19 ms·

Scaring People into Supporting Backdoors

201 points by hsnewman 7y ago

Gys 7y ago
> We are saying three things. One, that strong encryption is necessary for personal and national security. Two, that weakening encryption does more harm than good. And three, law enforcement has other avenues for criminal investigation than eavesdropping on communications and stored devices (this is just one example). Also: law enforcement assumes criminals and others are stupid and cannot not apply encryption and information hiding themselves. Plus creating your own chat app is extremely easy, so why even rely on the big and obvious ones, just DIY.
- RankingMember 7y ago
  I mean, really, isn't this kind of a moot point from a dedicated criminal's perspective? Does the government actually have any power? Sure, you'll catch the idiots operating over a compromised channel, but it doesn't matter what laws you pass wailing about "the children" and "criminals" if the criminals are rolling their own or even just using PGP.
  - rando_null 7y ago
    It's not about criminals. It's just about control.
    - RankingMember 7y ago
      I think it's both. The government wants the power to see EVERYTHING because EVERYONE is a potential criminal.
  - lolc 7y ago
    It should not be presumed that criminals are in any way smarter when it comes to technology. They may be more motivated, but when the options are less mainstream, they will make more mistakes. Backdooring mainstream encryption will substantially decrease security for criminals. What is often brushed over by proponents is that it will weaken security for all of us.
    - generalpass 7y ago
      > What is often brushed over by proponents is that it will weaken security for all of us. Because there are criminals in the government.
- snarf21 7y ago
  Exactly. Also, crimes against children didn't happen before 1995? This is an easy problem to solve with a proper whistleblower program. There are people adjacent to these criminals and they may be dependent or fearful of repercussions for coming forward. Treat them with witness protection and appropriate and large (millions) in monetary incentives. Like most things in life, you get what you incentivize. But this issue is about total surveillance not about protecting children.
  - speeder 7y ago
    Whistleblowing is incompatible with current child porn laws. In several countries (Brazil, where I am from included), the law is that possession of child porn, for ANY reason, is a crime. It means that trying to give evidence to the police, will get you in jail, even if the police doesn't want to arrest you, they have to, because that is what the law says. Things get worse in certain countries that went along US child porn laws and ignored local culture and laws regarding related areas (for example, in Brazil age of consent is 14, and in some Brazillian regions marriage at that age still makes sense, usually due to harsh geography of the area that make it necessary, cue lots of young couples surprised when their personal photos are considered a crime...)
deogeo 7y ago
> In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone They were also never able to learn what was said in the van before the London Bridge attack [1]. Are we okay with Renault providing a law-free space inside their vehicles? All cars should be equipped with always-on microphones. But don't worry! The audio will be encrypted, and only accessible with a warrant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack Edit: Just to make sure - this is satire, and the logical extension of believing people shouldn't be allowed to keep any secrets. Responding in edit due to posting limit (way to make sure downvoted comments can't explain or defend themselves): They can also record the person typing in their password, or recording the screen with cameras, or hardware or software bugs once they have a password to access the phone. The analogy works perfectly, and while they may say the will not "treat an encryption backdoor like a universal bug", that's exactly what it is.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  This isn’t a fair response. If law enforcement knows that some specific person is doing a crime, they can and do plant always-on microphones on their car. The law enforcement concern is that they can’t do that at all in this context. Even if you know for sure someone’s planning a serious crime, there’s no way to spy on their E2E encrypted communications. Most law enforcement agencies argue (with varying degrees of believability) that they will not treat an encryption backdoor like a universal bug they can just listen in on whenever.
  - pjkundert 7y ago
    Of course there is - exactly the same way as they do so with the car: get a warrant, and surveil the target.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      How would a warrant give them the ability to see what’s said in an encrypted chat? You can’t instal a camera on someone’s shoulder like you can put a bug in their car.
javajosh 7y ago
I have a related question, which is if the government's argument is valid, then why not extend it? Why not require cameras in every room of the home, so that if abuse or molestation of a child occurs then child services can step and remove the child, and the parents be prosecuted? You might also argue that if you don't accede to this simple request, then you must have something to hide.
- generalpass 7y ago
  "The accused never purchased an Alexa, carefully disabled all Android smart assistants, and even when his diligent neighbor across the street purchased a Ring for neighborhood security and protection, the accused immediately planted a very large hedge row in front of his home."
  - javajosh 7y ago
    Indeed, sounds guilty of...whatever!
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs What's he building in there...?
    - generalpass 7y ago
      https://imgur.com/a/m9PE7wn https://imgur.com/a/m9PE7wn
- paulfurley 7y ago
  Philosophically, sure, but this is a straw man argument. The practicalities and cost of putting cameras in every room then monitoring them are clearly absurd, so it undermines your case.
  - javajosh 7y ago
    Wow, you managed to pack so much wrong in such a small space, I'm a little impressed! First, at worst I've induldged in a slippery slope fallacy, not a strawman. However, I'm not making an argument, really. I'm asking a hypothetical question. As for the absurdity of placing monitors in every room, I'm surprised someone on HN would raise that objection. IoT devices are dirt cheap, and whats more, many people voluntarily install them. The government could easily choose to subsidize Nest/Amazon/Google devices - for the low low price of free access for your protection. Maybe you would get insurance premium discounts. Many would jump on that deal. Then you use a straw-man yourself, implying that this system would require constant human monitoring to be effective. It wouldn't. The data would be used in the same way security camera footage is used now, to be used as evidence after-the-fact, and so, as a deterrent. So, rather than reflexively attack me, how about engaging with the thought behind it?
HarryHirsch 7y ago
Why do people generally assume that law enforcement is clean? There are sufficient examples of cops informing for drug gangs (https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/07/29/during-steroid-scandal-few-arlington-police-officers-faced-drug-tests/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/07/29/during-steroid-scandal-f...), and somewhere in Mexico a blogger whose subject was gang atrocities was discovered and killed by cartel members because the cartel had an inside man at the local telco (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/mexican-drug-cartel-killed-another-blogger/335686/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/me...).
