20 ms·

Rethinking Encryption

177 points by justlikeyou 7y ago

chacham15 7y ago
Despite the length of this article, I see no plan for the obvious rebuttal of terrorists: if you make whatsapp or some other app not end to end encrypted, the terrorists will make their own app. Its not difficult to generate your own symmetric key and use openssl to encrypt and decrypt information sent with that key. Sure, you can force apple to reveal the contents of the hard drive, but whats the difference if apple is the one generating the ciphertext or the terrorists own app is? The difference is consumer protection has backdoors, but the terrorist protection does not.
- backdoorsgalore 7y ago
  Every cryptographic protocol has a weakness in its implementation if not in its spec (and if not in the tool itself then in its various dependencies)
  - senectus1 7y ago
    Any tool can be used to undo itself... if not directly then by proxy.
    - ProfHewitt 7y ago
      This is one reason that NIBOR requires that a new virtual machine can always be installed to fix issues with the previous one.
  - lazyguy2 7y ago
    Uhh.. no. In fact it doesn't. If your goal is to secure the entire internet via SSL or get people to use PGP signed emails in a mass market then the tremendous technical and cultural hurdles in place that create making a 'truly secure' implementation that gets widely accepted a near impossibility. But if you goal is to secure the communication between trained people in a 'terrorist cell' or other small group then that is pretty easy. It's really as hard as you want it to be. For example any decent programmer could write a program that utilizes a 'One Time Pad' of random data to encrypt communication. A program in a USB flash drive that is filled with randomly generated data and the program is all that would need to be exchanged ahead of time. The biggest challenge involved in that is making absolutely sure that the every section of the one time pad used is only used once and is destroyed afterwards. You don't need to really know anything about encryption or math or protocol details to make something like that work. And if correctly done it'll be impossible to crack. And we are dealing with threats and adversaries that are much more sophisticated then that. Even small terrorist groups are more often then not state-funded one way or another. Foreign threats are sophisticated enough to create their own encryption. Domestic threats and cartels are sophisticated to hire competent programmers to do work for them. Pedophiles are not idiots either. Many of them are talented technical people that will have no problem avoiding government backdoors in commercial software and hardware products. The threats American face via encryption isn't that encryption is too strong. It's that Americans don't use it enough and don't use it properly. I find the idea that Americans are under threat due to lack of backdoors a fallacious one. Legislating that backdoors need to put in place only increases threats. The only thing that laws like that would accomplish is to make it illegal for Americans to be secure. Take away legal ability to have secure software then it means that the only people who will have secure software is criminals. Criminalizing good software is never going to be productive.
    - backdoorsgalore 7y ago
      USB stick... I'm sure it'll work out great. What if you have to give it up with a gun to your head? << Many of them are talented technical people that will have no problem avoiding government backdoors in commercial software and hardware products >> Hand wavy as heck. Then you meander. Not sure what you're responding to.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        It's trivial to lock the USB stick in such a fashion as to be impossible to decrypt in a practical time frame. Furthermore it's practical to communicate in such a fashion that grabbing one party only grants you access to communication intended for this party. If really paranoid it might only grant you access to communication between compromise and his fellows realizing that he is burned. Maybe nothing at all if you can't successfully coerce and all devices are locked.
        backdoorsgalore 7y ago
        All public encryption algorithms have backdoors in their implementation and sometimes (as with Elliptic Curve standards from NIST adopted in the browser) in their spec. You might get lucky if you have a cryptographer design you a custom algorithm but that's mostly security thru obscurity and if a state actor really wanted to defeat it they may just kidnap the cryptographer at gun point and have them reveal how to. Cryptography as a weapon against state actors is NO LESS BRAINLESS than the right to bear arms to protect against the US gov. Just completely useless, if not brain dead.
        adrianN 7y ago
        Encryption is not trivial to implement right, but it is also not impossible to defend against reasonable threat models. You make claims without giving any proof.
        AdieuToLogic 7y ago
        > All public encryption algorithms have backdoors in their implementation ... Okay, this is the first time I can recall having ever asked the following: Source? I mean, if you're going to make that type of absolute claim, I must ask for some referenes to support same.
- josephg 7y ago
  Apple could, for example, switch out the version of an app on my phone with a backdoored version of the same app. The backdoored version could upload a copy of every message I send to law enforcement. It wouldn’t even be difficult - just a keylogger would do the trick, or the OS could periodically take screenshots of the app while it is open and send them somewhere nefarious. Those latter techniques would also work with web apps. If this sort of thing was done selectively, I doubt anyone would notice. If the government passes laws requiring backdoors in WhatsApp, terrorists can use another app. If the government passes laws requiring Apple and google to add backdoors to their phones, it will be almost impossible to avoid government surveillance. (And if the approach of the Australian government is anything to go by, we won’t even be able to tell this has happened. Instead they’ll pass a law demanding backdoors on request, then legally forbid Apple et al from making any of the details public.) This is one of the reasons I buy phones from Apple. Unlike Google, Samsung, Huawei, etc they have at least made their opposition to government meddling very clear. And as this article points out in detail, they have put their money where their mouth is. If some of the sales price of my iPhone pays for Apple lawyers to fight for my digital rights, that is a tax I pay willingly.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Ironically, using a corporate store for app deployment could become less safe than downloading something through your browser at that point. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt and appreciate their stance, but with a legislative basis they too would have to comply. I also think that professional criminals wouldn't use their phones in the first place if it is tied to their ID in any way. Sure, you might catch some of the riff-raff, but I think strong encryption is more beneficial for any form of security in the broader picture.
  - chacham15 7y ago
