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FBI: End-to-End Encryption Is an Infectious Problem
Just in case there were any lingering doubts about U.S. law enforcement's stance on end-to-end encryption, which prevents information from being read by anyone but its intended recipient, FBI executive assistant director Amy Hess told the Wall Street Journal this week that its use "is a problem that infects law enforcement and the intelligence community more and more so every day."
The quote was published in a piece about efforts from the UK, Australia and India to undermine end-to-end encryption. All three countries have passed or proposed legislation that compels tech companies to supply certain information to government agencies. The laws vary in their specifics, including restrictions on to what information law enforcement can request access, but the gist is that they don't want any data to be completely inaccessible.
Related: FBI Chief Calls for National Talk Over Encryption vs. Safety
FBI Failed to Access 7,000 Encrypted Mobile Devices
DOJ: Strong Encryption That We Don't Have Access to is "Unreasonable"
Five Eyes Governments Get Even Tougher on Encryption
Apple Speaks Out Against Australian Anti-Encryption Law; Police Advised Not to Trigger Face ID
Australia Set to Pass Controversial Encryption Law
Split Key Cryptography is Back... Again – Why Government Back Doors Don't Work
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @09:48PM (17 children)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 27 2019, @10:49PM (8 children)
What rights do you think you have, exactly?
The reality of encryption is that there are too many tools readily available with such low barriers to acquisition and use that the old saw "when encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will encrypt" applies, in spades.
All that the legislators can do is target large entities that make things like cellphones, PCs, network equipment, etc. and attempt to influence them to make user's data accessible to law enforcement, but all such efforts will fall short of stopping anyone who cares to from "talking in code."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:29AM (7 children)
How about this one [cornell.edu]?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:33AM (1 child)
Your 4th amendment rights have been dead since PRISM was started. For all the talk about needing guns in case tyrants try to infringe people's freedoms, nobody stood up to the government when they flaunted the fact that they were spying on everybody and tried to arrest Snowden for exposing them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:15PM
Are you sure? Did you RTFA?
The FBI has nobody but themselves to blame for the wide deployment of end to end crypto.TFA is them taking aim at the other foot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:29PM (3 children)
That one still stands while you are on private property and have not been issued a warrant or demonstrated probable cause for a search.
The rights you never had were for large corporations to provide you with cheap communication and recording tools that implement strong encryption.
If you want to build them yourself, nobody is ever going to stop that in a practical sense, and I think you can make a good case in court that any law which prevents you from using your own homebrew secret decoder ring is unconscionable and unenforceable - assuming you can afford a competent lawyer.
On the other hand, if you're just using Chat-App-12 on your commodity phone, you're going to have a hard time "enforcing the corporations' rights" to provide strong encryption on that. Rolling your own chat app software should always be a possibility, but if your strong encryption app ever gets too popular, you shouldn't be surprised if you are contacted and have law enforcement attempt to incentivize you to make their jobs easier, using whatever tools and rights they have to do so.
How this plays out on the world stage is even more interesting, revealing how much/little international power the various police agencies have.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)
By the time you're in court arguing against the police's version of the story and what's probable cause then you've already been punished. The cop however may even be getting paid overtime to show up to court and in the event that things start looking like there could be personal repercussions they'll have their lawyers deal with it and you'll have a hard time paying for an attorney that has the same level of expertise arguing things like probable cause.
After that you'll need to move or else you're getting pulled over for "swerving" and then getting searched for the "suspicious odor" in your car every single time your plate pops up on their buddy's automated plate scanner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:01PM
Forgot to finish this thought. If you have to defend yourself in court you've already been punished.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Friday March 01 2019, @01:56AM
I agree. There's nothing that says anyone has to provide me with strong crypto. What I oppose is when they say I'm not allowed to have strong crypto from end to end if I want it. If they've got a legitimate subpoena to see a particular conversation then I can show it to them. Until that time though thing stay locked up, just like the papers in my safe.
