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Let's try Title 47, Chapter 9, Subchapter I, § 1002. The whole subsection is good but calling attention to (b)(3): "(3) Encryption A telecommunications carrie

Let's try Title 47, Chapter 9, Subchapter I, § 1002. The whole subsection is good but calling attention to (b)(3): "(3) Encryption A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1002 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1002 Here's the Wikipedia article: "The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton (Pub. L. No. 103-414, 108 Stat. 4279, codified at 47 USC 1001-1010). CALEA's purpose is to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_... Here's a checklist for CALEA: http://transition.fcc.gov/bureaus/pshs/services/calea/CALEA%20Checklist%202013.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/bureaus/pshs/services/calea/CALEA%...

azernik 12y ago
"unless... the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." That is, if a company is running a key escrow, then it is required to decrypt information for the government. But it's not already running a key escrow, there's nothing in the section you cited that requires it to.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  The parent comment asked about "subvert encryption in any way, key escrow or otherwise". CALEA relies on voluntary key escrow which essentially all major information providers have been willing to provide (see Snowden leaks). Voluntary only exists where incentives allow a full reasoned decision to be made by corporations. Look at the fines that Yahoo was forced to face on a daily basis for not providing the information requested by the government. Look at how QWest was unraveled. Soft power, financial leverage, standards manipulation, other laws and legal requirements (law praxis) - including those mentioned in the parent comments (ignored thus far by downvote brigade), executive orders and others effectively require key escrow. All major telecommunications carriers have been onboarded to 'voluntary escrow' in this regard. The presumed 'big news' being that Apple and Google providing escrow-less cryptography directly implies that there was key escrow before (there was encryption present before, but no law enforcement condemnation). I encourage readers of these comments to chase the provided links and information, as well as the fully body of knowledge leaked by Binney, Snowden and others, to bear on the 'truthiness' of this comment thread.
  - lern_too_spel 12y ago
    The "big news" wasn't that they are "providing escrow-less cryptography" but that iOS 8 added full-disk encryption and that Android 5 turned full disk encryption on by default. They never had access to the encryption keys. On iOS 7 and earlier, Apple could extract data from native apps "for which the data is not encrypted using the passcode." http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guidelines-us.pdf http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guideline...
    - xnull2guest 12y ago
      Nah that's not right at all. The big news was in fact that they would be providing end-to-end encryption with the claim that they 'do not have a key and so can not comply with key requests.' Find me some articles that don't center around the issue of law enforcement getting keys. Encryption, including by default and including FDE existed before this year. That's not the news. Any HN reader reading this can confirm this is the case with a few quick searches around the use of full disk encryption and encryption in general in Google and Apple.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        I've read this comment three times and I can't find anywhere inside of it any testable claim. You started this thread very authoritatively, but at this point instead of providing evidence or even authoritative cites, you're asking people to search the trade press to confirm your arguments. Your claim at the top of this thread was that companies like Microsoft (presumably also Google, Dropbox, Apple, Stripe, Mozilla, Facebook, LinkedIn, Samsung, &c) were legally compelled to implement --- your words --- key escrow. Even if we charitably defocus that argument to cover not just literally key escrow but any cryptographic or security UX property meant to reduce security or provide lawful intercept capabilities, I know that claim to be false. I'm eagerly awaiting actual evidence from you to back your claim up, because if you're right, I'm profoundly wrong about something. I doubt you're right, but the risk/reward on wasting my time versus a life-changing revelation work out for me to keep participating in this discussion.
- tptacek 12y ago
  CALEA also doesn't apply to software companies; the law explicitly distinguishes between "telecommunications carriers" and entities providing "information services." The law simply does not require Google, Microsoft, &c to implement key escrow, and so far as I can tell, those companies don't.
Zigurd 12y ago
What you are citing actually supports tptacek's claim that there is no law requiring key escrow or other means of circumventing encryption. That appears to be true. But it makes it all the more surprising that none of these companies supports user-controlled keys, convenient and trustworthy key exchange, and end-to-end encryption for their storage and communications products.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Why does that surprise you? Virtually nobody who uses these products wants to use user-controlled keys. Corroborating evidence: compare the success of web-based encrypted chat products (which people who pay attention know don't actually work) to native encrypted clients that do provide end-to-end security. Or compare the adoption of WhatsApp to that of, say, TextSecure or ChatSecure.
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    You have a point regarding real-time communication. As long as users can be confident ephemeral keys can't be compromised, they are far easier to use. But what about store and forward communication, and storage? But you could also say that ephemeral keys are user controlled to the extent they are exchanged end-to-end and the conversation can't be evesdropped. Your objection amounts to saying "We don't have easy, trustworthy key exchange backed by a web of trust."
    - tptacek 12y ago
      There are three keying regimes I can see in common use: * Key continuity (a la SSH) * Web of trust (a la PGP Keyservers) * PKI (a la SSL CAs) Of these three, only key continuity appears to work in practice. I'm eagerly awaiting the UX invention that somehow merges continuity and web-of-trust to make the latter tractable. I'm definitely not complaining that there's no web-of-trust, since I don't believe in it as a workable UX solution for normal people.
      - Zigurd 12y ago

azernik 12y ago

"unless... the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication." That is, if a company is running a key escrow, then it is required to decrypt information for the government. But it's not already running a key escrow, there's nothing in the section you cited that requires it to.

