of instability than any gaps in the ability of the state to enforce them. Viewed this way, the 5Eyes statement seems unwise.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  The apparently Hobbesian view that you have over FVEY's desire to decrypt data is misguided. Most people that work in politics or intelligence in liberal states aren't in it for the power. They are either curious, desire a life of excitement, or want to bring positive change to society. They want to decrypt data because they want to protect people from threats. I'm not saying we should allow them to, but ascribing malintent is misguided. Edit: Before the reflexive downvotes ask yourself: Who is asking for the ability to decrypt? These people are making half or less what they could make in the private sector.
  - the_watcher 8y ago
    > Who is asking for the ability to decrypt? These people are making half or less what they could make in the private sector. While I agree with your general point about not ascribing malign intent (at the very least, the misunderstanding about the security implications of weakening decryption seems primarily a case of Hanlon's Razor to me), but the "making half or less what they could make isn't convincing to me. There are those who'd happily sacrifice raw dollars for the power of being able to decrypt
aneutron 8y ago
It feels weird to read stuff like this, really. What they want is to be able to wiretap people, without them knowing. Because if encryption is what's bothering them, you can get a warrant, seize the phone and/or computer, and make the owner unlock it / give you the keys, by law. It is perfectly logical and lawful. However, if unwarranted (in the sense of without a warrant) wiretapping is involved, then yes, encryption "hinders the law enforcement". Except it doesn't. Because as mentioned earlier, just get a warrant, and make the owner unlock / give you the key, by law. It doesn't hinder the law enforcement, it hinders the intelligence agencies work and makes it less invisible. And I kind of think that's a good thing too.
- wereHamster 8y ago
  > […] make the owner unlock / give you the key, by law. That only works if you can threaten to put the owner into jail for not complying. If you're trying to spy on communication between two people outside your jurisdiction, you're out of luck. (that doesn't mean I support the US governments attempt to undermine secure communication)
  - jowsie 8y ago
    Refusing to provide your passwords is itself a crime in the UK, not to mention obstructing an investigation and god knows what else they decide to stick you with for trying to have some privacy. I believe the idea is to threaten you with more jail time than you would receive for the crime you possibly committed.
    - Canada 8y ago
      Luckily with modern key agreement protocols the user never knew the decryption keys at all. Encryption of data at rest is another matter. We need better duress mechanisms there, and in order for those to be effective we need a big cleanup of how many applications store user data.
      - mirimir 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
crummy 8y ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but if the tech industry claims that you can't make a backdoor safe, how do they keep safe their update mechanisms? Aren't they basically backdoors-by-design?
- Canada 8y ago
  In a sense they are, but they send the same updates to everyone whereas a backdoor needs to allow malicious actions to be taken against specific targets only. If vendors are forced to abuse updates in this way then users are going to demand a certificate transparency-like system to stop the abuse.
  - ENOTTY 8y ago
    > they send the same updates to everyone Google's staggered updates to Chrome are updates sent to specific targeted users. The iOS App Store (and Google Play store, I believe) has an opt-in beta program that also sends betas to specific targeted users. > If vendors are forced to abuse updates in this way then users are going to demand a certificate transparency-like system to stop the abuse. But yes, leveraging users' trust in the update system is a risk that needs to be factored into the debate.
    - Canada 8y ago
      Right, I'm not suggesting that it's even remotely possible for millions of systems to be updated at the same instant, just that outside of some special circumstances like beta channels (yes Google Play supports this) the huge numbers of devices are offered the same updates. If trust is lost in the update mechanisms then something will be done to restore it. That would likely be large developers like Apple, Microsoft and Google deploying a technical solution to prevent themselves from sending different updates to different devices without loudly warning the user and automatically reporting the attack to the world. That would please users and reduce compliance costs. Really, the major operating systems should just do it now to prevent this from becoming a problem in the first place.
  - AgentME 8y ago
code4tee 8y ago
Simply put, actions like this reaffirm that encryption works. Use it.
arminiusreturns 8y ago
Let's not kid ourselves. Surveillance moves like this are about control, not security, and especially not about national security. If anything, moves like this actually weaken national security by forcing bad standards and backdoors on people. The 1946 USUK act that officially created the five-eyes in the first place post-Atlantic treaty needs to be completely re-evaluated and potentially scrapped.
fixermark 8y ago
This seems like a pretty empty threat. The government already has the authority to demand lawful access. "Lawful" includes a warrant. If the government wants to show up with a warrant, I expect companies to aid the government in gaining access to legally-relevant data. If they want help in a broad-spectrum fishing expedition, the US at least has no clear affirmative authority and a small pile of legal precedent based upon the Fourth Amendment that says they in fact lack that authority. The fact they had the technological capability previously to act without Constitutional authority is irrelevant. Show up with a warrant or go pound sand.
- natch 8y ago
  Whether they get a warrant or not is orthogonal to the question of whether they ultimately succeed in breaking security for virtually everyone and everything. In other words this notion of “get a warrant or pound sand” ignores that even with a robust legal warrant-requiring regime, they still would need to require back doors (key escrow, effectively the same thing) that would screw up security royally in order to get what they want.
fosco 8y ago
What can we do about it?
JTbane 8y ago
Legislators don't seem to understand that backdoored crypto is bad crypto. If I write a chat app that uses strong encryption, with the keys stored on each user's device, there are no legal grounds for me to modify any part of my app if the government wants access.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
leptoniscool 8y ago
It's likely the 'Five Eyes' already have access to all or most data from the level of telecom equipment. This is probably why they banned Huawei and ZTE.
forapurpose 8y ago
> part of an escalating war between government officials and Silicon Valley over access to people’s private data Who is missing from that competition? I'm purposely misconstruing the meaning, but it makes an ironic point. Remember that most of these tech companies make money by collecting and using the same data they claim to protect, and some provide it to the government.
willfiveash 8y ago
I would refer people to these two posts about this subject: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/five-eyes_intel.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/five-eyes_int... https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html Basically, crypto backdoors are a very bad idea.