    I dont quite buy the "switch the app" argument as code signing easily fixes that. Intercepting at a higher level such as a keylogger or screenshotter would work, but then you'd apply the same argument: the terrorists would just go one level higher. In fact they could go all the way to open source processors running their own code doing all the same things. Yes, it would delay them a few years to get there, but once there there would be little the US could do to stop it. At the network level, we simply dont sign hardware, so without some major refactoring to the core system, theres little to do there. Still though, at every level of this back and forth, consumers have to give up more and more privacy to allow the government to step in and get the same level of information they had before about terrorists until the terrorists will eventually win (or we completely lose privacy and trillions of dollars in infrastructure). So why play the game?
- ProfHewitt 7y ago
  A new virtual machine underneath can see what every app is doing.
argomo 7y ago
"Going dark" is a good thing... it limits the state's ability to abuse its enormous power (which is already routinely abused, as any student of FBI history or current events should know). However, "going dark" is not what's happening. Only recently had government has this much power to examine, catalog, and track the masses. Instead of debating the ethics of encryption (and trying to outlaw math), we should be debating how best to curtail and audit government powers to prevent their abuse.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  The problem was the fact that the Internet, in its romantic period, "went light" first. "Going dark" is just a return to the balance once knowledge critical mass was reached about the scale of the "went light" event.
akersten 7y ago
This is fundamentally a fight about the autonomy of the human mind, and what the government can command you to do with your own brain. If you and a cohort were the last survivors of a dying tribe, with your own special language that no one understood, and you criminally conspired with them via written word, the government could not compel you to translate your messages just because they cannot understand them. That's the 5th Amendment in action, as you'd be creating testimony against yourself. The prosecution will have to pin you on some other charge, maybe a crime that you actually physically committed. It's the same exact thing with encryption. It's a language that the government cannot understand, and cannot compel you to translate. Now, to be fair, there is some wishy-washy here because the government desires not only to have compelled decryption, but to force companies to wiretap their own users. The later is not strictly a 5th Amendment violation - but it's the principle of the matter. One day we'll have the ability to interface directly with our minds, and we need to draw the "stay the fuck out" line pretty damned clearly in the sand before that happens.
- paggle 7y ago
  By "cannot compel you to translate," you mean "must not compel" or "should not compel," because an entity that controls 11 aircraft carriers can compel you to translate whatever the hell they want you to.
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    What does 11 carrier strike groups have to do with the 5th amendment? The former is to project power beyond the borders of the United States. The latter is to protect you from an abusive government domestically. Also to take it further, technically, the US Constitution does not apply beyond our borders (like any other US law, absent a bilateral treaty). I fail to see the connection you are trying to make.
    - nullstyle 7y ago
      Not GP, but I think further exploration of the point being made can be found here: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/ If you prefer to hear similar sentiments from one of saints of comedy: https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261 https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261
dev_dull 7y ago
I’m extremely skeptical about ANYTHING put out by this group, and Jim Baker in particular. This guy was general counsel for the FBI at the same time they were abusing FISA warrants to secretly spy on Trump admins. You think they’ll stop at Trump? They’re just getting started. We need to get back to our roots of being extremely careful about our intelligence agencies. I know you’ll initially be turned off by the subject of the below article, but definitely read it. For the sake of our civil liberties, the leash of our intelligence agencies must be kept short. https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behind-the-alleged-plot-to-take-down-trump_2833074.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behin...
- temptemptemp111 7y ago
  Pretty annoyed with how censorship prone HN is... I'm just surprised at how much people will put up with before moving to their own "news" platform(s).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  Don't post conspiracy theories. Also: the article actually comes out in favour of strong encryption. How does that fit with your worldview?
  - gortep 7y ago
    What are "conspiracy theories"?
shakna 7y ago
Whilst I strongly disagree with some of his viewpoints, we do agree on at least one major point. > Many would disagree strongly with the attorney general’s assessment that an acceptable technical solution to law enforcement’s problem—one that appropriately balances all of the equities at issue—actually exists. > But, for the reasons discussed above, public safety officials should also become among the strongest supporters of widely available strong encryption. Encryption _should_ be continued to be used, and used in a more effective manner across all communications. The net benefits of encryption outweigh the risks that these intelligence agencies complain about. I may think of it as absolutely necessary, and Baker may think of it as a necessary evil, but if we two from very different worlds can both agree it is necessary, then it should be fully embraced.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I don't think the threats from people "going dark" justify weakening encryption. The potential for abuse is too real and there are already a lot of instances when governmental actors have acted in bad faith. The text I would consider manipulative with its references of a terrorist bombing. State actors suppressing dissent isn't mentioned at all. It is not a black and white issue, but in most parts of the world, people would benefit from strengthening encryption even further. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.
- PaulAJ 7y ago
  If you read the whole article you will find out that you are in complete agreement with it.
todd3834 7y ago
I was thinking about this subject today. If the US has laws that prohibit legitimate encryption and other countries do not... Is it fair to suggest that we are making ourselves easy targets to foreign nations who wish to practice privacy violations? I don’t think about encryption as a method to protect myself from the US government (only) but from any entity that is local or foreign. I think everyone should have the right to privacy. To me this is more important than the right to guns. And no not because I want to have illegal content, I just want to keep my information secure from people who don’t have a right to my privacy. What am I missing? Should we give up our rights because there are people who break the law? Aren’t they going to continue to break the law anyways? Including using encryption. This is like CAPTCHAs. Punishing the majority for the crimes of a very tiny minority. Is this really the only way to catch people who do illegal things or is this just the laziest way to do it?
