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Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime
- datameta 6y agoIs it not a slippery slope to wanting access to email and pretext for intercepting?
- wmf 6y agoThey already have access to email through subpoenas and warrants.
- Natsu 6y agoIn the USA, email that has been stored for longer than some (fairly short) period I don't remember offhand doesn't require a warrant to access. Just think about that for a while.
- kevinsundar 6y agoYep, after 180 days it only requires a subpoena (which does not require any court). See the Stored Communications Act.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIn my country, our constitution has been updated recently enough that the privacy article explicitly mentions telecommunications: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680273
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> after 180 days it only requires a subpoena (which does not require any court) If stored on an American third-party server.
- megous 6y agoSolved by pop3 protocol.
- fulafel 6y agoIn the EU, the metadata retention directive killed most of this. Though there was a temporary lapse of insanity and some of it was annulled, but it's now making a comeback in various forms... https://radiobruxelleslibera.com/2020/10/09/data-retention-still-a-nightmare-for-eu-member-states/ https://radiobruxelleslibera.com/2020/10/09/data-retention-s...
- LatteLazy 6y agoThey already have that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago1. How is this really different to government-mandated microphones and cameras in your house, school, workplace, etc? 2. What’s the endgame here? Open-source encrypted messaging software is widely available. The cat is out of the bag. Every country on Earth could outlaw the technology and it would still be trivially easy for criminals to use it. Do the people behind these proposals not see that?
- sorethescore 6y agoThere's no need to make them mandatory, most people already have cameras and microphones in their homes, schools and workplaces that the government can access. This is more about getting access to the social graph.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y agoI don’t think that is accurate. Just as with end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, they would have to use targeted 0-day exploits to access the cameras and microphones in people’s homes. End-to-end encryption doesn’t protect the social graph. They already know who is talking to who; they just don’t know what is being said.
- mixologic 6y agoThey are already subpoena'ing alexa and Google home recordings, Android and iPhone location data, cell tower pings etc. I don't think we're far away from court ordered wire taps to compel Google to enable the cameras and microphones.
- dannyw 6y agoAny such court orders would be sealed indefinitely as well. In 5-10 or so years I predict we will have another Snowden, describing that the NSA has been running a ring -1 process on every single Intel Management Engine co-processor in the entire world.
- 6y ago
- CryptoPunk 6y agoGovernment will always be a major threat vector to the population. Encypted communication tools have the effect of creating a wider distribution of power which lessens that threat. I think the trade-off of denying the establishment some control that would empower it to more effectively combat malevolent behavior by fringe elements, in order to better protect the majority from potential abuses and structural exploitation by the establishment, is worth it.
- meekmind 6y agoI tend to agree. There are already well established methods to investigate individuals suspected of some crime without needing SigInt, but it's more expensive. That's all this is about: cost. It's more expensive and the system would have to dedicate more resources to fewer targets, being forced to prioritize their efforts. Sure, that means that investigating truly bad people will be more difficult. But, that extra cost means that the average well-meaning person won't be nearly as vulnerable to bad actors who use Total Information Awareness for nefarious purposes. This shouldn't really be controversial now, in-fact it's a well established principle in criminal law called Blackstone's Ratio. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation
- CryptoPunk 6y agoOne thing that is never factored into reports by security agencies is the threat posed by the state. So for instance, in the United States federal framework for criminal crypto enforcement report recently published by the US Department of Justice's Cyber Digital Task Force, it states: https://www.justice.gov/ag/page/file/1326061/download https://www.justice.gov/ag/page/file/1326061/download >>Because of the global and cross-border nature of transactions involving virtual assets, the lack of consistent AML/ CFT regulation and supervision over VASPs across jurisdictions—and the complete absence of such regulation and supervision in certain parts of the world—is detrimental to the safety and stability of the international financial system.161 This takes it as a priori that state institutions having Total Information Awareness with regard to private financial transactions DOESN'T pose a threat to the "safety and stability of the international financial system." This is an absurdly totalitarian political philosophy and the infrequency in which it's criticized is extremely dangerous.
- seibelj 6y agoIsn't it obvious how the widespread knowledge that the government can read everything you do online - your FB posts, your emails, your texts - contributes to the erosion of trust in government and institutions? As an anecdote, I went to DEFCON last year. I was at a blackjack table and surrounded by midwestern salt-of-the-earth types. I had my badge on which flashed lights, and someone asked if I was "one of those computer hackers" and I said Yes (of course). Then they asked me if it was true that the government could read everything they did on their computer! The very first question! I hesitated, and said yes! The government can indeed read everything they do online! It made the whole table silent. The mainstream media keeps publishing these hand-wringing articles about how America's faith in institutions has diminished, as if Trump did it all. I argue that the total lack of privacy and argument from the Department of Justice that any privacy is akin to terrorism / criminal behavior kills society more than what they think they protect. Is not privacy a fundamental American principle? What the hell happened?