- buckminster 7y ago
  The former head of Mexico's war on drugs has just been arrested for taking cartel money! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50736482 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50736482
- shakezula 7y ago
  From an American perspective: it's because police are idolized and worshipped on the nightly news just about every single day. Growing up, speaking ill of the police was second only to speaking ill of God himself, and this isn't an exaggeration. There are no cops in my family, but this reverence is still held. My family is quite religious, and I wonder if that plays a factor (I would suspect it does).
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    Blind faith and trust in authority is a hallmark of many religions and often a praised trait in an individual.
    - HarryHirsch 7y ago
      The various denominations of Christianity tend to view government as a manifestation of the divine order. It's easy to see how that can degrade to blind submission to whoever sits in power. The official Catholic position is here: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7W.HTM http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7W.HTM
ProfHewitt 7y ago
How to implement highly-secure backdoors is explained in the following linked article along with an analysis of potential pitfalls: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957
jancsika 7y ago
> In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone because of this gift to sex traffickers that came, not from God, but from Apple. Thanks to the poor state of U.S. education, inscrutable nature of encryption, and the failure of secure software developers to protect nearly anything at all, this sentence remains unintelligible to most Americans.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  - God is all knowing - God is all powerful - God created the universe Given the above three, God created the universe knowing he was creating it in a way that said sex traffickers would come into being, and that they would get access to said phones/encryption. It is literally impossible for the first three items to be true and the consequence to be false. As such, "this gift to sex traffickers" did, indeed, come for God (and Apple).
  - jjgreen 7y ago
    It depends on what you think omnipotence is; if you believe that it is constrained by consistency (God cannot create a square circle) then it could be the case that any world created would have some evil. Then a benign God could create the "best possible world" in which bad things happen. All academic anyway, there is no God.
    - RHSeeger 7y ago
      Even given that, He chose to create this world, with these people. Choosing between 2 evils doesn't mean you chose evil, but it does mean you chose an evil.
- rongenre 7y ago
  If I believed in god, I'd say that mathematics is indeed a gift from the all-powerful.
  - petre 7y ago
    Let's should make a religion with secure encryption (no master key) at its core. Once it becomes recognized, it would be unconstitutional to ban it.
morganw 7y ago
It's time for a careful analysis by a qualified cryptographer of how key escrow weakens the protections encryption is supposed to afford. Schneier does conclude his post with a general "weakening encryption does more harm than good", but the title still uses the term backdoor. No one who's learned a bit about crypto (omitting Lindsey Graham here https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/tech-companies-bipartisan-congress-encryption-080704 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/tech-companies-bipa...) is advocating for a "master key," short key lengths or backdoors that use obscurity to keep bad actors from exploiting them. Key escrow is real & already deployed in things like FileVault's Institutional Recovery Key https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202385 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202385 All institutions don't use the same key and the vendor doesn't have to have a copy. [Microsoft offers companies a recovery mechanism too https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/bitlocker/bitlocker-recovery-guide-plan https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio...] My guess to how key escrow weakens protections is through implementation mistakes. Are there also mathematical weaknesses that effectively shorten the key length making brute force more feasible??? Why is the discourse on the anti-lawful-intercept side so imprecise?
- driverdan 7y ago
  Key escrow is still a backdoor.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Key escrow doesn't change the fundamental mathematics behind the key. It's entirely an implementation detail / matter of trust. You're sharing what would otherwise be a secret with a new party. If they are untrustworthy or get compromised, it's no different than if you got compromised directly. But now you have roughly 2x the exposure.
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  From the wikipedia page [1]: > The third party should be permitted access only under carefully controlled conditions, as for instance, a court order. Thus far, no system design has been shown to meet this requirement fully on a technical basis alone. All proposed systems also require correct functioning of some social linkage, as for instance the process of request for access, examination of request for 'legitimacy' (as by a court), and granting of access by technical personnel charged with access control. The social issue is a significant problem. How do you make sure court officials are not bribed? Who has access to the key escrow service, and what sort of checks make them trusted? Employees snoop on things all the time [2, 3, 4]: how are you going to ensure this does not happen with all communications for an individual? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_escrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_escrow [2]: https://www.wired.com/2008/05/five-irs-employ/ https://www.wired.com/2008/05/five-irs-employ/ [3]: https://reason.com/2015/05/20/more-irs-employees-abuse-access-to-taxpa/ https://reason.com/2015/05/20/more-irs-employees-abuse-acces... [4]: https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-celebrity-snoop-gets-three-years-probation https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-celebrity-snoop-get...
rubinelli 7y ago
Law-enforcement agencies in the UK, to name one relatively liberal country, had no qualms about using their anti-terrorism tools to track and arrest minors during, after, and even before climate change protests. "Think of the children," indeed.
- shakezula 7y ago
  Every tool we give cops has to be measured in two ways: - What's the best case for this tool to be used? - What's the worst case for this tool to be used in? and then the disparity between the two must be examined. In most cases, I would say it's not worth giving many of these tools to cops.
carapace 7y ago
If encryption is a weapon then (in the USA) the First Amendment applies.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  You're thinking of the second amendment, I think.
  - carapace 7y ago
    OMG derp, yeah, thanks

