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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.
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FBI Using Social Media, E-Commerce Sites to Track Down Suspects (Including Non-Lawbreakers)
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(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?