- scaryclam 7y ago
  Not only that, foreign businesses are less likely to trust anything stored with or touched by US companies. And that's not even getting into regulated industries where it might become illegal to do business.
jeroenhd 7y ago
This guy is all about how much of a threat the expansion of Chinese hardware is but doesn't say a word about the same being true for American hardware. Chinese networking hardware may contain backdoors, American hardware has been confirmed to contain backdoors over and over again. Re: the iPhone: when any country has the golden keys, every country has the golden keys. How hard is it to. Get that through your head. The moment the US demands golden keys, China is going to demand their own set of golden keys, followed by Saudi Arabia and any other foreign adversary. These keys are going to be used the same way the US is going to use them (spy on allies and enemies) as well as for seeking out minorities and problematic citizens. As a foreigner, if something doesn't cross the US Senate of all bodies because of ethics or surveillance problems, that's really saying something. These are the people that brought us laws like the PATRIOT ACT and the CLOUD act, systematically expanding the reach of US law enforcement across borders. The EU, supposedly an ally, had to negotiate a quick, likely invalid or quickly overturned bandage treaty to make it legal to even just store personal data on US company servers. Is this what the US wants to become? A risk to their own allies? Forcing weak encryption is not defence, it's offence. It's hard to believe that people like these aren't jealous of the spying network China has set up.
- modeless 7y ago
  China already got golden keys for Chinese iPhones. Apple handed them iCloud.
  - NieDzejkob 7y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't been able to find a source for this - only mentions of a new datacenter in China. A citation would be nice.
    - trevyn 7y ago
      https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
      - 7y ago
nullc 7y ago
I'm confused at the assumption that you can prevent serious organized criminals from having access to strong cryptography simply by backdooring common communications apps. The genie is out of the bottle: Powerful criminal enterprises will have no difficulty hiring people to build overlay tools that they can run inside their backdoored comms that will provide adequate (at least, if not effectively unbreakable) cryptography. Even if we ignore the considerable first amendment barriers and there were an effort to outright outlaw strong crypto, steganography has become very strong and even if not quite sufficient finding out your comms were being monitored via a use of crypto charge is way better than having the attacker learn all your info. In light of this, I find it difficult to see the goverment's position as seeking to widen infrastructure for the wholesale surveillance of the general public with claims of terrorist groups as a dishonest cover for the demands. The old adage "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns"-- has serious limits owing to the nature of guns as physical objects. The sentiment applies a million fold for cryptography, which is fundamentally a collection of ideas with a zero marginal cost of reproduction or execution, mass-less, volume-less, capable of being distributed around the world in a fraction of a second and implausible to silence even with great leap forward mass murder. Actions to block access to encryption would severely degrade the security and privacy of the general public, on this point I agree with the author. But would it prevent pedophiles and terrorist from having access to encryption? Not likely. Would pedophiles and terrorists occasionally screw up and use insecure means... sure, but they already do that today.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Actions to block access to encryption would severely degrade the security and privacy of the general public.. Perhaps that's the point.
- ProfHewitt 7y ago
  The NIBOR (Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach) proposal addresses the issue of cryptography inside backdoored devices by installing a virtual machine underneath. As discussed in following article, NIBOR also combats steganography: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957
- 7y ago
forthehorde 7y ago
Interesting read, bookmarking it until my boss stops staring at everyone's morning monitors. Thanks for sharing!
pfortuny 7y ago
Unbelievable: think of the children in a grand and pseudo-legalistic way. And this guy is serious! As of secrets were something new. “Society has failed to protect children”. No, man: they were never as protected as you purport they were. You are just rewriting history.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
This is all theater to give people a warm-fuzzy about the way things are. Other than cock-blocking ISPs, what's the value in end-to-end encryption when one of those ends is a megacorporation that is A) super-friendly with the state security apparatus, and B) ready, willing, and able to sell you out to the highest bidder? E2E works great against basement-dwelling h4x0rs, not so much against people with actual power. I know these companies will swear up and down how secure they are--but security of what? Who audits them? Last I checked, no one.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  To be clear, E2E from your-own-server to your-own-server is wonderful. E2E from your google/apple/amazon surveillance device to google/apple/amazon servers is turf guarding. Say I want to block such-and-such domain. With unencrypted DNS, I put a record in my own resolver, and problem solved. With per-app DNS over HTTPS, my infrastructure is out of the loop, and SV has total control.
AdieuToLogic 7y ago
Based on the content and tone of this article, I have to leave this here: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/
enriquto 7y ago
tl;dr: we should use weak encryption because think of the children
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  This spook is arguing for strong encryption. I think the length is just apologia to soften the inevitable shunning by fellow spooks.
ffwd 7y ago
Interesting speech by William Barr: https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general-barr-encryption-technology-law-enforcement https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general-barr... "Only two ways to protect society ... 1) Ability to detect and apprehend criminals .. 2) Regiment society as a whole" "Our ability to protect the public from criminal threats is rapidly deteriorating" "Status quo is exceptionally dangerous"