478 points by aaronharnly 8y ago

macawfish 8y ago

Fascism.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post like this. Even if you're right, an unsubstantive single-word comment is not the thing to post—and certainly not that word, which leads to the nether regions of the internet barrel. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pizzazzaro 8y ago
I want you to know up front that I agree with you - this is such, from the very people we were warned about, and we should oppose it wherever it exists. But... Do you care to elaborate why this is Fascism? Why we should care? Or most importantly... How do you respond to this instance of "Fascism"? Any ideas? Suggestions? Pointers? Calling it out is nice, but "calling Hitler a Nazi" is just an obvious Tautology. I expect better on HN.

arkadiyt 8y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17898498

dang 8y ago
Yes. Normally we'd mark this one as a dupe of that one, but it seems to be taking this story a while to ripple through the system as people become aware that that document was published and try to figure out what it means. Since the NYT article does contain some new information as well as more background, we'll leave it up.

mactavish88 8y ago

Surely the final solution to this problem is a community-based one - one that decentralises the tech giants? I'm still struggling to figure out why a cohesive, widespread, community-driven solution hasn't emerged yet. Anybody have any ideas as to why?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 8y ago
- winner-take-all economics created the giants - similar forces drive techies: would you rather make Facebook for free or for a billion dollars? - tech culture doesn't understand community building - some censorship / legal control is absolutely necessary lest you become the child porn network, or crown in spam
- mirimir 8y ago
  > some censorship / legal control is absolutely necessary lest you become the child porn network, or crown in spam Arguably, "becom[ing] the child porn network" is the only proof that you can't be compromised. Because assholes will eventually migrate to the most secure options.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The assholes migrated to TOR. They were wrong, their migration didn't act as a proof. You can always be compromised a dozen different ways if you're breaking the law (in the US) and your adversary has the resources and reach of the US Federal Government. You're fucked, period, if they're on to you and determined. We keep seeing this demonstrated over and over and over again. There are always flaws somewhere.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      As I read the evidence, you're only fucked if your OPSEC is weak. Sure there have been lots of high-profile takedowns. But I only know of one case where a bug in Tor per se compromised users. That was CMU exploitation of the relay-early bug. That's how they got PlayPen. And then they ran it as a honeypot, serving phone-home malware, and nailed lots of users. But in every other case that I'm aware of, OPSEC failure led to pwnage. Freedom Hosting. Silk Road 1. Sheep Marketplace. So can you point to another case where defects in Tor design or practice got people pwned? I doubt it. But even so, I am concerned that the absence of such news just reflects parallel construction. And finally, it's not enough to just rely on Tor. In my opinion, one should always use Tor through a nested VPN chain, comprising servers from at least three different VPN providers. That way, adversaries must compromise both Tor and the VPN services. Also, it's crucial to never run servers in places that can be associated with you. Because the more traffic there is, especially if an adversary can control traffic flow, the easier it is to do traffic correlation.