- dannyw 6y ago9/11 and the “you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists” mentality happened.
- moonchild 6y ago9/11 certainly provided that argument with a lot more ammo, but the rhetoric has been around for ages. Remember the cold war and McCarthyism?
- cgriswald 6y agoMcCarthyism was bad and I see what you’re saying but it isn’t quite the same thing. McCarthyism wasn’t really about government control but about a sort of mass hysteria. It was more like the Salem witch trials. Much of the rhetoric during the Cold War actually made these types of government activities unacceptable to the average person because not doing these things was used to differentiate the US from the Soviets. “Microphones in every house? What is this, Soviet Russia?”
- 6y ago
- vmception 6y ago> Security alliance worries encrypted messaging apps can be used by bad actors backdoors can be used by bad actors too.
- vmception 6y agoAll they have to do is create a "user analytics package" which happens to read client side text. We would never know if it was implemented or not. Alternatively they can look at existing analytics packages and look at the dependency graph and take over one of those to capture the screen and read info.
- AYBABTME 6y agoWe'd know by merely looking at the network tab in the web inspector.
- viraptor 6y agoOnly if you're the targeted person. Not everyone's text has to be forwarded. Not everyone has to get the same code either, so you'd have to check it every time.
- 082349872349872 6y agoNot to mention that exfiltrated text can be traffic shaped.
- vmception 6y agoThis is about its whatsapp product, which is predominantly mobile app based and easier to hide in an update.
- ios14 6y agoFrictionless E2EE at scale is cancerous on society and the FYEV/JP alliance know this all too well. As this subject has been iterated over many times, will keep this comment short. * FB deploying frictionless, unbreakable encryption at scale makes the job of law enforcement harder, and makes it easier for less sophisticated criminals to get away with conspiracies (a word which, by the way, simply refers to two or more people secretly collaborating on criminal activity). * As math cannot be stopped, more sophisticated criminals, as well as those with general concerns about privacy from big brother can still use their own open source tools. Long before the internet, comms via telephony were anything but secure. We’ve tested the waters post-Snowden with E2EE which likely resulted in numerous secret case studies on the effect E2EE has on an orderly society. * Don’t bring gizmos into your home if you want a modicum of privacy at home * FB offering a frictionless, global private network out of reach of law enforcement isn’t a constitutional right. We can still gather in a home, use strong encryption when it matters (in more extreme cases, on an offline device, with write-only outgoing media transported via sneaker net to the transmission device). * I’d rather have hardened devices and lawful access to the deployed encryption by major service providers, rather than flawed by design consumer device architecture. Then I can employ strong encryption software on those devices and have more confidence in preventing big brother from snooping at all.
- ponker 6y agoInteresting points but I’ve never seen a comment like this anywhere but downvoted to oblivion.
- ios14 6y agoForgot to add: I don’t trust the consumer devices including a fully patched brand new iPhone. I am far more concerned about the various private interests abusing data access, data brokers, hackers potentially getting into my endpoint directly or to any of my consumer cloud assets, than I am about lawful access to recoverable encryption
- markus_zhang 6y ago
- holidayacct 6y agoEvery single social network is backdoored by multiple governments.
- gatvol 6y agoMy thoughts exactly. I always suspect that these articles are aimed at convincing the naive that these networks are currently secure and immune from govt level snooping.
- fsflover 6y agoMastodon is not.
- readarticle 6y agoIt’s in an even worse position being self hosted by people/entities with no power or sway in the face of a state. Is there a technical provision that applies to people hosting mastodon instances that doesn’t apply to large social media cos and cannot be beaten with a $5 wrench?
- SN76477 6y agoCrime will be the price that a free society pays. We need a certain tolerance of petty crime if we are going to truest be free.
- ketzo 6y agoThat sounded sort of vacuous to me at first, but I think it’s a genuinely good point. I think human nature or whatever you want to call it is always going to mean that some number of people don’t follow The Rules to some degree, and that achieving 100% perfect rule adherence should not necessarily be the one and only goal of society.
- psychoslave 6y agoWhat rules? It's not like any government out there rises every single citizen or has into a fully qualified lawyer. People generally go with the foggy model of what seem the most in accordance with values they lously acquired by observing there own neighborhood.
- rbecker 6y agoWhat you have to tolerate in non-free societies can be far worse. It's just not called "crime". History is full of examples.
- sneak 6y agoThis comment seems to ignore crimes committed by the government in bulk against the people. Surveillance societies have a lot more crime, it’s just carried out by a single set of uniformed groups.
- t-writescode 6y agoBut they're not called "crimes" when they're made into laws and obligations.
- colechristensen 6y ago"Give me freedom or give me death"
- jgaa 6y agoWith governments consistently landing on the wrong side of good, no wonder people seek comfort in things like qanon.