As for "nobody is ever going to stop that in a practical sense", you're just looking at the wrong dictatorship. If the TLAs have their way they would allow just enough encryption that they can break easily and lock you up as a terrorist for using anything stronger.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:01PM
Yeah, except for the part where The Man has demonstrated multiple times that he doesn't give a flying fuck about what a logical interpretation of "papers and effects" is, i.e. forcing people to divulge their encryption keys for encrypted hard drives, which a reasonable person would agree also violates the Fifth Amendment.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:28PM (5 children)
Do you mean that? You got guns to back up your words?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:54PM (4 children)
Congress could pass a law so heinous that nerds are compelled to violence.
What would it take to get incel nerds to pick up the ammo box? Encryption ban? Anime ban?
The problem is that E2E is becoming too mainstream. So we may see some kind of "failure to decrypt" law instead. You can have your crypto, just be sure to lower all defenses when asked or face the slammer.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:38AM (2 children)
Sexbot ban.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:17AM (1 child)
Yeah, that could do it. Bonus points if they can get the sex bots to fire the guns.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:28AM
Bonus points allowed ONLY if they have BOOB GUNS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTv9AhCuSU4 [youtube.com]
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:35AM
Congress could pass a law so heinous that nerds are compelled to violence.
Yeah, and people could vote for a less heinous congress... Really, why keep the servants around after they broke all the best china?
What would it take to get incel nerds to pick up the ammo box?
Can't you get 'em to the ballot box first?
We have to develop robust E2E so we can avoid arguing about it.
As far as "failure to decrypt", we have to demand they prove who sent the message to begin with. Good E2E will make that very difficult also.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:31PM
>where heads can roll
where heads SHOULD roll, in all countries whose constitution says private communication is a right of the sovereign citizen.
Constitutional right INFECTS law enforcement? then law is illegal.
Private communication can be used for crimes Yes. Crimes have real world perpetrators and real world consequences, I am afraid law will have to look for those. If pleasing law enforcement and intelligence is more important, I suggest a dictatorship, the ability of making laws on the spot by policemen, and other 1984ish improvements.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:35PM
yes, this stupid whore needs to hang for sedition.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday February 27 2019, @10:03PM (7 children)
My choice to use encryption "infects" how much privacy I have.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 27 2019, @10:51PM (6 children)
What they can hope for is to make your choice to use encryption a rare enough one that you stand out when you do it.
The people in this debate need to not only wrap their heads around the reality of encryption, but also steganography.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:08PM (5 children)
Too late for that, with HTTPS everywhere and multiplayer games there's so many ways to disguise encryption comms in tunnels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:30AM (4 children)
You meanIwill have to become a gamer to have a private conversation?
New TLA investigation technique: play MPORGs and look for players who die very quickly.. Or who just sit and do..nothing.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:02AM (1 child)
That's not a bug, that's a feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:01AM
There are so many ways to communicate in a MPORG... the timing between moves can be dithered to encode binary information - even delay for 0, odd delay for 1, and the data so encoded can be encrypted so that the evens and odds are indistinguishable from white noise. You can play naturally and the encoder can just dither your moves to delay them or not to send the desired message.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:21AM (1 child)
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/16/terrorists-using-playstation-4-to-communicate.html [cnbc.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:49AM
Very interesting...
Personally I don't believe them. It's an old trick to make people believe their communications are secure. And to encourage them to use a Playstation.
And here's a tiny bombshell from the article:
WhatsApp is also very difficult to monitor, but intelligence services are able to decrypt these communications.
Another one bites the dust... You can be sure that Facebook provided all the needed assistance
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Wednesday February 27 2019, @10:57PM (8 children)
We have reached peak idiocy. To get into positions of management, all that is required is to be a political animal.
Hence ,knowledge of maths, science and technology is optional.
The FBI may be brilliant law enforcement investigators, but no knowing the mathematics of encryption is tantamount to incompetence.
They don't have to *write* the algo's but they should be compelled to show they understand them.
Then again, congress is pathetic too. Dogma driven political parties has left us with elected story tellers.
No evidence of competence required, just tow the line...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:03PM
Everyone send a few Terabytes of encrypted gibberish and keep them busy for a few hundred years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:14PM (1 child)
You mean 'fall in line' (as in 'toe it') or do you really have the vision of the politicians pulling hard on an infinitely long geometrical abstraction?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:29PM
Not infinitely long, just a third of it - they will divide line's length by pi (ie 3.0).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:28PM
Naah, we're still on the way up. US politicians can get much, much more idiotic than they are today. Look at examples like Jacob Zuma, Narendra Modi, ... hmm, even with those world-class idiots available, it's actually not that far from what Trump's been up to. So maybe we're actually close to peak idiocy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
The NSA could be cracking assumed-to-be-safe encryption methods right now and it would take years for us to find out. They are also going to be all over quantum computers if they become practical.
FBI officials have been whining about encryption for years, while exploiting vulnerabilities, buying phone cracking equipment, running honeypots, etc. But it's starting to become ubiquitous and even the tech giants are putting end-to-end encryption in some services.
What might happen is that Congress could put "using encryption to conceal criminal activity" into the law books as a new federal crime. Or they could criminalize not giving up the keys. If those laws survive Constitutional scrutiny, then they don't have to ban encryption. They can just fuck you over for using it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:59PM
I like being modded a troll! Nice and warm under that bridge ;-)
The Founders understood very well how easy it was for a $GOVT to trap its people with law - that's why the 4th and 5th amndts are so important.
It's also why the government can't be trusted. Remember, all the levers of power are still in place, no matter who you vote for.
With the current political farce playing out, it still looks like the most valuable evidence is check stubs!!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:14AM
Then again, congress is pathetic too.
Don't blame congress. Most of them have been reelected more than once.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:12PM
I would suggest they are not idiots. They know the math or atleast the implications of it. They have been trying to put the encryption genie back in the bottle since it was let out. They know that if they can make encryption require backdoors/masterkeys/etc, they either make it weak and useless for us or they make us criminals for using strong encryption. Its a win/win for them if they can convince Congress and the courts to play along. And no matter what, they will always have access to strong encryption for themselves, they are our betters, and must have these powers to protect us. </sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:02PM (4 children)
I have the whole family using Signal now; the impertus was the arrival of another grandchild and me being stubborn and not using FB; FB messenger or WhatsApp (all owned by FB). Email is too cumbersome.
My mum doesn't know or care that the contents of the messages are E2E encrypted; she cares that the required dose of grandchild
crackpictures is maintained.There are now 16 people in my contact list that use Signal; that is up from 1 three years ago.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
That's cute... you think signal is secure.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:37AM
Do you have any evidence to the contrary? If so please share. I know the developer's credentials. I don't know yours or if you even have any.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:31AM
The Open Technology Fund was created in 2012. According to US journalist Eli Lake, the idea for the creation of the Open Technology Fund was the result of a policy advocated by Hillary Clinton when she was the U.S. Secretary of State. Lake has written that Clinton's policy was "heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011".
In September 2014, the Open Technology Fund worked with Google and Dropbox to create an organization called Simply Secure to help improve the usability of privacy tools.
Don't trust Signal any more than you would all the others. You're only keeping out the riff-raff.
They cry about encryption. They want to you to believe they can't get in. It's bullshit. The hardware itself is compromised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:43PM
you need to run your own xmpp server with tls and use conversations with omemo. then, if you want to be safe from the bigger fish you need trustable phones. good luck with that. the other option is to use omemo supporting FOSS desktop apps on Gnu+Linux (preferably on something like tails) but most lazy minded slaves (sometimes our beloved family members) want their windows and macs if they'll use a full size computer at all.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:14PM
In the old days people used to talk to each other all the time and law enforcement could not always listen to their conversations. This is the exact same situation. If law enforcement want to listen in then they will need to install something on the end user's device. This they can already do. There is no problem.
But they should never be allowed to scoop up all of the data and read it. Unfortunately it appears to be certain three-letter agencies that want this, not law enforcement, but law enforcement feels obliged to speak on their behalf because they would never push for this themselves directly.
(Score: 1) by liberza on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:42PM (2 children)
Incompetence, or malice? Doesn't really matter either way I suppose, when all's said and done.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:46PM
It's malice. The FBI has been singing the same tune for years, and trying to score PR victories (Apple vs. FBI [wikipedia.org]). They are going to keep complaining about this for months or years to come, until they can find some example of a heinous terrorist attack enabled by encryption to wave in everyone's faces.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GlennC on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:53PM
Yes.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:03AM (2 children)
Once again, please repeat after me: the same encryption technology that allows criminals and terrorists to converse securely, also permits ordinary law-abiding people to securely engage in electronic commerce and banking. You want to kill electronic commerce dead? That's the way to do it, by legally mandating back doors in all encryption technology. Once this is done, then in a matter of hours, the intelligence agencies of the world, including those of hostile foreign countries, will know the master key. In a matter of days criminals will know it too, and then no one doing electronic commerce will be able to survive the avalanche of fraud that will result. No way that an immensely juicy and valuable secret like the master key to all American encryption won't eventually get out. Congratulations, you just killed Amazon, PayPal, and every other business like them, basically salted the ground for electronic commerce so no other businesses like them can ever arise again (at least until you repeal your stupid law), and sent ordinary, law-abiding people back to doing banking on paper and shopping with nothing but cash in brick and mortar stores. And meanwhile criminals will still be using their no-backdoors encryption to communicate securely. They're already breaking many laws by doing what they do, what's one more?
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:33AM (1 child)
You say that like it is a bad thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:52AM
It's the second part, 'every other business like them' that is a truly bad thing. The current lords of e-commerce may be right bastards but I don't want to see them to die in a way that ensures they will never have any successors. The end of Amazon and PayPal, sure, the end of e-commerce as a whole, no.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:06AM (6 children)
Nullam eu ante vel est convallis dignissim. Fusce suscipit, wisi nec facilisis facilisis, est dui fermentum leo, quis tempor ligula erat quis odio. Nunc porta vulputate tellus. Nunc rutrum turpis sed pede. Sed bibendum. Aliquam posuere. Nunc aliquet, augue nec adipiscing interdum, lacus tellus malesuada massa, quis varius mi purus non odio. Pellentesque condimentum, magna ut suscipit hendrerit, ipsum augue ornare nulla, non luctus diam neque sit amet urna. Curabitur vulputate vestibulum lorem. Fusce sagittis, libero non molestie mollis, magna orci ultrices dolor, at vulputate neque nulla lacinia eros. Sed id ligula quis est convallis tempor. Curabitur lacinia pulvinar nibh. Nam a sapien.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)
Google translate says that is a mix of latin and esperanto.
For a sapien indeed. Although I am interested in a chat skirt volleyball nibh.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:29AM (1 child)
You beat me to it. But my Google translation is different. It thought it was just Latin, for one thing. Can we get more meaning by translating again and again and amalgamating the isolated bits that make sense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:54AM
I did a sentence at a time and auto-detected the language. I think it is mostly a mess, for one thing it has "lorem ipsum dolor" scattered through it.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:27AM
Before any football or soccer in the valley. Fusce suscipit, wisi nec facilisis facilisis, est dui warm-up a lion, who shall tempor ligula erat quis odio. Now Vulputate gate region. But now makeup ugly foot. But the restructuring. Dolor. Now bananas, augue nec adipiscing interdum, lacus tellus velit nec risus, quis varius mi purus did not hate him. Pellentesque condimentum, great as it receives hendrerit, ipsum Integer rhoncus malesuada no, I do not, nor sit amet urna luctus diam. Vulputate chat manufacturing lorem. Fusce sagittis, liberty, but not employee a soft, magna orci ultrices dolor, and that none can at vulputate quis Vestibulum. However Ligula who nunc. Chat skirt volleyball nibh. For the Playstation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:38PM
About 1 o'clock?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:12PM
mater tua
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:33AM
in other news: the fbi would like to ban latex gloves.
using latex gloves during a crime prevents the fbi from lifting fingerprints at the crime scene.
latex glove manufacturing should be banned.
-
on a more serious side note, consider all ELECTRONIC encryption done on a vanilla computing
device as broken. the whole uproar should be considered a incentive to lean back and have trust
in broken encryption thus giving a simple filter selector argument for all scouped up data from the global surveilance drag net?
very 'muriken things come to mind:"after the fact", "plausible deniability" and "its eazier to ask for forgivnes then permission"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:50PM
You are using encryption, what are you hiding from us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:45PM
ftfy