mirimir 8y ago

As I see it, any system that can be compromised to pwn malefactors - even the most conceivably horrible terrorists and criminals - cannot be trusted. And notwithstanding all the slander and conspiracy theory, Tor is perhaps the only working example of a compromise-resistant system. Unless it actually is backdoored, anyway. Obviously, the Five Eyes don't see it that way. But I gotta wonder how commonly Tor is used among TLAs, and how the debate goes, if it is. Because this would destroy Tor. Unless operators were totally anonymous, and relays only stayed up until targeted.

jedberg 8y ago
I thought it was decided that tor was already compromised, because the five eyes intelligence apparatus already controls more than 50% of the exit nodes, giving them almost complete insight into where all the traffic originates?
- mirimir 8y ago
  Gotta cite for that? And actually, your comment makes no sense. Controlling exits shows where traffic goes. Exits don't connect directly with users, but rather through middle relays, and either entry guards or bridges. So adversaries either need data from all three relays in circuits, or they must control both ends, and be able to signal through circuits. That's how CMU researchers pwned users and .onion sites, using the relay-early bug, which allowed intra-circuit signaling.
  - TrueDuality 8y ago
    I believe they're referring to the traffic analysis style attacks. You don't have to know the content of the traffic if you control the entry node and exit node, either the guard relay, or the hidden service by monitoring the size and timing of individual packets. This doesn't deanonymize on its own unless you control the hidden service, but can be used with other data to link anonymous identities to the IP connecting to the entry node. That being said, what they're referring to is pretty old research and I haven't heard about any evidence proving any agency controls a large amount of the network. For a more current account of modern attack methods against Tor this paper[1] is a pretty recent compilation of researched attacks. The Tor developers actively try to defend against these but you should still be careful, it isn't researched enough yet (read: Tor isn't that old) to defend against resource rich attackers. [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02816.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02816.pdf

ben_w 8y ago

Ultimately these governments can break security at any level. It’s not just the encryption or the apps — if they require the OS manufacturers to cooperate with them, they can record all user input and output. Likewise hardware manufacturers. It’s not just phones or computers, either — The UK was well known for having high CCTV density well before the proliferation of low-cost digital cameras; By my estimate is now well within government spending limits to put all movement under surveillance by putting cameras on every corner which combine ANPR and facial recognition to cover pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists; and laser diodes are so cheap every window, never mind person, can be surveilled with laser microscopes. This is also cheap enough for criminals to do it. I recently got (fake) scam blackmail emails demanding bitcoin under the threat that they had used my webcam to record me watching porn (duct tape over my webcam says they didn’t), but imagine a local crime gang doing that with a drone pointing at your window. We have to change a lot of stuff in out society very quickly to keep us all safe. We need a world where none of us need secrets, because very soon we won’t have the ability to keep them. We also need the ability to survive ourselves breaking the law, because the law was created with the (at the time reasonable) belief that only important violations would be brought to the attention of the authorities, because most of us can’t get through the day without violating several [1], and because even though current state-of-the-art A.I. can’t automatically enforce all those laws, we should assume that is coming. But not just what, also how fast it changes and how slow we react: How long ago was it demonstrated that keys can be duplicated from a single image taken by a telephoto lens? And how many keys have been made safe against it since? The only thing keeping us safe is that even the bad actors aren’t keeping up with the tech. That isn’t good, because it means that whoever does use it will look, what’s the phrase, “indistinguishable from magic”. [1] https://mises.org/library/decriminalize-average-man https://mises.org/library/decriminalize-average-man

stedaniels 8y ago
> By my estimate is now well within government spending limits to put all movement under surveillance by putting cameras on every corner which combine ANPR and facial recognition to cover pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists; and laser diodes are so cheap every window, never mind person, can be surveilled. That's a maybe. You are however vastly overestimating the time it would take for the UK government to go to tender over such a platform. Then you are overestimating by an order of magnitude the private sectors ability to deliver such a platform within a reasonable budget and within the next few decades. Have you looked at government infrastructure projects? Thankfully they set a reassuringly pitiful benchmark. For now.. I agree with the rest of your comment wholeheartedly.

mmxi 8y ago

I think this is quite similar to ad-blocking. If ads would have stayed small instead of becoming assholes, nobody would have adblockers. And if the intelligence agencys wouldn't spy on anyone but only with a court-order, encryption wouldn't be that interesting as well.

