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> Mr. Barr has said that Facebook’s moves toward end-to-end encryption, which shields the content of messages from everyone but the sender and recipient, makes
by cronix 7y ago
> Mr. Barr has said that Facebook’s moves toward end-to-end encryption, which shields the content of messages from everyone but the sender and recipient, makes it harder for law enforcement officers to track malicious behavior online.
It's kind of supposed to be hard, by design. Read the constitution on what it takes to get a search warrant. You're not supposed to be "tracking malicious behavior." You're supposed to be tracking individuals, once you have some sort of actual tangible proof that a judge individually signs off on, that they are doing something nefarious. It wasn't supposed to be a drag net fishing expedition where you can key word search everything anybody has ever said via a digital device at any point in history. No, they were pretty clear about that when they wrote that pesky constitution thingy (and for good reason.)
- tantalor 7y agoYou mention warrants... please explain how to serve a warrant for E2E encrypted messages without alerting the sender or recipient.
- akersten 7y agoLooks like law enforcement might have to do their job the hard way and sit outside the target's house or something crazy difficult like that! Not our job as technologists to enable the surveillance state.
- everdrive 7y ago>Not our job as technologists to enable the surveillance state. Now, let's get back to work on getting facial recognition built into airplane seats.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago> Not our job as technologists to enable the surveillance state. For the government (ie: "the state"). Surveillance of employees and customers is just fine.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoslash ess
- gdhbcc 7y agoYou don't. Secrecy has no place in the search for justice.
- ct520 7y agouh - I had to re-read this multi-times. Are you opining we should give up the right of privacy to provide a government who has known to abuse mass surveillance and trust them?
- mentat 7y agoThey're saying observing you in secret without a served warrant is wrong. (Not saying I agree either way.)
- ct520 7y agoGotcha I was a bit slow yesterday this makes more sense
- shantly 7y agoI took it to mean that the police might have to settle for actually serving a warrant to the person they're investigating or someone close to them, rather than some third party under a gag order.
- throwaway_tech 7y agoThe same way you would execute a warrant for say known/suspected drug dealer? You go to court, get the warrant and execute it...think drug dealers haven't destroyed evidence before (flushing it down the toilet isn't just a thing in movies) while police are knocking on the front door?
- int_19h 7y agoSCOTUS has presented this exact scenario as justification for no-knock raids in serving such warrants, which created a huge mess.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoInsert spyware on either end.
- noja 7y agoAh, the argument of efficiency. Nowhere does it say that the most efficient method beats the constitution.
- burkaman 7y agoWhy would that be a requirement? How would you serve a warrant to search somebody's home without alerting them, if they won't leave or they have a camera system set up?
- JadeNB 7y agoNo-knock warrants to the rescue! (OK, that's definitely going to alert the resident, but it's explicitly designed to be served in a way that precludes significant reaction time.)
- _Understated_ 7y agoYou assume that nothing is off-limits to law enforcement. What about confessionals? I bet there have been illegal conversations between bad people in a confessional. Should they be subject to having cameras or microphones in them? The law doesn't have a right to invade privacy to uphold itself.
- sjy 7y agoThat’s an interesting example. Some countries have laws that protect the sanctity of the confessional, but I think police in most countries could install a bug in there with an appropriate warrant (which hopefully wouldn’t be lightly issued). They can usually install bugs in your bedroom in a serious enough case, so there is no doubt that law enforcement does have a right to invade privacy. Even a regular search warrant obviously has the capacity to constitute a huge invasion of privacy.
- sectiondetail 7y agoThey're called search warrants. They're not called find warrants.
- briffle 7y agoHow do you currently serve a warrant for a conversation between two people, without alerting the sender or the recipient?
- sjy 7y agoYou serve it on the person who operates the communications technology they are using, or a person who will use the warrant to lawfully break into the premises where they’ll be speaking and install a bug. In theory, end-to-end encryption should not be vulnerable to this, as long as you verify your friend’s key in person and trust the software not to let it change without warning you. Nothing distributed through an app store can be this trustworthy.
- diabeetusman 7y agoI mean, there are things out there that you simply cannot execute a warrant for; for instance, what I'm thinking at the moment.
- tptacek 7y agoWhat is it that you think the Constitution says about getting warrants? It's not my understanding that the Constitution was designed to make it difficult to investigate crimes. As I understand it, the US largely inherits the common law principle that the public is entitled to every person's evidence. The backstory I understand behind the Fourth Amendment is that the British used "general warrants" as a tool of harassment – where a general warrant was essentially a slip of paper that deputized a group of soldiers to toss houses and confiscate goods on a whim. The intent wasn't to make warrants hard to get, or to gate all conceivable searches on warrants, but rather to make sure that what warrants were issued were at least particularized with a real, defensible purpose. Another observation that bolsters my particular understanding is the variety of conditions in which the Supreme Court, going all the way back into the era of the founders, authorized warrantless searches. The border search exception, for instance, dates back to the founders. My feelings about law enforcement and encryption are complicated but hew mostly to the HN party line. However, I feel sometimes like I arrive at my conclusions in a very different way than people who invoke the Constitution here.
- 904baf11 7y agoArea Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
- bagacrap 7y agoIf we could all agree what the Constitution says, we wouldn't need constitutional law professors and there wouldn't be endless debates over what "bear arms" meant in 18th century English.
- elliekelly 7y agoBut even in the event the government demonstrates probable cause the constitution doesn’t require us to make it as easy as possible for the government to search our homes, papers, and effects. If the police suspect you of murder and get a warrant to dig up your basement you aren’t the one who’s then required to dig. Now imagine the government said no one should be allowed to pour cement in their basement because it makes it difficult to investigate suspected murderers. That’s what Barr is advocating.
- Shivetya 7y agoconsidering the abuses recently revealed with the investigation into the FBI when it comes to FISA warrants how do we trust any intelligence or law enforcement agency in this country. worse, sycophants in the press are basically white washing the FBI abuse instead of highlighting it. the ACLU pointed out the abuses but only of course how they impact a very select group. the fact we need to encrypt from our own government should people a hint that all sides are bad, not just one you don't like.
- matheusmoreira 7y agoEven with a warrant, there shouldn't be an "enable surveillance" button that instantly cracks the targeted user's device and gives complete access to law enforcement. At the very least, they should have to physically compromise the user's machines in order to get any access. That should make things difficult enough to stop them from doing it routinely.