That's what Congressman Darrell Issa tweeted as it became clear that Congress would have no part of the FBI's plan to require backdoors (or frontdoors) into encrypted phones.
The Register is reporting that the FBI's request had publicly failed after senators said the proposal would be rejected. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said:
"I think the public would not support it, certainly industry would not support it, civil liberties groups would not support it."
"I think [Comey is] a sincere guy, but there's just no way this is going to happen."
The bipartisan opposition signaled the end of the line (at least until after the next election) of any chance for the FBI's proposal according to an article in The Hill.
Earlier this year, in another bipartisan move, Lofgren, and Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a measure to the defense spending bill banning the National Security Agency from using “backdoor” searches to spy on Americans through a legal provision targeting foreigners. That measure overwhelmingly passed the House 293-123.
Related Stories
James Comey has been asked by President Trump to stay on as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Comey is three years into a ten-year term.
News at NYT (which broke the story), USA Today, Washington Post, CNN, and The Hill.
Here's the bulk of our extensive past coverage of FBI Director Comey's career (oldest first):
2014:
FBI Director Concerned about Encryption on Smartphones
F.B.I. Director Calls "Dark" Devices a Hindrance to Crime Solving
To FBI Director Comey: You Reap What You Sow!
2015:
F.B.I. Has No Doubt that North Korea Attacked Sony, says Director
FBI Chief Links Video Scrutiny of Police to Rise in Violent Crime
2016:
Apple Ordered by Judge to Help Decrypt San Bernadino Shooter's phone
FBI Unable to Decrypt California Terrorists' Cell Phone
FBI vs. Apple Encryption Fight Continues
New York Judge Sides with Apple Rather than FBI in Dispute over a Locked iPhone
Apple Lawyer and FBI Director Appear Before Congress
FBI Error Locked San Bernardino Attacker's iPhone
FBI's iPhone Hack Only Works on 5C and Older
Washington Post: The FBI Paid "Gray Hat(s)", Not Cellebrite, for iPhone Unlock
FBI Director Blames 'Viral Video Effect' for Spike in Violent Crime
FBI Recommends No Prosecution for Clinton
FBI Chief Calls for National Talk Over Encryption vs. Safety
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Darren on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:24AM
I believe the new found backbone of congress has little to do with them caring about the people (they don't [washingtonpost.com]) or about some patriotism (they would rape Abe Lincoln for a penny [opensecrets.org]). The NSA recently admitted that they were perhaps spying on members of congress [rt.com] which suddenly made it 'real' to them so they have now begun to really focus on these privacy issues and give them weight.
The good thing is that they are doing something, the bad thing is that it was motivated again by self interest rather than community interest which is their function.
Web Designer - darrencaldwellwebdesign.ca
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:33AM
Reap what the Snowden
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday October 23 2014, @04:26PM
That and it's midterm election time.
(Score: 1) by DrkShadow on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:27AM
This is quite disturbing. 30% of the House approves of spying on Americans? How can this even BE?
(Score: 3, Funny) by MrGuy on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:40AM
They're thinking of the children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:50AM
There is nothing wrong with targeted surveillance. Even Schneier and Snowden agree.
I don't see how this is any different to a wiretap for the modern age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @04:02AM
It is the NSA that was to do the wiretapping. Their mandate explicitly forbids it from operating against US citizens. They are literally assuming that they are above the law and so far have been right. That is what is wrong with it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:23AM
Exactly. To be clear to the GP, the NSA is not supposed to have jurisdiction over American's. If you want to surveil an American, the gov't is supposed to go through the correct channels, i.e., state or federal courts via the pertinent local, state, or federal law enforcement agency. The Army can't surveil civilians, nor the NSA.
Of course, I'm using "can't" in the stopsign sense. If you ask a person "what do you have to do when you drive up to a stopsign?" (be sure to intentionally use the phrase "have to") Almost everyone says "stop." This is the wrong answer of course: you are *supposed to* stop, but nothing about a stopsign will prevent you from blowing right on through it. The feds fully understand this reality about laws and take complete advantage of the fact that most people view reasonable laws like stopsigns as imperatives, and are thus easily mislead into thinking our federal government adheres to any model of the rule of law beyond the golden rule (he who has the gold, rules).
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:20PM
And just for the non-American soylentils, we care that the NSA is spying on regular citizens in every other country, too. But if we can't get them to stop spying on us, which they are expressly forbidden to do, we can't get them off your asses, either.
It's not that we don't care! Just we have to get our own oxygen masks on before helping others.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday October 24 2014, @02:23AM
It's not only different, in so many respects, but it's massively wrong and unconstitutional regardless if abused or not.
