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>politicians all over the world demanded a kind of impossible encryption It's not impossible to design a cryptographic system where law enforcement is a party

>politicians all over the world demanded a kind of impossible encryption It's not impossible to design a cryptographic system where law enforcement is a party within it. The false dichotomy of encrypted or not encrypted in my opinion is used to shutdown the conversation since it's easy to argue why no encryption is bad. It's a strawman.

thyristan 1y ago
Then please prove the possibility by doing so. Up to now, there has only been intense wishful thinking by politicians, and strong "NOPE" by anyone with any kind of knowledge about cryptography. Either really everyone, including the likes of NSA, CIA and other spy services don't actually employ top cryptographers. Or they repeatedly tried and failed miserably. Or really nobody, including the spies, wants backdoored NOBUS encryption.
- loglog 1y ago
  NSA does probably want it, and did probably standardized at least one such scheme in the past: Dual_EC_DRBG.
JoshTriplett 1y ago
It's impossible to design a cryptographic system that does end-to-end encryption and has a backdoor that can never be misused. No technical solution will address the fact that it's failing at its one job.
jgeada 1y ago
That is a bad faith argument. As soon as there is another untrusted party in the encryption, an in particular a party with a "skeleton key" that can decrypt anybody's message, then your encrypted communications are merely one leak away from being decoded by everybody else.
- aaronmdjones 1y ago
  If there's one thing you can trust a government to do, it's to not be able to keep secrets for very long. https://www.vice.com/en/article/hackers-published-replicas-and-blueprints-to-tsa-master-luggage-keys/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/hackers-published-replicas-a...
- charcircuit 1y ago
  You can do things like require the service to verify that the court order is valid before they gain the capability to decrypt a subset of messages that the court order allows them to see. There doesn't have to be a skeleton key.
  - jgeada 1y ago
    Right, just "nerd harder". The mathematics of encryption just doesn't play that way.
  - crote 1y ago
    What is the mathematical formula for a valid court order? How does it look different from a court order signed by a judge held at gunpoint? How does it look different from a court order signed by a dictator's minion? How does it prevent someone from tricking a judge into signing an order to decrypt message 2421425241 instead of 2421475241? What is stopping the service from accepting invalid court orders? What is stopping the service from just decrypting everything for convenience?
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      >What is the mathematical formula for a valid court order? This is a political / social issue. A human has to decide. >How does it look different from a court order signed by a judge held at gunpoint? It doesn't. You could similarly hold developers at gunpoint to push malicous updates too or at users to give them their messages. Putting people at gunpoint is illegal. >How does it look different from a court order signed by a dictator's minion? Judges could have their own private key so it would be noticeable that the minions private key would not be trusted. >How does it prevent someone from tricking a judge into signing an order to decrypt message 2421425241 instead of 2421475241? It doesn't. This is solved by laws that make such an action illegal to do >What is stopping the service from accepting invalid court orders? They want to protect the privacy of their users so they should reject invalid court orders. >What is stopping the service from just decrypting everything for convenience? They would not have the keys LE has. So it could be setup such that LE's keys are required to decrypt something.
layer8 1y ago
The argument regarding general use of encryption for communication is that (a) law enforcement private keys would leak sooner or later, suddenly exposing everyone’s past communication, and that (b) criminals would just use “forbidden” encryption (“if x is outlawed, only outlaws will use x”).
- charcircuit 1y ago
  (a) LE keys don't have to be all powerful. It can require actions from other parties such as the company that is running the chat or a judge. It can limit the scope of who or what messages can be decrypted. (b) Perfect is the enemy of good. Smaller services won't have the same utility and network effects of large ones.
crooked-v 1y ago
If you include law enforcement by default, the system becomes completely insecure literally the first time an agent is corrupt, lazy, or just gets access stolen from them.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  You can design it such that the a single agent isn't able to decrypt anything. You can also do things like limiting the number of decrypted messages per period of time and more.

thyristan 1y ago

Then please prove the possibility by doing so. Up to now, there has only been intense wishful thinking by politicians, and strong "NOPE" by anyone with any kind of knowledge about cryptography. Either really everyone, including the likes of NSA, CIA and other spy services don't actually employ top cryptographers. Or they repeatedly tried and failed miserably. Or really nobody, including the spies, wants backdoored NOBUS encryption.

loglog 1y ago
NSA does probably want it, and did probably standardized at least one such scheme in the past: Dual_EC_DRBG.

JoshTriplett 1y ago

It's impossible to design a cryptographic system that does end-to-end encryption and has a backdoor that can never be misused. No technical solution will address the fact that it's failing at its one job.

jgeada 1y ago

That is a bad faith argument. As soon as there is another untrusted party in the encryption, an in particular a party with a "skeleton key" that can decrypt anybody's message, then your encrypted communications are merely one leak away from being decoded by everybody else.

aaronmdjones 1y ago
If there's one thing you can trust a government to do, it's to not be able to keep secrets for very long. https://www.vice.com/en/article/hackers-published-replicas-and-blueprints-to-tsa-master-luggage-keys/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/hackers-published-replicas-a...
charcircuit 1y ago
You can do things like require the service to verify that the court order is valid before they gain the capability to decrypt a subset of messages that the court order allows them to see. There doesn't have to be a skeleton key.
- jgeada 1y ago
  Right, just "nerd harder". The mathematics of encryption just doesn't play that way.
- crote 1y ago
  What is the mathematical formula for a valid court order? How does it look different from a court order signed by a judge held at gunpoint? How does it look different from a court order signed by a dictator's minion? How does it prevent someone from tricking a judge into signing an order to decrypt message 2421425241 instead of 2421475241? What is stopping the service from accepting invalid court orders? What is stopping the service from just decrypting everything for convenience?
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >What is the mathematical formula for a valid court order? This is a political / social issue. A human has to decide. >How does it look different from a court order signed by a judge held at gunpoint? It doesn't. You could similarly hold developers at gunpoint to push malicous updates too or at users to give them their messages. Putting people at gunpoint is illegal. >How does it look different from a court order signed by a dictator's minion? Judges could have their own private key so it would be noticeable that the minions private key would not be trusted. >How does it prevent someone from tricking a judge into signing an order to decrypt message 2421425241 instead of 2421475241? It doesn't. This is solved by laws that make such an action illegal to do >What is stopping the service from accepting invalid court orders? They want to protect the privacy of their users so they should reject invalid court orders. >What is stopping the service from just decrypting everything for convenience? They would not have the keys LE has. So it could be setup such that LE's keys are required to decrypt something.

layer8 1y ago

The argument regarding general use of encryption for communication is that (a) law enforcement private keys would leak sooner or later, suddenly exposing everyone’s past communication, and that (b) criminals would just use “forbidden” encryption (“if x is outlawed, only outlaws will use x”).

charcircuit 1y ago
(a) LE keys don't have to be all powerful. It can require actions from other parties such as the company that is running the chat or a judge. It can limit the scope of who or what messages can be decrypted. (b) Perfect is the enemy of good. Smaller services won't have the same utility and network effects of large ones.

crooked-v 1y ago

If you include law enforcement by default, the system becomes completely insecure literally the first time an agent is corrupt, lazy, or just gets access stolen from them.

charcircuit 1y ago
You can design it such that the a single agent isn't able to decrypt anything. You can also do things like limiting the number of decrypted messages per period of time and more.