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(I'm one of the guys that was talking with you in that link) To be clear, I think that vendors make their services "backdoorable" because they want to extract

by jlgreco 13y ago

(I'm one of the guys that was talking with you in that link) To be clear, I think that vendors make their services "backdoorable" because they want to extract revenue from them and attract consumers. Once they have the capability, the government can then capable of compelling them to comply. I don't think the government is compelling them to build the capability in the first place. To use a concrete example, Bitlocker is presumably not backdoored by Microsoft and I don't believe that the government has any (public) laws that would allow them to compel Microsoft to modify Bitlocker in such a way. Microsoft's refusal to backdoor Bitlocker could not get them into any sort of official trouble. If Microsoft had Bitlocker backdoored already for whatever reason (say, customer service data recovery), then the government could compel them to comply them to unlock drives. I don't think we really disagree on anything substantial.

btilly 13y ago
To be clear, I think that vendors make their services "backdoorable" because they want to extract revenue from them and attract consumers. I disagree. Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way. For instance consider gmail. The hard requirement is that a person armed with a user name and password can login from a browser and get access to that email. The common requirement is that a person armed with the right cookie can get that email. Now in theory you could encrypt all of the emails on the server, but now your operations costs went through the roof. However if you store them in plain text then you can use smart indexing, and your operations costs are much more manageable. However once you've decided to have plain text files on your server, EVEN IF you aren't doing anything with them other than storing/sending them to the user, you're now able to backdoor those files, and hence can be compared to by a court. There have been many email systems out there. Open source (qmail, sendmail, etc), proprietary (Exchange, Dovecot, etc), hosted in the cloud (Hotmail, Gmail, etc), hosted at your company (Exim, Oracle Communications Messaging Server, etc), built on top of platforms not meant to do email (Lotus Notes being a prime example) and so on. Every single one of the ones I named and many, many, more stored data in plain text and legal discovery could be compelled on them. Simply because that was the easiest way to build them. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions because they were meant to be. Hushmail comes to mind. However even there, even when it was designed to store data in encrypted format, if the government can find a way to force you to extract data, they will push you to do so. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail for a description of the way in which the government got Hushmail to capture plain text, even though the data was stored in plain text.) The moral? Often the government has access not because evil profit-mongering corporations did wrong, but simply because obvious technical decisions leave them able to do so. And this can be true even when those corporations made a good faith effort to make that impossible.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way. Okay sure, I can go with that. My point is that the reason is not "because the government makes them do it that way." I agree with all of what you are saying. Tying into the original conversation, my beef with skype isn't so much that they were backdoorable but that they were backdoorable when they have been claiming for years that they are not.
- declan 13y ago
  This is well said. The thing is, though, that it was the non-Java version of Hushmail that was exploited by the Feds. The fact that it could be exploited shouldn't cast the end-to-end secure version in a negative light. So who at Google is going to code an encrypted Gmail in their 20% time? Paid, of course, because the server won't know what ads to show. (You could put that intelligence in the client, but it seems a privacy-sensitive clientele wouldn't like even that info to leak.)
  - kamjam 13y ago
    I'm sure Google already has an encrypted version of their Gmail service, but why would they shoot themselves in the foot and loose all that Ad revenue? You could put that intelligence in the client, but there is only so much analysis you do do using JavaScript, I'm sure the computing power they have available on their servers is phenomenal, and add to that a huge databank of information they have available to be able to better match those ads to you. And you've already mentioned the privacy issue...
    - declan 13y ago
      Google would choose to lose "all that ad revenue" if they could replace it with sufficient, and probably more lucrative, non-ad revenue through paying customers.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
declan 13y ago
Yep, there is no public or secret law that would require Microsoft to backdoor Bitlocker. What's worth remembering, though, is that such a proposal came reasonably close to becoming federal law in the 1990s. It was backed by the FBI and was approved by a House of Representatives committee, which I mention here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html An excerpt from that article: "In the 1990s, [now-VP Joe] Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was "persuaded" to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language: It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law... While neither of Biden's pair of bills became law, they did foreshadow the FBI's pro-wiretapping, anti-encryption legislative strategy that followed -- and demonstrated that the Delaware senator was willing to be a reliable ally of law enforcement on the topic. (They also previewed the FBI's legislative proposal later that decade for banning encryption products such as SSH or PGP without government backdoors, which was approved by one House of Representatives committee but never came to a vote in the Senate.)"
yajoe 13y ago
I agree! And I hope it's clear I like and respect your questions -- people like you are the key reasons I keep coming back here. About bitlocker, I agree with you that there likely isn't a backdoor built into the service beyond breaking crypto (likely still hard, though crypto export laws still apply and influence overall strength). What I would point out is that the data recovery 'backdoor' (where private keys get stored in central servers, either in AD or your Microsoft Account) is turned on by default. It's most likely for user convenience, but I imagine those that want ediscovery would be happy. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recovery-keys-faq http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recov...