In the past, LEO had to come out to your property and install a tap. Meaning, they actually had to place themselves in the middle of an ongoing conversation. All conversations were unencumbered by anything like code books or digital encryption. Who was to complain about anything? They had to work hard enough to place the tap, which mean somebody got paid taxpayer money for it, and was therefore highly likely to be under judicial review at some point. This was back when a tap required a telephone engineer to work with actual wires. There was far less concern for corruption, and mass surveillance was an idea grouped along with many other ideas found in comic books and sci-fi movies.
In any case, nobody knew about it that wasn't under the direct or indirect employ of LEO.
Where it became a problem is when the workload so greatly increased that it began to make sense to tap the line at the choke points to cover more of the network at once. Now, the telephone company has to know about it. It's in their interests to comply with the law. Especially on civil rights issues like these that can be costly in lawsuits. So while the workload has still increased, and a possibility to tap it does exist, it requires a large amount of effort to keep proving compliance to the telephone company when they ask every single time. So small time stuff, was still done on the lines where you could get around the phone company "speed bumps". I'm sure plenty of enterprising detectives back in the day had a lineman's set and could climb poles. What you could prove was one thing, what you could know was entirely different.
That lasted awhile, and then the pissing matches started between LEO (really the FBI) and the big telephone company at the time, Ma Bell. They used to have whole security departments dedicated to legal compliance with taps. The FBI was getting pretty damned tired of having to prove their intentions every single time, as if, almost, the citizens had a right to it. Conspiracy or not, Ma Bell was "disrupted" through activity in Congress. It was shortly after this that the golden age of Phreaking really came into existence as security in the telecom industry was being shuffled around to say the least.
Telecoms still complained, so the FBI eventually gets CALEA passed that allows them access anyways electronically. So the costs are so high on compliance in terms of verifying warrants, that the telephone company really doesn't have a choice but to demand, and receive, nearly a billion in funding to pay for the equipment. Actually looking at warrants is becoming costly enough to the point that the telecoms are at least willing to negotiate.
What a compromise :) Then the Internet happens and everyone starts abandoning the quite expensively tapped voice lines for cell phones and the Internet. Round Two. Cellular Carriers. Fight. That *still* turned out really well for them, with a HUGE bonus. E911 laws now guarantee a location for every mobile phone call. We've finished up with E911 mostly, so the FBI has all these locations to access.
The FBI also cried actual tears once it was clear that the computing revolution had a staggeringly high price. No more plaintext intercepts. A lot of harder work is to be done. Clipper chip denied. Now the FBI is even more butthurt that it can't just get wiretaps pushed out on the boards and paid for by the citizens via added costs of manufacturing.
So to wrap it all up, the FBI is pushing to declare all VOIP and IM (that is not fully decentralized and without a corporation receiving money) is now under CALEA and the manufacturers, software developers, telecoms, etc. are required to build the backdoors just like the telecoms are currently operating for the legacy infrastructure.
They didn't bitch, cry, and go home. They didn't get creepy in the darkness and just throw the law away entirely like the NSA did either. The FBI has *always* been pushing for day one to have equal footing to capture and intercept communications data with both the consumer and the communications company, as well as the capability to do so without anyone knowing. Now the FBI is pushing as hard as possible to complete their efforts with Congress and the FCC to bring all the communications with a broad definition under their legal purview.
That's your problem, and it is that targeted surveillance doesn't exist. The idea was always evolving to just install effectively warrantless LEO equipment on every device sold and operated in the US. Combine that with what the Justice Department and the FBI knows about Big Data and the ability to tease intelligence out of massive sets of data. Their dreams quickly evolved into a predictive system at least capable of finding targets. It's not a talkie anymore about Martians, but a reality of science that we can do this now.
What the FBI has been pushing for, and apparently you agree with, is that targeted surveillance will be carried out through the simple activation of ostensibly protected government security circuits that are everywhere by law. Of course they can't go after the small developer, but they have enough resources to take on the popular mediums. Executives like being rich, and that usually means FBI agents can find you easily.
Maybe at this point, you still love and trust the government so much that you are willing to give them such monumental control over your privacy and your life. That doesn't mean it's secure from criminals and foreign intelligence agendas. That doesn't mean it's right.
If that still doesn't convince you that it's wrong, the very fact those laws exist means that it's effectively illegal for citizens to communicate privately. It's illegal, because it's illegal for manufacturers to create equipment that don't allow the permanent taps whereby the FBI's collection network is just simply connected to it receiving plaintext. Manufacturers of the equipment are required to directly implement it. So practically any device you own that is marketed as a communications device will be CALEA complaint.