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Wow the Trump administration really does love saying the quiet part out loud. Literally saying a free society is dangerous and must be controlled.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    The depressing thing is people with his views have been active in politics for decades (and not all in the political circles that currently run the government) - they're just finally getting their time in the sun, gathering together and doing whatever they want. Even if some of this gets unraveled and the worst actors get kicked out, people like him will still be active in local and federal government trying to roll back civil freedoms. It's rough. Hopefully the events of the past few years will act as a wake-up call for people who were previously willing to ignore what was already going on.
  - PixyMisa 7y ago
    I honestly prefer that to someone who lies to your face and stab you in the back. It's easier to fight.
deogeo 7y ago
> But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance for many technical reasons, including but not limited to the widespread adoption of encryption technology. The 'going dark' boogeyman - how predictable. Only in the mind of a spy agency shill does the rapidly growing number of surveillance cameras, facial recognition, flying surveillance drones with high-resolution cameras over cities, and interception of all communication metadata (if not the content), equate to decreasing ability. They won't be happy until we are stripped of even the last tiny scrap of privacy.
- solstice 7y ago
  Have you read the whole (admittedly rather long) article? He has a pretty nuanced view of it imo, especially at the end and explicitly refers to the "golden age of surveillance"
  - deogeo 7y ago
    He says "some argue that society is in a golden age of surveillance" exactly once, but repeatedly presents 'going dark' as fact. That the rest of his view is nuanced doesn't make that aspect any less of a lie.
Debugreality 7y ago
tl;dr: First 5 pages to show he understands why law enforcement wants to weaken security, last 2 disagreeing because cybersecurity and nation state threats are the bigger risk.
auslander 7y ago
> The problem is that there is no law that clearly empowers governmental actors to obtain court orders to compel third parties (such as equipment manufacturers and service providers) to configure their systems to allow the government to obtain the plain text That kinda sums the article, but US Gov always finds ways to compel anyone to anything. Raw power. Takeaway is to be your own equipment manufacturer and service provider, as in cheap mini x86 boxes running open source daemons, over proxychains and VPNs. Rotate equipment, hacked wifi APs and identities monthly, use Signal on iOS and hide in the crowd, because if you're on the watch list, game is over. Cyberpunk at its best.
coldtea 7y ago
>But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance That wasn't an ability of government in 1900 or 1800, so why should we worry that this new-fangled ability has been decreasing lately? Who said it should be an ability for government, and much more, an eternal one, and not a temporary accidental capability due to a few technical developments that allowed it for a short span of time?
- gampleman 7y ago
  While I agree with you, I can also appreciate that intelligence/law enforcement agencies are not keen to go back to the alternatives. HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Would you rather train for a few years, then live a fake life with the constant threat of gruesome death, lying to everyone you know - possibly even your fake wife and kids or rather just tap a few phones/emails? It's no wonder that most agencies have pretty much entirely dropped their expertise on this as soon as the alternative showed up. I don't think they are geared up to get back into that game.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance. Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies. But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).
  - mnm1 7y ago
    Of course I'd rather have my privacy even if it means thousands of CIA agents get tortured and killed. They're the ones who signed up for that job, a job that is likely unnecessary. And even the necessary spying would in no way justify that I and everyone else give up our privacy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already died so we could have that privacy in the first place. A few thousand more dying to keep it is a miniscule price to pay at this point, a negligible price. So are a few crimes being committed that could potentially have been stopped by back doors.
ProfHewitt 7y ago
There is an analysis here: Highly-Secure Backdoors: Internet of Traitorous Things (IoTT) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957
Cyder 7y ago
The flaw in these over zealous mind- policemens arguments is that they say will be no other way to tell what someone is doing without reading their texts and phone data live. A beat cop knows there are many "tells" about what someone is doing. Similarly, one has to commit several crimes leading up to a terrorist act. Catching those before hand crimes is an effective way at stopping the final act. And who is going to be investigating all the people with keywords in their texts? There are not enough cops in the US to do that. If we use the net, there's a government file with a rating on how dangerous we are. My blog on these issues www.cyderinc.net
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  The flaw in your argument is that the article actually argues for strong encryption.
peterwwillis 7y ago
If we make encryption illegal, only the criminals will have encryption. The criminals can just use real encryption inside of "backdoored" tech. USG can't change math.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
athrowaway3z 7y ago
Because this article is an explanation to the anti-encryption crowd the author takes his time to lay out their arguments as a token of understanding their position. Still, i want to bitch about some of them. > In my work at the FBI, I encountered directly how encryption makes it harder for law enforcement to detect, prevent and solve certain types of crime in specific instances. Encrypted data is a known unknown. This doesn't work as an argument without speculating on the scope of unknown unknowns. > I’m confident that this problem can be addressed from a technical perspective. In most cases, it’s just software, and software can be rewritten. That works both ways. ( Source code for effective encryption is less text then this blog piece ) > the United States has not experienced a terrorist or other attack of sufficient magnitude where encryption clearly played a key role in preventing law enforcement from thwarting it And i can't think of any realistic scenario in which it would. The window of cause-and-effect is extremely small. The attack needs to hinge on the tools that the US has authority over. i.e. Why would Osama use WhatsApp on an iPhone in the first place? > inherently vulnerable network of networks This is the wrong way around. Its a 'network of inherently vulnerable networks'. Which is the safest option. ( As the author later notes but doesn't reflect on )
hectorr1 7y ago
Doesn't once mention First Amendment protections. Code is speech, and the internet is the press. This is an attempt to ban an idea.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Even worse, encryption is math. Banning encryption means banning math.

