4 ms·
Portions of the US government have tried multiple times to make the addition of backdoors required via public force of law. They're still trying to promote it n
by dv_dt 7y ago
Portions of the US government have tried multiple times to make the addition of backdoors required via public force of law. They're still trying to promote it now. Short of that public requirement, they can ask & issue orders to not discuss the matter, tie it with defense orders, or imply the withholding of export or trade licenses, all contingent upon cooperation. In the end it looks pretty blurry between a request for cooperation and and order.
Even in China, they might not need to rely on explicit state security authority, just tie it up with state sponsored funding or other softer measures.
- nabla9 7y ago> they can ask & issue orders to not discuss the matter, They can't do that.
- dv_dt 7y agoWhy not in the form of a National Security letter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
- nl 7y agoNo, a national security letter can't do this. It can only compel the release of collected metadata to agencies.
- dv_dt 7y agoAre holes in security infrastructure required to collect metadata? Are keys, data that secures content - considered metadata? They're not content. Since you can't discuss the letters publicly, a claim could be that it is metadata, and compel keeping the request to collect it as such secret - similarly the fight from the silenced party, if there were any fight, could be out of public visibility.
- nl 7y agoNo they aren't. Read the Wikipedia page you linked to. It's great that you can make claims like this based on zero evidence or even allegations, but there is no basis in fact for it. What's more the number of 3rd party people that have to be involved in something like this make it virtually impossible that the national security letter structure could keep them all silent, especially since there are numerous foreign nationals in the supply chains. Go read the huge amount of ACLU coverage of these, or the many articles linked, or the congressional testimony. There are no allegations that this mechanism is being used to do what you say.
- jtc331 7y agoSince when has the US government felt limited by its own laws? The naïveté here is incredible. That doesn’t prove they have done it. But arguing they can’t is crazy.
- tdhttt 7y agoCitation needed?
- _jal 7y agoYou seem to be making specific, narrow arguments to cast doubt on a much wider claim. Care to state your belief about the relations between the TLAs and the larger networking and communications firms in the US?
- nl 7y agoYou seem to be making specific, narrow arguments to cast doubt on a much wider claim. Not the OP, but I think that addressing specific parts of the claim is extremely important. We've seen this around the PRISM program, where the allegations of support by tech companies were confused by their support for lawful law enforcment warrants (as opposed to the NSA's dragnet surveillance via PRISM). This confusion has reached the point where I saw a lecturer claiming Google helped the NSA collect data as part of PRISM, where the NSA's own slides[1] show the opposite[2]. [1] The famous "smiley slide" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/new-docs-show-nsa-taps-google-yahoo-data-center-links/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/new-docs-show-ns... or https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/nsa-muscular-program-spying-on-google-and-yahoo.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/nsa-muscular-program-sp... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...