201 points by hsnewman 7y ago

Gys 7y ago

> We are saying three things. One, that strong encryption is necessary for personal and national security. Two, that weakening encryption does more harm than good. And three, law enforcement has other avenues for criminal investigation than eavesdropping on communications and stored devices (this is just one example). Also: law enforcement assumes criminals and others are stupid and cannot not apply encryption and information hiding themselves. Plus creating your own chat app is extremely easy, so why even rely on the big and obvious ones, just DIY.

RankingMember 7y ago
I mean, really, isn't this kind of a moot point from a dedicated criminal's perspective? Does the government actually have any power? Sure, you'll catch the idiots operating over a compromised channel, but it doesn't matter what laws you pass wailing about "the children" and "criminals" if the criminals are rolling their own or even just using PGP.
- rando_null 7y ago
  It's not about criminals. It's just about control.
  - RankingMember 7y ago
    I think it's both. The government wants the power to see EVERYTHING because EVERYONE is a potential criminal.
- lolc 7y ago
  It should not be presumed that criminals are in any way smarter when it comes to technology. They may be more motivated, but when the options are less mainstream, they will make more mistakes. Backdooring mainstream encryption will substantially decrease security for criminals. What is often brushed over by proponents is that it will weaken security for all of us.
  - generalpass 7y ago
    > What is often brushed over by proponents is that it will weaken security for all of us. Because there are criminals in the government.
snarf21 7y ago
Exactly. Also, crimes against children didn't happen before 1995? This is an easy problem to solve with a proper whistleblower program. There are people adjacent to these criminals and they may be dependent or fearful of repercussions for coming forward. Treat them with witness protection and appropriate and large (millions) in monetary incentives. Like most things in life, you get what you incentivize. But this issue is about total surveillance not about protecting children.
- speeder 7y ago
  Whistleblowing is incompatible with current child porn laws. In several countries (Brazil, where I am from included), the law is that possession of child porn, for ANY reason, is a crime. It means that trying to give evidence to the police, will get you in jail, even if the police doesn't want to arrest you, they have to, because that is what the law says. Things get worse in certain countries that went along US child porn laws and ignored local culture and laws regarding related areas (for example, in Brazil age of consent is 14, and in some Brazillian regions marriage at that age still makes sense, usually due to harsh geography of the area that make it necessary, cue lots of young couples surprised when their personal photos are considered a crime...)

