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posted by takyon on Monday April 13 2015, @10:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the both-doored dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:02AM (#170221)

    The problem, like always, is racism. Racism is what created the drug laws, which have single-handedly shredded the constitution and eroded the US into a police state. Racism also has half of congress committing treason and sedition solely because the president isn't a WASP. [wikipedia.org] Racism is why at least half of the country is all for oppressive, unjust laws, because they're currently only being used exclusively on non-whites or other demonized people like drug users.

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