177 points by justlikeyou 7y ago

Despite the length of this article, I see no plan for the obvious rebuttal of terrorists: if you make whatsapp or some other app not end to end encrypted, the terrorists will make their own app. Its not difficult to generate your own symmetric key and use openssl to encrypt and decrypt information sent with that key. Sure, you can force apple to reveal the contents of the hard drive, but whats the difference if apple is the one generating the ciphertext or the terrorists own app is? The difference is consumer protection has backdoors, but the terrorist protection does not.

backdoorsgalore 7y ago
Every cryptographic protocol has a weakness in its implementation if not in its spec (and if not in the tool itself then in its various dependencies)
- senectus1 7y ago
  Any tool can be used to undo itself... if not directly then by proxy.
  - ProfHewitt 7y ago
    This is one reason that NIBOR requires that a new virtual machine can always be installed to fix issues with the previous one.
- lazyguy2 7y ago
  Uhh.. no. In fact it doesn't. If your goal is to secure the entire internet via SSL or get people to use PGP signed emails in a mass market then the tremendous technical and cultural hurdles in place that create making a 'truly secure' implementation that gets widely accepted a near impossibility. But if you goal is to secure the communication between trained people in a 'terrorist cell' or other small group then that is pretty easy. It's really as hard as you want it to be. For example any decent programmer could write a program that utilizes a 'One Time Pad' of random data to encrypt communication. A program in a USB flash drive that is filled with randomly generated data and the program is all that would need to be exchanged ahead of time. The biggest challenge involved in that is making absolutely sure that the every section of the one time pad used is only used once and is destroyed afterwards. You don't need to really know anything about encryption or math or protocol details to make something like that work. And if correctly done it'll be impossible to crack. And we are dealing with threats and adversaries that are much more sophisticated then that. Even small terrorist groups are more often then not state-funded one way or another. Foreign threats are sophisticated enough to create their own encryption. Domestic threats and cartels are sophisticated to hire competent programmers to do work for them. Pedophiles are not idiots either. Many of them are talented technical people that will have no problem avoiding government backdoors in commercial software and hardware products. The threats American face via encryption isn't that encryption is too strong. It's that Americans don't use it enough and don't use it properly. I find the idea that Americans are under threat due to lack of backdoors a fallacious one. Legislating that backdoors need to put in place only increases threats. The only thing that laws like that would accomplish is to make it illegal for Americans to be secure. Take away legal ability to have secure software then it means that the only people who will have secure software is criminals. Criminalizing good software is never going to be productive.
  - backdoorsgalore 7y ago
    USB stick... I'm sure it'll work out great. What if you have to give it up with a gun to your head? << Many of them are talented technical people that will have no problem avoiding government backdoors in commercial software and hardware products >> Hand wavy as heck. Then you meander. Not sure what you're responding to.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      It's trivial to lock the USB stick in such a fashion as to be impossible to decrypt in a practical time frame. Furthermore it's practical to communicate in such a fashion that grabbing one party only grants you access to communication intended for this party. If really paranoid it might only grant you access to communication between compromise and his fellows realizing that he is burned. Maybe nothing at all if you can't successfully coerce and all devices are locked.
      - backdoorsgalore 7y ago
        All public encryption algorithms have backdoors in their implementation and sometimes (as with Elliptic Curve standards from NIST adopted in the browser) in their spec. You might get lucky if you have a cryptographer design you a custom algorithm but that's mostly security thru obscurity and if a state actor really wanted to defeat it they may just kidnap the cryptographer at gun point and have them reveal how to. Cryptography as a weapon against state actors is NO LESS BRAINLESS than the right to bear arms to protect against the US gov. Just completely useless, if not brain dead.
        adrianN 7y ago
        Encryption is not trivial to implement right, but it is also not impossible to defend against reasonable threat models. You make claims without giving any proof.
        AdieuToLogic 7y ago
        > All public encryption algorithms have backdoors in their implementation ... Okay, this is the first time I can recall having ever asked the following: Source? I mean, if you're going to make that type of absolute claim, I must ask for some referenes to support same.
josephg 7y ago
Apple could, for example, switch out the version of an app on my phone with a backdoored version of the same app. The backdoored version could upload a copy of every message I send to law enforcement. It wouldn’t even be difficult - just a keylogger would do the trick, or the OS could periodically take screenshots of the app while it is open and send them somewhere nefarious. Those latter techniques would also work with web apps. If this sort of thing was done selectively, I doubt anyone would notice. If the government passes laws requiring backdoors in WhatsApp, terrorists can use another app. If the government passes laws requiring Apple and google to add backdoors to their phones, it will be almost impossible to avoid government surveillance. (And if the approach of the Australian government is anything to go by, we won’t even be able to tell this has happened. Instead they’ll pass a law demanding backdoors on request, then legally forbid Apple et al from making any of the details public.) This is one of the reasons I buy phones from Apple. Unlike Google, Samsung, Huawei, etc they have at least made their opposition to government meddling very clear. And as this article points out in detail, they have put their money where their mouth is. If some of the sales price of my iPhone pays for Apple lawyers to fight for my digital rights, that is a tax I pay willingly.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Ironically, using a corporate store for app deployment could become less safe than downloading something through your browser at that point. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt and appreciate their stance, but with a legislative basis they too would have to comply. I also think that professional criminals wouldn't use their phones in the first place if it is tied to their ID in any way. Sure, you might catch some of the riff-raff, but I think strong encryption is more beneficial for any form of security in the broader picture.
- chacham15 7y ago
  I dont quite buy the "switch the app" argument as code signing easily fixes that. Intercepting at a higher level such as a keylogger or screenshotter would work, but then you'd apply the same argument: the terrorists would just go one level higher. In fact they could go all the way to open source processors running their own code doing all the same things. Yes, it would delay them a few years to get there, but once there there would be little the US could do to stop it. At the network level, we simply dont sign hardware, so without some major refactoring to the core system, theres little to do there. Still though, at every level of this back and forth, consumers have to give up more and more privacy to allow the government to step in and get the same level of information they had before about terrorists until the terrorists will eventually win (or we completely lose privacy and trillions of dollars in infrastructure). So why play the game?
ProfHewitt 7y ago
A new virtual machine underneath can see what every app is doing.