deogeo 7y ago

> In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone They were also never able to learn what was said in the van before the London Bridge attack [1]. Are we okay with Renault providing a law-free space inside their vehicles? All cars should be equipped with always-on microphones. But don't worry! The audio will be encrypted, and only accessible with a warrant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack Edit: Just to make sure - this is satire, and the logical extension of believing people shouldn't be allowed to keep any secrets. Responding in edit due to posting limit (way to make sure downvoted comments can't explain or defend themselves): They can also record the person typing in their password, or recording the screen with cameras, or hardware or software bugs once they have a password to access the phone. The analogy works perfectly, and while they may say the will not "treat an encryption backdoor like a universal bug", that's exactly what it is.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
This isn’t a fair response. If law enforcement knows that some specific person is doing a crime, they can and do plant always-on microphones on their car. The law enforcement concern is that they can’t do that at all in this context. Even if you know for sure someone’s planning a serious crime, there’s no way to spy on their E2E encrypted communications. Most law enforcement agencies argue (with varying degrees of believability) that they will not treat an encryption backdoor like a universal bug they can just listen in on whenever.
- pjkundert 7y ago
  Of course there is - exactly the same way as they do so with the car: get a warrant, and surveil the target.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    How would a warrant give them the ability to see what’s said in an encrypted chat? You can’t instal a camera on someone’s shoulder like you can put a bug in their car.

javajosh 7y ago

I have a related question, which is if the government's argument is valid, then why not extend it? Why not require cameras in every room of the home, so that if abuse or molestation of a child occurs then child services can step and remove the child, and the parents be prosecuted? You might also argue that if you don't accede to this simple request, then you must have something to hide.

generalpass 7y ago
"The accused never purchased an Alexa, carefully disabled all Android smart assistants, and even when his diligent neighbor across the street purchased a Ring for neighborhood security and protection, the accused immediately planted a very large hedge row in front of his home."
- javajosh 7y ago
  Indeed, sounds guilty of...whatever!
- kazagistar 7y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs What's he building in there...?
  - generalpass 7y ago
    https://imgur.com/a/m9PE7wn https://imgur.com/a/m9PE7wn
paulfurley 7y ago
Philosophically, sure, but this is a straw man argument. The practicalities and cost of putting cameras in every room then monitoring them are clearly absurd, so it undermines your case.
- javajosh 7y ago
  Wow, you managed to pack so much wrong in such a small space, I'm a little impressed! First, at worst I've induldged in a slippery slope fallacy, not a strawman. However, I'm not making an argument, really. I'm asking a hypothetical question. As for the absurdity of placing monitors in every room, I'm surprised someone on HN would raise that objection. IoT devices are dirt cheap, and whats more, many people voluntarily install them. The government could easily choose to subsidize Nest/Amazon/Google devices - for the low low price of free access for your protection. Maybe you would get insurance premium discounts. Many would jump on that deal. Then you use a straw-man yourself, implying that this system would require constant human monitoring to be effective. It wouldn't. The data would be used in the same way security camera footage is used now, to be used as evidence after-the-fact, and so, as a deterrent. So, rather than reflexively attack me, how about engaging with the thought behind it?

HarryHirsch 7y ago

Why do people generally assume that law enforcement is clean? There are sufficient examples of cops informing for drug gangs (https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/07/29/during-steroid-scandal-few-arlington-police-officers-faced-drug-tests/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/07/29/during-steroid-scandal-f...), and somewhere in Mexico a blogger whose subject was gang atrocities was discovered and killed by cartel members because the cartel had an inside man at the local telco (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/mexican-drug-cartel-killed-another-blogger/335686/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/me...).

buckminster 7y ago
The former head of Mexico's war on drugs has just been arrested for taking cartel money! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50736482 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50736482
shakezula 7y ago
From an American perspective: it's because police are idolized and worshipped on the nightly news just about every single day. Growing up, speaking ill of the police was second only to speaking ill of God himself, and this isn't an exaggeration. There are no cops in my family, but this reverence is still held. My family is quite religious, and I wonder if that plays a factor (I would suspect it does).
- nkrisc 7y ago
  Blind faith and trust in authority is a hallmark of many religions and often a praised trait in an individual.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    The various denominations of Christianity tend to view government as a manifestation of the divine order. It's easy to see how that can degrade to blind submission to whoever sits in power. The official Catholic position is here: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7W.HTM http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7W.HTM

ProfHewitt 7y ago

How to implement highly-secure backdoors is explained in the following linked article along with an analysis of potential pitfalls: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957

jancsika 7y ago

> In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone because of this gift to sex traffickers that came, not from God, but from Apple. Thanks to the poor state of U.S. education, inscrutable nature of encryption, and the failure of secure software developers to protect nearly anything at all, this sentence remains unintelligible to most Americans.