xnull2guest 12y ago
The parent comment asked about "subvert encryption in any way, key escrow or otherwise". CALEA relies on voluntary key escrow which essentially all major information providers have been willing to provide (see Snowden leaks). Voluntary only exists where incentives allow a full reasoned decision to be made by corporations. Look at the fines that Yahoo was forced to face on a daily basis for not providing the information requested by the government. Look at how QWest was unraveled. Soft power, financial leverage, standards manipulation, other laws and legal requirements (law praxis) - including those mentioned in the parent comments (ignored thus far by downvote brigade), executive orders and others effectively require key escrow. All major telecommunications carriers have been onboarded to 'voluntary escrow' in this regard. The presumed 'big news' being that Apple and Google providing escrow-less cryptography directly implies that there was key escrow before (there was encryption present before, but no law enforcement condemnation). I encourage readers of these comments to chase the provided links and information, as well as the fully body of knowledge leaked by Binney, Snowden and others, to bear on the 'truthiness' of this comment thread.
- lern_too_spel 12y ago
  The "big news" wasn't that they are "providing escrow-less cryptography" but that iOS 8 added full-disk encryption and that Android 5 turned full disk encryption on by default. They never had access to the encryption keys. On iOS 7 and earlier, Apple could extract data from native apps "for which the data is not encrypted using the passcode." http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guidelines-us.pdf http://images.apple.com/privacy/docs/legal-process-guideline...
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    Nah that's not right at all. The big news was in fact that they would be providing end-to-end encryption with the claim that they 'do not have a key and so can not comply with key requests.' Find me some articles that don't center around the issue of law enforcement getting keys. Encryption, including by default and including FDE existed before this year. That's not the news. Any HN reader reading this can confirm this is the case with a few quick searches around the use of full disk encryption and encryption in general in Google and Apple.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      I've read this comment three times and I can't find anywhere inside of it any testable claim. You started this thread very authoritatively, but at this point instead of providing evidence or even authoritative cites, you're asking people to search the trade press to confirm your arguments. Your claim at the top of this thread was that companies like Microsoft (presumably also Google, Dropbox, Apple, Stripe, Mozilla, Facebook, LinkedIn, Samsung, &c) were legally compelled to implement --- your words --- key escrow. Even if we charitably defocus that argument to cover not just literally key escrow but any cryptographic or security UX property meant to reduce security or provide lawful intercept capabilities, I know that claim to be false. I'm eagerly awaiting actual evidence from you to back your claim up, because if you're right, I'm profoundly wrong about something. I doubt you're right, but the risk/reward on wasting my time versus a life-changing revelation work out for me to keep participating in this discussion.
tptacek 12y ago
CALEA also doesn't apply to software companies; the law explicitly distinguishes between "telecommunications carriers" and entities providing "information services." The law simply does not require Google, Microsoft, &c to implement key escrow, and so far as I can tell, those companies don't.

Zigurd 12y ago

What you are citing actually supports tptacek's claim that there is no law requiring key escrow or other means of circumventing encryption. That appears to be true. But it makes it all the more surprising that none of these companies supports user-controlled keys, convenient and trustworthy key exchange, and end-to-end encryption for their storage and communications products.

tptacek 12y ago
Why does that surprise you? Virtually nobody who uses these products wants to use user-controlled keys. Corroborating evidence: compare the success of web-based encrypted chat products (which people who pay attention know don't actually work) to native encrypted clients that do provide end-to-end security. Or compare the adoption of WhatsApp to that of, say, TextSecure or ChatSecure.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  You have a point regarding real-time communication. As long as users can be confident ephemeral keys can't be compromised, they are far easier to use. But what about store and forward communication, and storage? But you could also say that ephemeral keys are user controlled to the extent they are exchanged end-to-end and the conversation can't be evesdropped. Your objection amounts to saying "We don't have easy, trustworthy key exchange backed by a web of trust."
  - tptacek 12y ago
    There are three keying regimes I can see in common use: * Key continuity (a la SSH) * Web of trust (a la PGP Keyservers) * PKI (a la SSL CAs) Of these three, only key continuity appears to work in practice. I'm eagerly awaiting the UX invention that somehow merges continuity and web-of-trust to make the latter tractable. I'm definitely not complaining that there's no web-of-trust, since I don't believe in it as a workable UX solution for normal people.
    - Zigurd 12y ago