SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
If the cops and Feds can't read people's encrypted messages, you will install backdoors for us, regardless of the security hit, US Attorney General William Barr has told the technology world.
While speaking today in New York, Barr demanded eavesdropping mechanisms be added to consumer-level software and devices, mechanisms that can be used by investigators to forcibly decrypt and pry into strongly end-to-end encrypted chats, emails, files, and calls. No ifs, no buts.
And while this will likely weaken secure data storage and communications – by introducing backdoors that hackers and spies, as well as the cops and FBI, can potentially leverage to snoop on folks – it will be a price worth paying. And, after all, what do you really need that encryption for? Your email and selfies?
"We are not talking about protecting the nation's nuclear launch codes," Barr told the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University. "Nor are we necessarily talking about the customized encryption used by large business enterprises to protect their operations. We are talking about consumer products and services such as messaging, smart phones, email, and voice and data applications. There have been enough dogmatic pronouncements that lawful access simply cannot be done. It can be, and it must be."
Related: DOJ: Strong Encryption That We Don't Have Access to is "Unreasonable"
FBI Director Calls Encryption a "Major Public Safety Issue"
FBI Director: Without Compromise on Encryption, Legislation May be the 'Remedy'
Five Eyes Governments Get Even Tougher on Encryption
Australia Set to Pass Controversial Encryption Law
FBI: End-to-End Encryption Problem "Infects" Law Enforcement and Intelligence Community
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday July 25 2019, @02:37PM (1 child)
What about the human right to privacy, or doesn't that exist?
And if he's just concerned about petty things like he says, why make such a fuss about it?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday July 25 2019, @06:08PM
I think it is misguided to take anything a stooge like Barr says. He has no credibility. He is carrying a message, announcing to everyone in the united states the new Total Information Awareness policy of no personal computers, it must all be a cloud and connected.
They are trying to end the personal computer but no one besides me is just going to come out and explain it for you, everything they are doing is through doublethink and changing language itself, classic totalitarian tactics. Once you know you are dealing with a totalitarian you need to really stop trying to argue with them, it's not a political party anymore, it's a cult.
Barr is not intelligent enough to understand what he is talking about anymore than Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, oir Troompaloompa is.
They are hydra like faces of a system, we can only derive it's true nature, the system will not come out and give us an instruction manual to it because this part of the system is oppositional to us as are all systems of tyranny.
It's not unitary, there are lots of actual federal judges and representatives who are fighting against the system that bar represents, but they just control the 3 channels everyone still relies on, and that defines an overton window where clear impositions of a totalitarian agenda are treated as reasonable ideas.
Without encryption there is no privacy. Without no privacy there is no constitutional right to privacy being enforced. With no constituational right to privacy being enforced, Barr is not the attorney general, he is a traitor as are anyone who defends him.
But as Noam Chomsky has noted, we would be in actually OK shape if the laws and enforcement tactics were applied equally on the president and his stooges as they are on Chelsea Manning and Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond.
The real reason to oppose this is if you put back doors into everything, that itself is a huge engineering project, and what are you then going to use to protect your database of 256 bit master key to all microsoft products? Which employee is going to turn down the 1 billion dollar bribe for handing that puppy over? Which government agency is going to defend it from artificial intelligence on the network?
I mean, this is essentially what IME is, what any processor made in especially Israel or China represents. I'm american I want to think AMD isn't a NSA operation but I just don't quite have the patriotism at the moment. It would also be one thing if they were like 'and here is your apple computer, now with government backdoor 8.0, only $3000!' ? Like who would buy that shiz? They are gaslighting us too, they want us to live in a world where it may or may not be, we may or may not be important enough to watch, etc etc etc.
Which is to say it is a dark pattern, an actual attempt to break down your consciousness and brainwash you into compliance.
If we are in a panopticon and on display all of the time, we should be paid to have the computer, because we are actually performing for them and helping them do their jobs of protecting us. No one spying on me is protecting me. Like someone said on Schneier recently, all of these tools will be misused, spread around, lost, and the people affected by these things will have no way to know, no legal recourse, no rights.
Which is, if I had to boil it down what Mr. Barr is announcing, it is that no Americans have any rights. Which is to say the first way you can know that someone thinks you are their subordinate, inferior and slave is if they do not allow you to send private messages, i.e. making your encryption a crime.
But hey, I am using a nordvpn and steam and protonmail on intel with systemd at the moment, all services that are more than 50% likelihood simply different branches of some government anyway.
But is it a government, or is it a cult? I'm starting to think it's a cult, but I know for sure it's not friendly, doesn't care about anyone's rights despite many oaths to the contrary, and uses all manner of stasi scientologist zersetzung tricks to secretly attack those with whom they would rather not argue.