mirimir 8y ago
Not really. Before the 80s brought ubiquitous personal computers, and academic cryptography became a thing, the NSA and its friends had pretty much a monopoly on strong encryption. That is, encryption was implemented by dedicated hardware. There weren't that many manufacturers, and they were under intense pressure to only sell strong encryption to the NSA and friends, and sell backdoored stuff to everyone else. So anyway, we went through this in the 90s (the Clipper Chip). That died down, in part because terrorists and criminals weren't really using much encryption. But now we have iPhones with strong encryption, and TLAs and LEOs are seriously freaked.

vikiomega9 8y ago

As an aside, I recently came across the argument that programs like Five Eyes were designed because of mass infiltration of immigrants/others who are not designed for Western ideas/government and that it's the price that people pay for relegation of their freedoms. So I might have been living under a rock but this argument is on the alt-right for what it's worth but I'm not entirely sure how to process it. In the sense that there's far too much irony and the lack of a unified framework of laws that work towards humanity maybe? (Sorry for the incoherent thought but I had to get this off my chest)

lozenge 8y ago
That doesn't really make sense to me. Five eyes, and intelligence agencies, collect information that has nothing to do with people in their countries. For example the US tapping Merkel's phone or bugging the Copenhagen climate talks. It is done to gain diplomatic, military and economic advantage. You can sample them on Wikileaks.
- vikiomega9 8y ago
  Isn't PRISM and other related programs part of Five eyes? I guess my point was more that as the US moves away from it's War on Terror the next natural target is on ideology
  - tumetab1 8y ago
    Not really since that target probably doesn't support the selling of more guns to the USA agencies.
seanhunter 8y ago
Don't think there's any connection between 5 eyes and immigration. The Five Eyes refers to intelligence cooperation between the major English-speaking nations. That arose directly out of them having been allies in WW2 and facing a common adversary (the Soviet Bloc) in the cold war. In WW2, they didn't have as deep collaboration with many other Nato powers because France was occupied and Italy and Germany were the enemy they were fighting. It was natural for this close cooperation to continue from there.

motohagiography 8y ago

Of course they are going to ask, and legislators will weigh the political cost/benefit to it. My impression from the previous crypto wars and the skirmishes that have followed is, as technologists, we take a very tactical view of technology, and underestimate the intentions of people who understand power and politics the way we understand information systems. The way we see the security of a system, they see the sovereignty of a state. Just as incompleteness in our code can yield system level compromises, incompleteness in their ability to apply their rules to their territories and domains also yields compromises that makes the whole system untrustworthy. I don't agree with what I perceive as their Hobbes-ean need for total control, where I think the localized, depth first absolute authority of a state becomes malignant when it is applied breadth first and in totality to all aspects of life, but you can sympathize with the urge without agreeing with it. They should be mindful that post-Snowden, no matter how large the field we live in, people have seen the walls and bars at the perimeter, and that broad perception is likely a greater source of instability than any gaps in the ability of the state to enforce them. Viewed this way, the 5Eyes statement seems unwise.

3pt14159 8y ago
The apparently Hobbesian view that you have over FVEY's desire to decrypt data is misguided. Most people that work in politics or intelligence in liberal states aren't in it for the power. They are either curious, desire a life of excitement, or want to bring positive change to society. They want to decrypt data because they want to protect people from threats. I'm not saying we should allow them to, but ascribing malintent is misguided. Edit: Before the reflexive downvotes ask yourself: Who is asking for the ability to decrypt? These people are making half or less what they could make in the private sector.
- the_watcher 8y ago
  > Who is asking for the ability to decrypt? These people are making half or less what they could make in the private sector. While I agree with your general point about not ascribing malign intent (at the very least, the misunderstanding about the security implications of weakening decryption seems primarily a case of Hanlon's Razor to me), but the "making half or less what they could make isn't convincing to me. There are those who'd happily sacrifice raw dollars for the power of being able to decrypt

aneutron 8y ago

It feels weird to read stuff like this, really. What they want is to be able to wiretap people, without them knowing. Because if encryption is what's bothering them, you can get a warrant, seize the phone and/or computer, and make the owner unlock it / give you the keys, by law. It is perfectly logical and lawful. However, if unwarranted (in the sense of without a warrant) wiretapping is involved, then yes, encryption "hinders the law enforcement". Except it doesn't. Because as mentioned earlier, just get a warrant, and make the owner unlock / give you the key, by law. It doesn't hinder the law enforcement, it hinders the intelligence agencies work and makes it less invisible. And I kind of think that's a good thing too.