- sneak 6y agoI don’t think one has anything to do with the other; there have been movements and memes throughout millennia that tell people that they’re on to the righteous truth that nobody else can see but them and their meme-peers. The rapture will be here any day.
- 082349872349872 6y agoObviously it's been, and we've just been left behind. Either that, or the astonishing popularity of goatees means we're in the Star Trek Mirror Universe. More seriously, here's some seventeenth century righteous truth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859546 What, obscenity, adultery, civil commotion, conspiracy, blasphemy, subversion and lunacy? Burn the Quakers!
- gscott 6y agoThey have one already https://www.facebook.com/records/login/ https://www.facebook.com/records/login/
- ffggvv 6y agolet’s call it 6 eyes :)
- draugadrotten 6y agoRevelation 4:8, NIV: "Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: ''Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,' who was, and is, and is to come.'"
- sneak 6y agoIt’s not enough for the government to read everyone’s messages; they must also work with the platforms to make it seem to the public like the platforms are secure against government snoops, so people will continue to use them freely. The whole “Apple wouldn’t decrypt the phone for the FBI” is one such false narrative in the media to further this. Apple had already provided the FBI with the phone’s iCloud data, which usually contains backups that have complete plaintext message history. Apple also dropped their plan to encrypt iCloud device backups that would prevent this sort of surveillance, specifically to aid the FBI. Facebook already provides whatever surveillance law enforcement requests. This is a press hit along the same lines to spread the lie that routine communications on Facebook are not subject to surveillance. They absolutely are. You can tell this by trying to send banned links via Messenger. A platform that doesn’t surveil the content will necessarily permit them as they will be opaque to the provider. Facebook has many systems in place to monitor and censor message content.
- abellerose 6y agoI live my life assuming everything already has a backdoor and the article title is misleading the populace. Sure, the Five Eyes and Japan might be asking for a backdoor but I postulate the chance they don't already have access to all information they desire is zero. At this point everything is just meant to wear everyone down and increase tolerance until the day "government has access to everything" doesn't matter to the populace. Secondly, I think people are really naive to consider any justification for catching bad guys. All funding should be going into making the desire "to be a bad guy" zero. That's not going to be done by fear but instead by making a life as "not a bad guy" more attractive. Currently people are living unattractive lives while following the law and society should be making that unattractiveness go away.
- 082349872349872 6y agoOne thing that may help is making laws cut both ways. For instance, it is illegal in my country to not carry health insurance[1]. However, it naturally follows that it is equally illegal for an insurer to refuse coverage. La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. (1894) [1] among my stock of anecdotes from the States, that I pull out for people here who have never lived there: "uninsured motorist coverage" ... kepashang? (wtf?)
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThey need to make it legal to bring it up in court, it's pretty clear and there's decades of evidence that they are happy to break laws themselves to get the job done, despite caring about privacy I'm not that fussed really. Parallel construction has it's merits and for the most part cops want to improve society, especially for the most dangerous cases. That said, a scary amount of digital crime cases get dropped by the FBI when they are faced with some scrutiny. Their reasoning really doesn't hold up when they justify it either, got a bit of smell about it.
- odessacubbage 6y agofive eyes is exactly what you would call the secret evil organization in a super robot anime
- 082349872349872 6y agoI prefer to think of five eyes + japan (+ india + south africa + south korea + ...) as Oceania.
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThat doesn't make any sense whatsoever, also that's already a phrase used to describe a particular region comprising only of two countries you've mentioned (out of 8+)
- leadingthenet 6y agoIt’s a 1984 reference.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y agoI take it you've never read 1984? A shame, it's a good novel.
- AYBABTME 6y agoIf it undermines people's trust in Facebook's privacy, I'm for it. We need general adoption of strong open source secure messaging, and Facebook/WhatsApp stands in the way of this by being "good enough". If anything, this sort of announcement might just as well be a false flag tactic: look how secure Facebook is, 5-eyes is pleading for them to be less secure. [/tinfoil hat]
- anuila 6y ago> If it undermines people's trust in Facebook's privacy, I'm for it. First they came for Facebook; everybody liked that. It's to catch the terrorists. You wouldn't say no to that, right? I have nothing to hide, said the commoner.
- saddlerustle 6y agoAny law that applies to WhatsApp will apply to Signal too. There will never be mass adoption of secure messaging if it's illegal.
- heimatau 6y agoGuys. Guys. Don't worry. Libra will make the world a better place too.