argomo 7y ago

"Going dark" is a good thing... it limits the state's ability to abuse its enormous power (which is already routinely abused, as any student of FBI history or current events should know). However, "going dark" is not what's happening. Only recently had government has this much power to examine, catalog, and track the masses. Instead of debating the ethics of encryption (and trying to outlaw math), we should be debating how best to curtail and audit government powers to prevent their abuse.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
The problem was the fact that the Internet, in its romantic period, "went light" first. "Going dark" is just a return to the balance once knowledge critical mass was reached about the scale of the "went light" event.

akersten 7y ago

This is fundamentally a fight about the autonomy of the human mind, and what the government can command you to do with your own brain. If you and a cohort were the last survivors of a dying tribe, with your own special language that no one understood, and you criminally conspired with them via written word, the government could not compel you to translate your messages just because they cannot understand them. That's the 5th Amendment in action, as you'd be creating testimony against yourself. The prosecution will have to pin you on some other charge, maybe a crime that you actually physically committed. It's the same exact thing with encryption. It's a language that the government cannot understand, and cannot compel you to translate. Now, to be fair, there is some wishy-washy here because the government desires not only to have compelled decryption, but to force companies to wiretap their own users. The later is not strictly a 5th Amendment violation - but it's the principle of the matter. One day we'll have the ability to interface directly with our minds, and we need to draw the "stay the fuck out" line pretty damned clearly in the sand before that happens.

paggle 7y ago
By "cannot compel you to translate," you mean "must not compel" or "should not compel," because an entity that controls 11 aircraft carriers can compel you to translate whatever the hell they want you to.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  What does 11 carrier strike groups have to do with the 5th amendment? The former is to project power beyond the borders of the United States. The latter is to protect you from an abusive government domestically. Also to take it further, technically, the US Constitution does not apply beyond our borders (like any other US law, absent a bilateral treaty). I fail to see the connection you are trying to make.
  - nullstyle 7y ago
    Not GP, but I think further exploration of the point being made can be found here: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/ If you prefer to hear similar sentiments from one of saints of comedy: https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261 https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261

dev_dull 7y ago

I’m extremely skeptical about ANYTHING put out by this group, and Jim Baker in particular. This guy was general counsel for the FBI at the same time they were abusing FISA warrants to secretly spy on Trump admins. You think they’ll stop at Trump? They’re just getting started. We need to get back to our roots of being extremely careful about our intelligence agencies. I know you’ll initially be turned off by the subject of the below article, but definitely read it. For the sake of our civil liberties, the leash of our intelligence agencies must be kept short. https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behind-the-alleged-plot-to-take-down-trump_2833074.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behin...

temptemptemp111 7y ago
Pretty annoyed with how censorship prone HN is... I'm just surprised at how much people will put up with before moving to their own "news" platform(s).
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
Don't post conspiracy theories. Also: the article actually comes out in favour of strong encryption. How does that fit with your worldview?
- gortep 7y ago
  What are "conspiracy theories"?

shakna 7y ago

Whilst I strongly disagree with some of his viewpoints, we do agree on at least one major point. > Many would disagree strongly with the attorney general’s assessment that an acceptable technical solution to law enforcement’s problem—one that appropriately balances all of the equities at issue—actually exists. > But, for the reasons discussed above, public safety officials should also become among the strongest supporters of widely available strong encryption. Encryption _should_ be continued to be used, and used in a more effective manner across all communications. The net benefits of encryption outweigh the risks that these intelligence agencies complain about. I may think of it as absolutely necessary, and Baker may think of it as a necessary evil, but if we two from very different worlds can both agree it is necessary, then it should be fully embraced.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I don't think the threats from people "going dark" justify weakening encryption. The potential for abuse is too real and there are already a lot of instances when governmental actors have acted in bad faith. The text I would consider manipulative with its references of a terrorist bombing. State actors suppressing dissent isn't mentioned at all. It is not a black and white issue, but in most parts of the world, people would benefit from strengthening encryption even further. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.

