SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
You know the drill, right? The FBI keeps insisting that it has a "going dark" problem due to encryption making it impossible to access key evidence of supposedly criminal behavior, in theory allowing crime to happen without recourse. The problem, though, is that nearly every single bit of this claim is false. It's kind of stunning.
- It appears that, in practice, the FBI almost never runs into encryption.
- In the rare cases where it has (and we don't know how many because since the FBI admitted it over exaggerated how many "locked" devices it had, and then has since refused to provide an updated count), there do appear to be ways to get into those devices anyway.
- But the key issue, by far, is that the opposite of going dark is happening. Thanks to our increasingly electronic lives, the government actually has way more access to information than ever before.
Two recent articles highlight this in practice, with regards to the FBI trying to track down the rare cases of criminal activity happening around some of the protests.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
FBI Using Social Media, E-Commerce Sites to Track Down Suspects (Including Non-Lawbreakers)
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 35 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-- Elbert Hubbard
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday June 23 2020, @06:08AM (17 children)
The whole "going dark" idea was always nonsense. It used to be that communications between people wasn't saved at all - it was typically called a "phone call". Now, with email, SMS, WhatsApp, or whatever: most communications are saved. Even if the contents were securely encrypted (which they generally are not), the very existence of those communication records is already new information that was not previously available.
And for encrypted communications? They can still tap the endpoints. It just requires a warrant to do so, like it always did. How sad, that they have to go to all that trouble, in order to spy on someone...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday June 23 2020, @08:54AM (7 children)
Information overload.
Millions of us are posting crap. Trying to find anything meaningful is an exercise in futility.
I have hundreds of channels of TV, and more printed màterial sent to me than I can ever read. It's beyond my ability these days to even correctly fill out my tax forms.
And most everyone is pissed off at one thing or another.
Now the question is how close they are to a tipping point, where they fail to act an a lawful manner.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @09:11AM (4 children)
Oh yes... About all the encrypted traffic these days...I believe it's an unintended but obvious consequence of music sharing legislation.
Go through all that work of decryption only to uncover really bad music. My guess the DMCA is responsible for most of the encryption on the internet. Just kids sharing a song. Now everybody does it.
Anyone who is seriously hiding stuff will stego it into some funny cat videos. Good luck finding those. And reversing how it was coded in. There are still a lot of assemblers out there to make custom stego tools with.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Oakenshield on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:14PM (2 children)
That's only a small part of it. Encryption really came into its own after Snowden announced what the most paranoid of us had been claiming for a long time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeVilla on Tuesday June 23 2020, @09:36PM (1 child)
I call BS. What Snowden released exceeded what even the most paranoid people I knew expected.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday June 23 2020, @09:50PM
Not mutually exclusive statements.
I'm aligned with GP though, plenty of folks had been indicating what Snowden revealed for years. What they didn't have was smoking red proof and they were summarily dissed as conspiracy nuts. In those circles the reaction was more "Yeah, we knew and told you that.... NOW you believe it?!?!"
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:26PM
If I would have something really serious to hide my funny cat video would probably be one side of a One Time Pad. I would probably create a side that combined with the first results in a few MP3s. And of course a side that would result in the actual secret. But when they ask me to give the other side, with a $5 wrench, I would give them the side that results in MP3s ...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:36PM (1 child)
Only cowards, idiots, sell outs, or a combination of all three, pay the federal income tax. What's your excuse?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @11:56PM
My excuse: I "own" some things. Things that are easily taken from me by nothing more than a stroke of a pen. Men with guns will enforce if needed.
I am seeing more and more the wisdom of not fighting battles I can't win.
Nowhere left to run to get away from the takers of things. I am really pondering about whether I am really happier trying to work, or should I just get on the dole and get paid to not cause trouble.
There are those who own things and "earn" rent. That's good. Then there are those who prostitute their bodies. Ok, but risky. Then, there are those who prostitute the labors of their hands and minds. Those should be taxed into Oblivion. We can always import stuff from other countries, as we have the ability to pay by "extending the debt ceiling". And hire H1-B.
While our idle pillage the street. While their welfare checks still arrive, thanks to the tax imposed on the people who still prostitute the labors of their hands and minds. You know, useless people like farmers, miners, factory workers, food service people, shopkeepers, engineers, builders. These have simply got to go. Do your best to discourage them. Way overcomplicated tax forms is a great way to make one reconsider if it's really even worth it to try to earn a wage. Compel them to have to get professional help if they involve themselves with employers.
If you believe this, you can get elected to Congress.
They are full of people who think just like you do.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:06AM (5 children)
People can definitely go dark and be able to foil evidence collection in some cases. It's just that 99% won't bother and they can usually be fingered for something.
What they really fear is an ecosystem that is automatically resistant:
1. End to end encrypted communications.
2. Onion routing or other methods so that "communication records" don't reveal the parties to a conversation.
3. Tamper resistant hardware with disk encryption that might be able resist inspection.
4. EASE OF USE. It has to be so easy that Joe Sixpack uses all of it on accident.
You say they can tap the endpoints. Probably true. But what if they don't know who to tap?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:57AM (4 children)
You missed the GP's point. That isn't "going dark", it's "remaining dark". As opposed to the "lighting yourself up like a beacon" like the 99% do because they won't bother.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday June 23 2020, @11:25AM (1 child)
Yes, but the 1% will stand out anyway, just because the 99% doesn't bother.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:25PM
To be really dark, you have to be more gray, or at least I imagine. To have zero footprint is to make yourself interesting, so I would guess those who really wish to be hidden, are innocuously visible in a carefully curated manner.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:14PM
That's why I added #4 to the list.
FBI likes to complain about criminals "going dark". This is obviously hyperbolic and something we should welcome anyway if true, but they do have a point. If SMS is suddenly replaced with end-to-end encrypted messaging on most phones, and the phones are not easily unlocked by third parties, then there will likely be more suspects that can't be convicted due to a lack of evidence.
The key is that it gets adopted with very little work or thought on the part of the user. Snapchat has been downloaded over 1 billion times according to Google Play (probably only 150-200 million users), and it supposedly has end-to-end encryption of image/video messages [telegraph.co.uk], but not text. If Snapchat and other apps encrypt more stuff, people will "go dark" without even realizing it. And the FBI will whine about it yet again.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:16PM
"like the 99% do because they won't bother."
To encrypt, or to recognize that they are being played off each other?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
Uh, how?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday June 23 2020, @10:11PM
Oblig: https://xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1) by AHuxley on Wednesday June 24 2020, @01:50AM
The wider smartphone population was never to work out what the NSA and GCHQ could do.
That tech is now at a cost that the FBI can use the same nation wide smartphone collection methods.
Then city and state police can afford the tech.
The idea of "going dark" was to get the domestic message out that the collection tech was not in wide use and that every next generation of smartphone was beyond the skill set on non mil collection.