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> Like, tap a padlock icon on your cellphone and suddenly anything your phone does is encrypted Not good enough: you have to think of activating it. And even i

> Like, tap a padlock icon on your cellphone and suddenly anything your phone does is encrypted Not good enough: you have to think of activating it. And even if you do, most traffic will still be unencrypted, making it easier for spies to tell who may have something to hide, and when they do. To have real good, actual privacy, everything should be encrypted by default, the internet itself should be a giant scrambling overlay network such as Tor, and people should have symmetric bandwidth to encourage decentralization —no more need for YouTube. I don't see it happen in the following decades.

shawnz 13y ago
What's the problem with most traffic being unencrypted? If you have something in particular that you want hidden, it's possible to make sure that it gets hid. What more do you need?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- cgag 13y ago
  You not to know I'm hiding anything at all.
  - zhemao 13y ago
    Exactly. They may not know what you're hiding, but if they see small portions of your internet traffic are encrypted using a scheme very different from your regular traffic, flags are raised. Then it's simply a matter of sending an NSL to whoever they need to in order to get the content of the message.
    - gizmo686 13y ago
      >Then it's simply a matter of sending an NSL to whoever they need to in order to get the content of the message. If its done right, there are only 2 people capable of getting the content of the message: you and the intended recipient.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  If the norm was that everybody sent their snailmail on postcards, the ones in envelopes would be suspicious.
wyager 13y ago
>everything should be encrypted by default Regarding phones, this is already the case with iOS. The Full-disk and Full-filesystem encryption mechanisms appear to be fairly/very strong. I believe since Android 4, full filesystem encryption has been supported, but I'm not sure if it's as well-integrated as on iOS. Apple has made an effort (although an imperfect one) to make text messaging secure by default. Obviously Apple screwed up pretty badly by making all this stuff closed-source, and it's probably full of vulnerabilities, but the reality is that this seems to be, in practice, enough to thwart LEO attempts to surveil users of iOS devices. I think we're on the right track.
- zobzu 13y ago
  Encryption doesn't mean: - that it's implementation secure (for example Android FDE is trivial to crack for us, imagine what a joke it is for the NSA) - that it's algorithms are secure (gone are the days where the NSA would warn us DES is broken to help US companies) - that the data is never stored or sent in clear - the system has full access to the data, in clear, when its running. - that there is no backdoor. each step of the implementation can have relatively hard to spot backdoors. Specially in proprietary code.
  - jervisfm 13y ago
    > Android FDE is trivial to crack for us What vulnerabilities exist with the full disk encryption on android that make it insecure ?
    - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
      Likely stuff like http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/07/researchers-bypass-android-encryption-by-exposing-phones-to-freezing-temperatures http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/07/researchers-bypass... - basically, the encryption is fine, but you need somewhere to store your keys. "Somewhere" ends up being RAM, which is usually not very secure.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
I think that's what screwed it all up, in the end: lack of symmetric bandwidth. Without symmetric bandwidth, everyone needs to talk to centralized services and servers in order to pass any data around larger than an email attachment. Those services and servers become power centers, which attract surveillance and corruption. A really safe internet has to look more like BitTorrent and less like YouTube.
- abecedarius 13y ago
  Also, pervasive NAT and dynamic IPs. David Reed mentioned somewhere that he'd argued against 32-bit IP addresses and lost. There've been powerful incentives for software on servers; I think the above got in the way of p2p getting much of a foothold to develop its own advantages.
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  There are initiatives going in this direction: http://thefnf.org http://thefnf.org http://projectmeshnet.org http://projectmeshnet.org

shawnz 13y ago

What's the problem with most traffic being unencrypted? If you have something in particular that you want hidden, it's possible to make sure that it gets hid. What more do you need?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cgag 13y ago
You not to know I'm hiding anything at all.
- zhemao 13y ago
  Exactly. They may not know what you're hiding, but if they see small portions of your internet traffic are encrypted using a scheme very different from your regular traffic, flags are raised. Then it's simply a matter of sending an NSL to whoever they need to in order to get the content of the message.
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    >Then it's simply a matter of sending an NSL to whoever they need to in order to get the content of the message. If its done right, there are only 2 people capable of getting the content of the message: you and the intended recipient.
tripzilch 13y ago
If the norm was that everybody sent their snailmail on postcards, the ones in envelopes would be suspicious.

wyager 13y ago

>everything should be encrypted by default Regarding phones, this is already the case with iOS. The Full-disk and Full-filesystem encryption mechanisms appear to be fairly/very strong. I believe since Android 4, full filesystem encryption has been supported, but I'm not sure if it's as well-integrated as on iOS. Apple has made an effort (although an imperfect one) to make text messaging secure by default. Obviously Apple screwed up pretty badly by making all this stuff closed-source, and it's probably full of vulnerabilities, but the reality is that this seems to be, in practice, enough to thwart LEO attempts to surveil users of iOS devices. I think we're on the right track.

zobzu 13y ago
Encryption doesn't mean: - that it's implementation secure (for example Android FDE is trivial to crack for us, imagine what a joke it is for the NSA) - that it's algorithms are secure (gone are the days where the NSA would warn us DES is broken to help US companies) - that the data is never stored or sent in clear - the system has full access to the data, in clear, when its running. - that there is no backdoor. each step of the implementation can have relatively hard to spot backdoors. Specially in proprietary code.
- jervisfm 13y ago
  > Android FDE is trivial to crack for us What vulnerabilities exist with the full disk encryption on android that make it insecure ?
  - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
    Likely stuff like http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/07/researchers-bypass-android-encryption-by-exposing-phones-to-freezing-temperatures http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/07/researchers-bypass... - basically, the encryption is fine, but you need somewhere to store your keys. "Somewhere" ends up being RAM, which is usually not very secure.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

I think that's what screwed it all up, in the end: lack of symmetric bandwidth. Without symmetric bandwidth, everyone needs to talk to centralized services and servers in order to pass any data around larger than an email attachment. Those services and servers become power centers, which attract surveillance and corruption. A really safe internet has to look more like BitTorrent and less like YouTube.

abecedarius 13y ago
Also, pervasive NAT and dynamic IPs. David Reed mentioned somewhere that he'd argued against 32-bit IP addresses and lost. There've been powerful incentives for software on servers; I think the above got in the way of p2p getting much of a foothold to develop its own advantages.
knowaveragejoe 13y ago
There are initiatives going in this direction: http://thefnf.org http://thefnf.org http://projectmeshnet.org http://projectmeshnet.org