- henearkr 6y agoJapan is slowly becoming an authoritarian nightmare. It already has laws to protect state secrets and prosecute alleged attempted conspiracies, and laws to compel any news outlet to never report any government-aimed criticism without always meticulously counterbalancing it with the same amount of positive praise (!). Also the recent rejection, by the prime minister, of scientific committee appointees, without willing to give any reason, is baffling.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- actuator 6y agoAs much as I hate it, I think this battle is already lost. Be it a social media company like Facebook or a computing devices company like Apple. They are going to kowtow to the wishes of the state to earn their profits. Also, I don't think it is just the state. There is no way to know if they are in majority but I am sure many people also buy into this argument. If you argue for encryption and antonymity, I am sure someone will bring up one of the four horses of infocalypse.
- fsflover 6y agoPlease stop spreading learned helplessness and donate to Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://eff.org https://eff.org.
- soraminazuki 6y agoYes, but the EFF’s main focus is the US. What could people in the remaining five countries do?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- anonymouszx 6y agoIn France for instance you can donate to laquadrature.net. They do a really great job given their small size. You will probably find similar associations in other European countries.
- fsflover 6y agoFor Europe, there is https://edri.org https://edri.org.
- M2Ys4U 6y agoIn the UK, the Open Rights Group[0] and Liberty.[1] [0] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ [1] https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/ https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/
- poxwole 6y agoOnly bad faith actors here are Facebook and the Governments
- elmo2you 6y ago> Security alliance worries encrypted messaging apps can be used by bad actors Same goes for kitchen knives. I don't hear them call for banning those, or have every sale of one tracked and monitored (which would only illustrate the lunacy of their "argument" even more).
- OwlsParlay 6y agoIf some politicians thought they could get away with it, they would.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoI mean, why do you think they've been trying to progressively restrict guns for years?
- Lev1a 6y agoFirearms make it easy/way easier to kill/seriously injure * a large number of people * from a distance * with basically no effort With knives on the other hand it's hard (especially for untrained attackers) killing/injuring * even a low number of people (IF even more than one) * from arm's reach * with large physical effort. Following that firearm restriction to those who may actually need them (law enforcement etc.) is then quite obvious.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoThat doesn't matter. How many people does something have to be able to kill before being banned? The truck attack in France was deadlier than any mass shooting in America. There are costs to freedom, including the potential for abuse. Just like predictive policing is wrong because it goes after those who haven't committed crimes, banning guns is wrong. The death of a ten, a hundred, a thousand, or more people doesn't justify restricting liberty. All guns ought to be legal.
- corobo 6y agoOk but how about if you combine all truck attacks vs all shootouts Not like Americans can do anything with the guns. You gonna stop what's happening right now with your pistol? Go on then. Literally the time to shine that liberty. You've got a guy threatening to be Hitler 2.0 (hi Godwin!) and making moves towards that.. nothing Oh they'd just make it worse? Maybe you shouldn't have them so easily accessible then https://www.theonion.com/search?q=%E2%80%98No%20Way%20To%20Prevent%20This,%E2%80%99%20Says%20Only%20Nation%20Where%20This%20Regularly%20Happens https://www.theonion.com/search?q=%E2%80%98No%20Way%20To%20P...
- pacifika 6y agoWe already can’t keep governments to account what do they need more control for?
- lewispollard 6y agoIt's worth noting that the document in question[1] mentions Facebook once, but is actually calling for backdoors into End-to-end encryption in general, not just on Facebook. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-statement-end-to-end-encryption-and-public-safety https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-sta...
- coronadisaster 6y agoI thought that they already a big pipe going from Facebook to the NSA...
- Pick-A-Hill2019 6y agoIs there an internet meme (equivalent to a Godwin's law) about "back-doors 'coz of terrists-n-kiddiepron"? I was expecting for it to feature in the article and sure enough there it was. The narrative that "bad people use X" becomes "bad people used X to do thing Y and the government was helpless to stop it, omg!" in various echo chambers. Soon, news reports start appearing with "Thing X was used by bad person. If only the government could have acted in time, tragedy would have been averted". The various governments and TLA's arguing about the need for back-doors is akin to them complaining that they can't solve crime because of the invention and use of curtains on windows. I mean, can you picture them arguing that if only people left their curtains wide open all the time then there would be no more crime happening inside houses.
- cesarb 6y ago> Is there an internet meme (equivalent to a Godwin's law) about "back-doors 'coz of terrists-n-kiddiepron"? Yes, it's called "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...)
- HashingtheCode 6y agoI never realized that there is soooooo much kiddie porn on Facebook that it warrants creation of "back-door access" :-) no pun intended, for governments to spy on people's private communication so as to SAVE THE CHILDREN. riiiiight.
- nswest23 6y agoIf it was technically feasible they would would be calling for a back door into private thought.
- ryukafalz 6y agoOnce internet-connected brain implants are a thing...
- zanethomas 6y agowhat could possibly go wrong with that?
- twirlock 6y agoThese people can eat shit until they want public oversight, and I will be a single issue voter until one of the two happens.
- TheMightyLlama 6y agoI tend to go with the idea that if they're asking for it, they already have it.