by jlgreco 13y ago

btilly 13y ago

To be clear, I think that vendors make their services "backdoorable" because they want to extract revenue from them and attract consumers. I disagree. Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way. For instance consider gmail. The hard requirement is that a person armed with a user name and password can login from a browser and get access to that email. The common requirement is that a person armed with the right cookie can get that email. Now in theory you could encrypt all of the emails on the server, but now your operations costs went through the roof. However if you store them in plain text then you can use smart indexing, and your operations costs are much more manageable. However once you've decided to have plain text files on your server, EVEN IF you aren't doing anything with them other than storing/sending them to the user, you're now able to backdoor those files, and hence can be compared to by a court. There have been many email systems out there. Open source (qmail, sendmail, etc), proprietary (Exchange, Dovecot, etc), hosted in the cloud (Hotmail, Gmail, etc), hosted at your company (Exim, Oracle Communications Messaging Server, etc), built on top of platforms not meant to do email (Lotus Notes being a prime example) and so on. Every single one of the ones I named and many, many, more stored data in plain text and legal discovery could be compelled on them. Simply because that was the easiest way to build them. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions because they were meant to be. Hushmail comes to mind. However even there, even when it was designed to store data in encrypted format, if the government can find a way to force you to extract data, they will push you to do so. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail for a description of the way in which the government got Hushmail to capture plain text, even though the data was stored in plain text.) The moral? Often the government has access not because evil profit-mongering corporations did wrong, but simply because obvious technical decisions leave them able to do so. And this can be true even when those corporations made a good faith effort to make that impossible.

jlgreco 13y ago
> Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way. Okay sure, I can go with that. My point is that the reason is not "because the government makes them do it that way." I agree with all of what you are saying. Tying into the original conversation, my beef with skype isn't so much that they were backdoorable but that they were backdoorable when they have been claiming for years that they are not.
declan 13y ago
This is well said. The thing is, though, that it was the non-Java version of Hushmail that was exploited by the Feds. The fact that it could be exploited shouldn't cast the end-to-end secure version in a negative light. So who at Google is going to code an encrypted Gmail in their 20% time? Paid, of course, because the server won't know what ads to show. (You could put that intelligence in the client, but it seems a privacy-sensitive clientele wouldn't like even that info to leak.)
- kamjam 13y ago
  I'm sure Google already has an encrypted version of their Gmail service, but why would they shoot themselves in the foot and loose all that Ad revenue? You could put that intelligence in the client, but there is only so much analysis you do do using JavaScript, I'm sure the computing power they have available on their servers is phenomenal, and add to that a huge databank of information they have available to be able to better match those ads to you. And you've already mentioned the privacy issue...
  - declan 13y ago
    Google would choose to lose "all that ad revenue" if they could replace it with sufficient, and probably more lucrative, non-ad revenue through paying customers.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

declan 13y ago

Yep, there is no public or secret law that would require Microsoft to backdoor Bitlocker. What's worth remembering, though, is that such a proposal came reasonably close to becoming federal law in the 1990s. It was backed by the FBI and was approved by a House of Representatives committee, which I mention here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html An excerpt from that article: "In the 1990s, [now-VP Joe] Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was "persuaded" to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language: It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law... While neither of Biden's pair of bills became law, they did foreshadow the FBI's pro-wiretapping, anti-encryption legislative strategy that followed -- and demonstrated that the Delaware senator was willing to be a reliable ally of law enforcement on the topic. (They also previewed the FBI's legislative proposal later that decade for banning encryption products such as SSH or PGP without government backdoors, which was approved by one House of Representatives committee but never came to a vote in the Senate.)"

yajoe 13y ago

I agree! And I hope it's clear I like and respect your questions -- people like you are the key reasons I keep coming back here. About bitlocker, I agree with you that there likely isn't a backdoor built into the service beyond breaking crypto (likely still hard, though crypto export laws still apply and influence overall strength). What I would point out is that the data recovery 'backdoor' (where private keys get stored in central servers, either in AD or your Microsoft Account) is turned on by default. It's most likely for user convenience, but I imagine those that want ediscovery would be happy. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recovery-keys-faq http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recov...