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Senate Judiciary Committee Interrogates Apple, Facebook About Crypto
In a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, while their counterparts in the House were busy with articles of impeachment, senators questioned New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance, University of Texas Professor Matt Tait, and experts from Apple and Facebook over the issue of gaining legal access to data in encrypted devices and messages. And committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned the representatives of the tech companies, "You're gonna find a way to do this or we're going to do it for you."
The hearing, entitled "Encryption and Lawful Access: Evaluating Benefits and Risks to Public Safety and Privacy," was very heavy on the public safety with a few passing words about privacy. Graham said that he appreciated "the fact that people cannot hack into my phone, listen to my phone calls, follow the messages, the texts that I receive. I think all of us want devices that protect our privacy." However, he said, "no American should want a device that is a safe haven for criminality," citing "encrypted apps that child molesters use" as an example.
"When they get a warrant or court order, I want the government to be able to look and find all relevant information," Graham declared. "In American law there is no place that's immune from inquiry if criminality is involved... I'm not about to create a safe haven for criminals where they can plan their misdeeds and store information in a place that law enforcement can never access it."
(Score: 3, Informative) by BsAtHome on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:48PM (3 children)
So, if you are not allowed to communicate in private using your private electronic devices, then you can always use paper and pencil. Plenty of good crypto available for plain old paper. A good compromise may be to write encrypted communication on paper and then send an image of it in plain text. -- Hey, I simply sent an image! And the image was not encrypted. Why are you complaining? --
However, you should avoid lemon juice. Its encrypting capabilities has been compromised.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday December 16 2019, @12:09AM
This is, in fact, a workable way of sending messages that cannot be deciphered in transit - especially if you use a one-time-pad method.
Note that it is still possible for those intercepting messages to determine the sender and recipient - part of the message's metadata, which can be just as important as the content. There are ways of obfuscating both.
Criminals will work this out just as you have done, which leads to the question of why the government wants to make it difficult for people to encrypt things, when it doesn't stop criminals from sending secret messages.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday December 16 2019, @01:23AM
One guy already did one good enough for manual computing.
It is elsiefour with 3D printable tokens:
https://gitea.blesmrt.net/exa/ls47 [blesmrt.net]
It is surprisingly quite strong, and suitable for postapocalyptic world without any electricity, if you can craft tokens from wood.
No electronic backdoors guaranteed.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday December 16 2019, @04:36PM
You could still use digital. We just need government mandated ROT17.
"The government selected ROT17 because two applications of it will not revert the ciphertext back to plain text.", the senator explained.
"...and furthermore", the senator added, "we chose ROT17 because 17 is a prime number unlike 13."
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.