PaulAJ 7y ago
If you read the whole article you will find out that you are in complete agreement with it.

todd3834 7y ago

I was thinking about this subject today. If the US has laws that prohibit legitimate encryption and other countries do not... Is it fair to suggest that we are making ourselves easy targets to foreign nations who wish to practice privacy violations? I don’t think about encryption as a method to protect myself from the US government (only) but from any entity that is local or foreign. I think everyone should have the right to privacy. To me this is more important than the right to guns. And no not because I want to have illegal content, I just want to keep my information secure from people who don’t have a right to my privacy. What am I missing? Should we give up our rights because there are people who break the law? Aren’t they going to continue to break the law anyways? Including using encryption. This is like CAPTCHAs. Punishing the majority for the crimes of a very tiny minority. Is this really the only way to catch people who do illegal things or is this just the laziest way to do it?

scaryclam 7y ago
Not only that, foreign businesses are less likely to trust anything stored with or touched by US companies. And that's not even getting into regulated industries where it might become illegal to do business.

jeroenhd 7y ago

This guy is all about how much of a threat the expansion of Chinese hardware is but doesn't say a word about the same being true for American hardware. Chinese networking hardware may contain backdoors, American hardware has been confirmed to contain backdoors over and over again. Re: the iPhone: when any country has the golden keys, every country has the golden keys. How hard is it to. Get that through your head. The moment the US demands golden keys, China is going to demand their own set of golden keys, followed by Saudi Arabia and any other foreign adversary. These keys are going to be used the same way the US is going to use them (spy on allies and enemies) as well as for seeking out minorities and problematic citizens. As a foreigner, if something doesn't cross the US Senate of all bodies because of ethics or surveillance problems, that's really saying something. These are the people that brought us laws like the PATRIOT ACT and the CLOUD act, systematically expanding the reach of US law enforcement across borders. The EU, supposedly an ally, had to negotiate a quick, likely invalid or quickly overturned bandage treaty to make it legal to even just store personal data on US company servers. Is this what the US wants to become? A risk to their own allies? Forcing weak encryption is not defence, it's offence. It's hard to believe that people like these aren't jealous of the spying network China has set up.

modeless 7y ago
China already got golden keys for Chinese iPhones. Apple handed them iCloud.
- NieDzejkob 7y ago
  I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't been able to find a source for this - only mentions of a new datacenter in China. A citation would be nice.
  - trevyn 7y ago
    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
    - 7y ago

nullc 7y ago

I'm confused at the assumption that you can prevent serious organized criminals from having access to strong cryptography simply by backdooring common communications apps. The genie is out of the bottle: Powerful criminal enterprises will have no difficulty hiring people to build overlay tools that they can run inside their backdoored comms that will provide adequate (at least, if not effectively unbreakable) cryptography. Even if we ignore the considerable first amendment barriers and there were an effort to outright outlaw strong crypto, steganography has become very strong and even if not quite sufficient finding out your comms were being monitored via a use of crypto charge is way better than having the attacker learn all your info. In light of this, I find it difficult to see the goverment's position as seeking to widen infrastructure for the wholesale surveillance of the general public with claims of terrorist groups as a dishonest cover for the demands. The old adage "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns"-- has serious limits owing to the nature of guns as physical objects. The sentiment applies a million fold for cryptography, which is fundamentally a collection of ideas with a zero marginal cost of reproduction or execution, mass-less, volume-less, capable of being distributed around the world in a fraction of a second and implausible to silence even with great leap forward mass murder. Actions to block access to encryption would severely degrade the security and privacy of the general public, on this point I agree with the author. But would it prevent pedophiles and terrorist from having access to encryption? Not likely. Would pedophiles and terrorists occasionally screw up and use insecure means... sure, but they already do that today.

onion2k 7y ago
Actions to block access to encryption would severely degrade the security and privacy of the general public.. Perhaps that's the point.
ProfHewitt 7y ago
The NIBOR (Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach) proposal addresses the issue of cryptography inside backdoored devices by installing a virtual machine underneath. As discussed in following article, NIBOR also combats steganography: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957
7y ago

forthehorde 7y ago

Interesting read, bookmarking it until my boss stops staring at everyone's morning monitors. Thanks for sharing!

pfortuny 7y ago

Unbelievable: think of the children in a grand and pseudo-legalistic way. And this guy is serious! As of secrets were something new. “Society has failed to protect children”. No, man: they were never as protected as you purport they were. You are just rewriting history.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

This is all theater to give people a warm-fuzzy about the way things are. Other than cock-blocking ISPs, what's the value in end-to-end encryption when one of those ends is a megacorporation that is A) super-friendly with the state security apparatus, and B) ready, willing, and able to sell you out to the highest bidder? E2E works great against basement-dwelling h4x0rs, not so much against people with actual power. I know these companies will swear up and down how secure they are--but security of what? Who audits them? Last I checked, no one.

jstewartmobile 7y ago
To be clear, E2E from your-own-server to your-own-server is wonderful. E2E from your google/apple/amazon surveillance device to google/apple/amazon servers is turf guarding. Say I want to block such-and-such domain. With unencrypted DNS, I put a record in my own resolver, and problem solved. With per-app DNS over HTTPS, my infrastructure is out of the loop, and SV has total control.