Finally, it's not targeted surveillance when their system is collecting the information by default only to be played back later or in realtime, which their system is capable of doing. So it's not that I deny them the ability to carry out the duties of LEO. It's that I refuse to have their equipment shoved up my ass to do it, as well as to refuse to hand over my privacy completely just so that they could cross reference my activities later.
That's the controversial part. The fact that I went to the free market to receive communications equipment and/or software and the requirements are clear from the government that I must be able to be monitored. My privacy isn't outlawed directly, but it will damn sure be DIY.
The FBI wants, and is pushing for, a system of terrific inequality when it comes to the ability to gather intelligence related to all kinds of civilian activities. We aren't really to know just what their capabilities are, as transparency also is the enemy of targeted surveillance. Security through obscurity. No checks and balances. Just trust.
Only one part about this isn't true yet - The FBI hasn't been able to declare VOIP and IM as CALEA covered conversations.
Yet.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:03AM
And again, that bill was to restrict the NSA, which historically has been forbidden from operating in the US.
That was an easy vote, because, it wasn't supposed to be happening anyway, and they know it probably won't make a bit of difference.
But I thought it interesting that the agency that is authorized to operate in the US, the FBI, was essentially told to go to hell, then taunted on twitter. Pretty cheeky (by congressional standards).
But again, this whole situation could change after the election, as soon as Congress has nothing left to fear from the voters for a while. These same people may slip that into another bill.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Silentknyght on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:27AM
Meh. I can easily see 30% of the population of the US being convinced that backdoors in all digital devices are needed in order to thwart terrorism/crime/whathaveyou. Preventing those things can be a persuasive argument, and I can easily see about 1 in 3 "falling" for it.
(Score: 1) by Zanothis on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:20PM
From the amount of actual outrage that I see from most people, I could see the percentage being somewhere around 60% myself. As others have stated, I think that we're seeing this type of push back because Congress feels personally violated. I doubt the general public could be bothered to stop saying "I have nothing to hide" long enough to generate the amount of momentum required to get things changed.
(Score: 1) by ibennetch on Friday October 24 2014, @02:13AM
Meh. I can easily see 30% of the population of the US being convinced that backdoors in all digital devices are needed in order to thwart terrorism/crime/whathaveyou. Preventing those things can be a persuasive argument, and I can easily see about 1 in 3 "falling" for it.
Anecdotally, I'd be surprised if the numbers were that favorable toward privacy. As I'm sure most others here do, I have several friends who claim to have nothing to hide and that they'd gladly give up their privacy to help prevent crime. It's gotten to the point where I don't have anything more to say; every point I make they discard or go back to the "but it can prevent crime/terrorism" argument.
Outside of my tech-savy circle of friends, I can only think of one or two who are concerned about privacy, three or four who would gladly give it all away, and the rest are completely indifferent.
It makes me grumpy sometimes to think about.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:57AM
The other 70% don't want there own details leaked.(campaign bribes, kick-backs, backroom deals, etc.)
Most of that 30% just have not thought about it further than the next election, otherwise they would be against it also out of future self interest.(see point #1)
If they could exempt themselves and their 'owners' from the spying, more would be in support of gov't. backdoors/spying.
This conflict does not have anything to do with the public/citizen's rights.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:44AM
Congress said, "Shut up Corney, we have the NSA to do this secretly, quit shining a light on it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:58AM
Title adjustment necessary: "Shut up Corney, rip that sow of yours".
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:01AM
To begin, I for one welcome (we need a strikeout tag!) am not in favor of ripping sows.
"Shut up Corney, rip that sow of yours".
That makes me thing the entire thing is backwards! You sew what you rip, not rip what you sew, unless you suw it wrong and have to start over. Wait, it was right the first time. Now excuse me while I rip this .. . . . . (Oh so that would be illegal! Seriously?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:51AM
FBI
See we don't have back doors; we're trying to get them put in. Oh you say we can't do that. Well OK if you say we can't then we won't.
(Que smoke and mirrors.)
Look over there!! See that bad person...
Us
What? Where? Who? Oh never mind... What were we talking about?
FBI
How we're doing a good job...
Us
Oh yeah; go get those bad guys.... cheer cheer cheer..... GO USA!!! GO USA!!!!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:47AM
VPro/VT.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:20PM
Except for that part about "I think [Comey is] a sincere guy..."
You don't get to the top of a three letter agency by being a sincere guy. The asking congress' permission is just a formality. They plan on trying to sneak the backdoors in the "backdoor" anyhow.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh