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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
The FBI's director says the agency is collecting data that he will present next year in hopes of sparking a national conversation about law enforcement's increasing inability to access encrypted electronic devices.
Speaking on Friday at the American Bar Association conference in San Francisco, James Comey says the agency was unable to access 650 of 5,000 electronic devices investigators attempted to search over the last 10 months.
Comey says encryption technology makes it impossible in a growing number of cases to search electronic devices. He says it's up to U.S. citizens to decide whether to modify the technology.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-chief-calls-national-talk-over-encryption-vs-safety-n624101
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Sunday August 07 2016, @11:29AM
That's not true. The government has tons of hardware. There is probably some size of encryption key such that the (okay, a) government can brute force it, but a standard bad actor cannot.
Now, that doesn't scale to breaking everyone's encryption simultaneously....
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday August 08 2016, @01:24AM
There is probably some size of encryption key such that the (okay, a) government can brute force it, but a standard bad actor cannot.
That's not my understanding. Using the right algorithm with the right key makes your stuff pretty much unbreakable. The main point is "right key", it needs to be A) Long (40+ characters); B) Non-obvious (duh); and C) use all the ascii characters 0-0x7f, and 0-0xff if your system can handle it.
Although I was a math major I never studied encryption. I don't understand encryption. I rely on the experts to judge how secure I am. If Bruce Schneier says "this is good", I tend to think this is good. If some random web page says "this is good", I tend to think "hmmm, has the NSA funnelled any money to this guy recently?"
I understand the NSA was caught tweaking encryption algorithms, providing magic numbers that turned out to be not so magic. It's my understanding that, even though the NSA knows how un-magic those numbers are, using a good key can mean the NSA will take a decade or two to decrypt your message.
That, of course, is if the NSA thinks your message is worth spending the resources on. If you typically use AES with a good key then A) the NSA has to notice you; and B) decide which of your messages they want to try to crack.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 09 2016, @07:40AM
It's true that there are (probably) algorithms and keys that are safe from the NSA. What I said was different. I said there is probably an algorithm/key combo , such that the NSA can brute force it in a timely manner (or MI6 or similar), but traditionally baddies cannot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08 2016, @10:32AM
What the Government also has is the power to make life easy or hard for corporations. Tax law. Patent law. IP law. Just to name a few.
Corprations ( especially software corporations ) are at a strong disadvantage if they don't co-operate with the government - likely making special back doors just for them, and agreeing to secrecy so that only some people in the corporation and some people in the government is privy to the backdoors.
I get the strong impression the only reason we have so many security holes in our software, and the government is tolerating it, is that those were back doors inserted at Government request - that were discovered when astute computer users noted something amiss. I have no doubt in my mind that Government and the software industry are doing their darndest to promote ignorance of the innards of computer operations using things like "intellectual property" restrictions on disassembling stuff, or even talking about it. Gag orders.
Now, if the people in Washington started all coming down with illness traced to their food, how welcome would some "law-makers" who pass law forbidding disassembly of food so as to trace the causes of infection be? I think this is a big problem with the American Way.
We let others make law, we agree to abide by it, but do not hold them responsible for it.
When it comes to law written like this DMCA stuff I saw them pass, I would love to see the law enforcement people put their guns back in the holster and say "Honorable Congressman.... you passed this crazy law - YOU go enforce it!"