wereHamster 8y ago
> […] make the owner unlock / give you the key, by law. That only works if you can threaten to put the owner into jail for not complying. If you're trying to spy on communication between two people outside your jurisdiction, you're out of luck. (that doesn't mean I support the US governments attempt to undermine secure communication)
- jowsie 8y ago
  Refusing to provide your passwords is itself a crime in the UK, not to mention obstructing an investigation and god knows what else they decide to stick you with for trying to have some privacy. I believe the idea is to threaten you with more jail time than you would receive for the crime you possibly committed.
  - Canada 8y ago
    Luckily with modern key agreement protocols the user never knew the decryption keys at all. Encryption of data at rest is another matter. We need better duress mechanisms there, and in order for those to be effective we need a big cleanup of how many applications store user data.
    - mirimir 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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crummy 8y ago

Maybe this is a stupid question, but if the tech industry claims that you can't make a backdoor safe, how do they keep safe their update mechanisms? Aren't they basically backdoors-by-design?

Canada 8y ago
In a sense they are, but they send the same updates to everyone whereas a backdoor needs to allow malicious actions to be taken against specific targets only. If vendors are forced to abuse updates in this way then users are going to demand a certificate transparency-like system to stop the abuse.
- ENOTTY 8y ago
  > they send the same updates to everyone Google's staggered updates to Chrome are updates sent to specific targeted users. The iOS App Store (and Google Play store, I believe) has an opt-in beta program that also sends betas to specific targeted users. > If vendors are forced to abuse updates in this way then users are going to demand a certificate transparency-like system to stop the abuse. But yes, leveraging users' trust in the update system is a risk that needs to be factored into the debate.
  - Canada 8y ago
    Right, I'm not suggesting that it's even remotely possible for millions of systems to be updated at the same instant, just that outside of some special circumstances like beta channels (yes Google Play supports this) the huge numbers of devices are offered the same updates. If trust is lost in the update mechanisms then something will be done to restore it. That would likely be large developers like Apple, Microsoft and Google deploying a technical solution to prevent themselves from sending different updates to different devices without loudly warning the user and automatically reporting the attack to the world. That would please users and reduce compliance costs. Really, the major operating systems should just do it now to prevent this from becoming a problem in the first place.
- AgentME 8y ago

code4tee 8y ago

Simply put, actions like this reaffirm that encryption works. Use it.

arminiusreturns 8y ago

Let's not kid ourselves. Surveillance moves like this are about control, not security, and especially not about national security. If anything, moves like this actually weaken national security by forcing bad standards and backdoors on people. The 1946 USUK act that officially created the five-eyes in the first place post-Atlantic treaty needs to be completely re-evaluated and potentially scrapped.

fixermark 8y ago

This seems like a pretty empty threat. The government already has the authority to demand lawful access. "Lawful" includes a warrant. If the government wants to show up with a warrant, I expect companies to aid the government in gaining access to legally-relevant data. If they want help in a broad-spectrum fishing expedition, the US at least has no clear affirmative authority and a small pile of legal precedent based upon the Fourth Amendment that says they in fact lack that authority. The fact they had the technological capability previously to act without Constitutional authority is irrelevant. Show up with a warrant or go pound sand.

natch 8y ago
Whether they get a warrant or not is orthogonal to the question of whether they ultimately succeed in breaking security for virtually everyone and everything. In other words this notion of “get a warrant or pound sand” ignores that even with a robust legal warrant-requiring regime, they still would need to require back doors (key escrow, effectively the same thing) that would screw up security royally in order to get what they want.

fosco 8y ago

What can we do about it?

JTbane 8y ago

Legislators don't seem to understand that backdoored crypto is bad crypto. If I write a chat app that uses strong encryption, with the keys stored on each user's device, there are no legal grounds for me to modify any part of my app if the government wants access.

deleted 8y ago

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leptoniscool 8y ago

It's likely the 'Five Eyes' already have access to all or most data from the level of telecom equipment. This is probably why they banned Huawei and ZTE.

forapurpose 8y ago

> part of an escalating war between government officials and Silicon Valley over access to people’s private data Who is missing from that competition? I'm purposely misconstruing the meaning, but it makes an ironic point. Remember that most of these tech companies make money by collecting and using the same data they claim to protect, and some provide it to the government.

willfiveash 8y ago

I would refer people to these two posts about this subject: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/five-eyes_intel.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/five-eyes_int... https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html Basically, crypto backdoors are a very bad idea.