RHSeeger 7y ago
- God is all knowing - God is all powerful - God created the universe Given the above three, God created the universe knowing he was creating it in a way that said sex traffickers would come into being, and that they would get access to said phones/encryption. It is literally impossible for the first three items to be true and the consequence to be false. As such, "this gift to sex traffickers" did, indeed, come for God (and Apple).
- jjgreen 7y ago
  It depends on what you think omnipotence is; if you believe that it is constrained by consistency (God cannot create a square circle) then it could be the case that any world created would have some evil. Then a benign God could create the "best possible world" in which bad things happen. All academic anyway, there is no God.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    Even given that, He chose to create this world, with these people. Choosing between 2 evils doesn't mean you chose evil, but it does mean you chose an evil.
rongenre 7y ago
If I believed in god, I'd say that mathematics is indeed a gift from the all-powerful.
- petre 7y ago
  Let's should make a religion with secure encryption (no master key) at its core. Once it becomes recognized, it would be unconstitutional to ban it.

morganw 7y ago

It's time for a careful analysis by a qualified cryptographer of how key escrow weakens the protections encryption is supposed to afford. Schneier does conclude his post with a general "weakening encryption does more harm than good", but the title still uses the term backdoor. No one who's learned a bit about crypto (omitting Lindsey Graham here https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/tech-companies-bipartisan-congress-encryption-080704 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/tech-companies-bipa...) is advocating for a "master key," short key lengths or backdoors that use obscurity to keep bad actors from exploiting them. Key escrow is real & already deployed in things like FileVault's Institutional Recovery Key https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202385 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202385 All institutions don't use the same key and the vendor doesn't have to have a copy. [Microsoft offers companies a recovery mechanism too https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/bitlocker/bitlocker-recovery-guide-plan https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio...] My guess to how key escrow weakens protections is through implementation mistakes. Are there also mathematical weaknesses that effectively shorten the key length making brute force more feasible??? Why is the discourse on the anti-lawful-intercept side so imprecise?

driverdan 7y ago
Key escrow is still a backdoor.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
Key escrow doesn't change the fundamental mathematics behind the key. It's entirely an implementation detail / matter of trust. You're sharing what would otherwise be a secret with a new party. If they are untrustworthy or get compromised, it's no different than if you got compromised directly. But now you have roughly 2x the exposure.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
From the wikipedia page [1]: > The third party should be permitted access only under carefully controlled conditions, as for instance, a court order. Thus far, no system design has been shown to meet this requirement fully on a technical basis alone. All proposed systems also require correct functioning of some social linkage, as for instance the process of request for access, examination of request for 'legitimacy' (as by a court), and granting of access by technical personnel charged with access control. The social issue is a significant problem. How do you make sure court officials are not bribed? Who has access to the key escrow service, and what sort of checks make them trusted? Employees snoop on things all the time [2, 3, 4]: how are you going to ensure this does not happen with all communications for an individual? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_escrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_escrow [2]: https://www.wired.com/2008/05/five-irs-employ/ https://www.wired.com/2008/05/five-irs-employ/ [3]: https://reason.com/2015/05/20/more-irs-employees-abuse-access-to-taxpa/ https://reason.com/2015/05/20/more-irs-employees-abuse-acces... [4]: https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-celebrity-snoop-gets-three-years-probation https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-celebrity-snoop-get...

rubinelli 7y ago

Law-enforcement agencies in the UK, to name one relatively liberal country, had no qualms about using their anti-terrorism tools to track and arrest minors during, after, and even before climate change protests. "Think of the children," indeed.

shakezula 7y ago
Every tool we give cops has to be measured in two ways: - What's the best case for this tool to be used? - What's the worst case for this tool to be used in? and then the disparity between the two must be examined. In most cases, I would say it's not worth giving many of these tools to cops.

carapace 7y ago

If encryption is a weapon then (in the USA) the First Amendment applies.

a1369209993 7y ago
You're thinking of the second amendment, I think.
- carapace 7y ago
  OMG derp, yeah, thanks