AdieuToLogic 7y ago

Based on the content and tone of this article, I have to leave this here: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/

enriquto 7y ago

tl;dr: we should use weak encryption because think of the children

jstewartmobile 7y ago
This spook is arguing for strong encryption. I think the length is just apologia to soften the inevitable shunning by fellow spooks.

ffwd 7y ago

Interesting speech by William Barr: https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general-barr-encryption-technology-law-enforcement https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general-barr... "Only two ways to protect society ... 1) Ability to detect and apprehend criminals .. 2) Regiment society as a whole" "Our ability to protect the public from criminal threats is rapidly deteriorating" "Status quo is exceptionally dangerous"

Nasrudith 7y ago
Wow the Trump administration really does love saying the quiet part out loud. Literally saying a free society is dangerous and must be controlled.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  The depressing thing is people with his views have been active in politics for decades (and not all in the political circles that currently run the government) - they're just finally getting their time in the sun, gathering together and doing whatever they want. Even if some of this gets unraveled and the worst actors get kicked out, people like him will still be active in local and federal government trying to roll back civil freedoms. It's rough. Hopefully the events of the past few years will act as a wake-up call for people who were previously willing to ignore what was already going on.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  I honestly prefer that to someone who lies to your face and stab you in the back. It's easier to fight.

deogeo 7y ago

> But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance for many technical reasons, including but not limited to the widespread adoption of encryption technology. The 'going dark' boogeyman - how predictable. Only in the mind of a spy agency shill does the rapidly growing number of surveillance cameras, facial recognition, flying surveillance drones with high-resolution cameras over cities, and interception of all communication metadata (if not the content), equate to decreasing ability. They won't be happy until we are stripped of even the last tiny scrap of privacy.

solstice 7y ago
Have you read the whole (admittedly rather long) article? He has a pretty nuanced view of it imo, especially at the end and explicitly refers to the "golden age of surveillance"
- deogeo 7y ago
  He says "some argue that society is in a golden age of surveillance" exactly once, but repeatedly presents 'going dark' as fact. That the rest of his view is nuanced doesn't make that aspect any less of a lie.

Debugreality 7y ago

tl;dr: First 5 pages to show he understands why law enforcement wants to weaken security, last 2 disagreeing because cybersecurity and nation state threats are the bigger risk.

auslander 7y ago

> The problem is that there is no law that clearly empowers governmental actors to obtain court orders to compel third parties (such as equipment manufacturers and service providers) to configure their systems to allow the government to obtain the plain text That kinda sums the article, but US Gov always finds ways to compel anyone to anything. Raw power. Takeaway is to be your own equipment manufacturer and service provider, as in cheap mini x86 boxes running open source daemons, over proxychains and VPNs. Rotate equipment, hacked wifi APs and identities monthly, use Signal on iOS and hide in the crowd, because if you're on the watch list, game is over. Cyberpunk at its best.

coldtea 7y ago

>But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance That wasn't an ability of government in 1900 or 1800, so why should we worry that this new-fangled ability has been decreasing lately? Who said it should be an ability for government, and much more, an eternal one, and not a temporary accidental capability due to a few technical developments that allowed it for a short span of time?

gampleman 7y ago
While I agree with you, I can also appreciate that intelligence/law enforcement agencies are not keen to go back to the alternatives. HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Would you rather train for a few years, then live a fake life with the constant threat of gruesome death, lying to everyone you know - possibly even your fake wife and kids or rather just tap a few phones/emails? It's no wonder that most agencies have pretty much entirely dropped their expertise on this as soon as the alternative showed up. I don't think they are geared up to get back into that game.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance. Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies. But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).
- mnm1 7y ago
  Of course I'd rather have my privacy even if it means thousands of CIA agents get tortured and killed. They're the ones who signed up for that job, a job that is likely unnecessary. And even the necessary spying would in no way justify that I and everyone else give up our privacy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already died so we could have that privacy in the first place. A few thousand more dying to keep it is a miniscule price to pay at this point, a negligible price. So are a few crimes being committed that could potentially have been stopped by back doors.

ProfHewitt 7y ago

There is an analysis here: Highly-Secure Backdoors: Internet of Traitorous Things (IoTT) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957

Cyder 7y ago

The flaw in these over zealous mind- policemens arguments is that they say will be no other way to tell what someone is doing without reading their texts and phone data live. A beat cop knows there are many "tells" about what someone is doing. Similarly, one has to commit several crimes leading up to a terrorist act. Catching those before hand crimes is an effective way at stopping the final act. And who is going to be investigating all the people with keywords in their texts? There are not enough cops in the US to do that. If we use the net, there's a government file with a rating on how dangerous we are. My blog on these issues www.cyderinc.net

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
The flaw in your argument is that the article actually argues for strong encryption.

peterwwillis 7y ago

If we make encryption illegal, only the criminals will have encryption. The criminals can just use real encryption inside of "backdoored" tech. USG can't change math.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

athrowaway3z 7y ago

Because this article is an explanation to the anti-encryption crowd the author takes his time to lay out their arguments as a token of understanding their position. Still, i want to bitch about some of them. > In my work at the FBI, I encountered directly how encryption makes it harder for law enforcement to detect, prevent and solve certain types of crime in specific instances. Encrypted data is a known unknown. This doesn't work as an argument without speculating on the scope of unknown unknowns. > I’m confident that this problem can be addressed from a technical perspective. In most cases, it’s just software, and software can be rewritten. That works both ways. ( Source code for effective encryption is less text then this blog piece ) > the United States has not experienced a terrorist or other attack of sufficient magnitude where encryption clearly played a key role in preventing law enforcement from thwarting it And i can't think of any realistic scenario in which it would. The window of cause-and-effect is extremely small. The attack needs to hinge on the tools that the US has authority over. i.e. Why would Osama use WhatsApp on an iPhone in the first place? > inherently vulnerable network of networks This is the wrong way around. Its a 'network of inherently vulnerable networks'. Which is the safest option. ( As the author later notes but doesn't reflect on )

hectorr1 7y ago

Doesn't once mention First Amendment protections. Code is speech, and the internet is the press. This is an attempt to ban an idea.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
Even worse, encryption is math. Banning encryption means banning math.