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The Washington Post reports that Adm. Michael S. Rogers is continuing to advocate for weakened encryption as the White House explores a number of possible schemes, as illustrated by this infographic.
For months, federal law enforcement agencies and industry have been deadlocked on a highly contentious issue: Should tech companies be obliged to guarantee government access to encrypted data on smartphones and other digital devices, and is that even possible without compromising the security of law-abiding customers?
Recently, the head of the National Security Agency provided a rare hint of what some U.S. officials think might be a technical solution. Why not, suggested Adm. Michael S. Rogers, require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it?
"I don't want a back door," Rogers, the director of the nation's top electronic spy agency, said during a speech at Princeton University, using a tech industry term for covert measures to bypass device security. "I want a front door. And I want the front door to have multiple locks. Big locks."
[...] The split-key approach is just one of the options being studied by the White House as senior policy officials weigh the needs of companies and consumers as well as law enforcement — and try to determine how imminent the latter's problem is. With input from the FBI, intelligence community and the departments of Justice, State, Commerce and Homeland Security, they are assessing regulatory and legislative approaches, among others.
The White House is also considering options that avoid having the company or a third party hold a key. One possibility, for example, might have a judge direct a company to set up a mirror account so that law enforcement conducting a criminal investigation is able to read text messages shortly after they have been sent. For encrypted photos, the judge might order the company to back up the suspect's data to a company server when the phone is on and the data is unencrypted. Technologists say there are still issues with these approaches, and companies probably would resist them.
Google, Apple, and others have been pretty badly burned by the NSA's crimes, so it's probably safe to say Mike Rogers should file that idea under Norfolk & Way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday April 14 2015, @12:27AM
Influence and jurisdiction of FBI [cnet.com] and NSA [cryptome.org], I guess. Sorry, folks, not your (direct?) fault.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:05AM
As in spying on their source code?
It is open, how is that relevant?
As in arresting the coders contributing? Apart from the terrible PR OS projects are VERY tolerant of this and continue regardless. In fact you will probably be overwhelmed with non-US recruits wanting to sign up to help out.
You have too much faith in your authoritarian masters, my friend. The more they tighten their grip, the more it will slip through their fingers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:13AM
As in weakening their code in non-obvious ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:43AM
While the matter with slipping is true, what the quoted aphorism won't tell you is the state of those slipping through the fingers; most of them will be in the form of a bloody pulp.
If you like it better (may be so, if I'm correctly interpreting your "I see this as a GOOD THING"), good luck when your turn comes.
(BTW: I have no masters... yet; certainly, if it can be helped, I don't intend to get some)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:41AM
Feel free to be happy and comforted by a ever worsening status quo.
It sounds like you are reasoning based on fear more than anything else. Not point arguing with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @11:10AM
And you sound like the glorious leader who's morals reduce to "If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs" - with the unspoken "as long as they are not mine".
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheRaven on Tuesday April 14 2015, @09:37AM
It is open, how is that relevant?
If you have a mechanism that allows malicious and non-malicious code to be trivially distinguished, then I know some VCs that would be very interested in throwing money at you (just to give you something to do for the couple of years before you claim your Turing Award).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:07AM
That's not so much a legal liability as the ability to do the "$1 wrench breach".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:34AM
The "$1 wrench breach" is included in the "influence" part.
The jurisdiction is not related with the legal liability of the "breached contributor", but with the possibility of acronym agencies to gag them afterwards. Those NSL [wikipedia.org]s? They are an as nasty tool as the $1 wrench.
...
(BTW: last time I checked, that wrench used to be 5 times [xkcd.com] more expensive.
Is the price drop a sign that the NSA's wrench volume purchases started to play significantly in US economy?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 14 2015, @11:55AM
How would these organizations get to an individual using NSL etc if the person are physically outside of the jurisdiction?
Yeah, perhaps some organizations have a volume discount .... ;-)
(the price is 12$ with free shipping I saw now)