Another day, another U.S. law enforcement official calling for regulation and weakening of encryption. This time, Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, has told Congress that Internet communication services are helping ISIS/ISIL and other terrorist groups as they are now "Going Dark," and the FBI needs a "front door":
As far as the FBI is concerned, private companies must "build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else," the Washington Post reports Steinbach as saying. That's a pretty sharp reverse ferret from the FBI, which four years ago was recommending encryption as a basic security measure. But Steinbach said evildoers are hiding behind US-made technology to mask their actions.
Steinbach told the committee that encrypted communications were the bane of the agency's efforts to keep the American public safe from terror. But the FBI wasn't insisting on back door access to encryption; rather, it wants companies to work directly with law enforcement where necessary. "Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go," Steinbach said. "We're not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious."
Instead the FBI wants a front door; a system to allow it to break encryption created by US companies. Understandably, US tech firms aren't that keen on the idea, since "we have borked encryption" isn't much of a selling point.
Steinbach claims that while "traditional voice telephone companies are required by CALEA to develop and maintain capabilities to intercept communications when law enforcement has lawful authority, that requirement does not extend to most Internet communications services." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, fought unsuccessfully against the expansion of CALEA in 2004 to cover Internet and some VoIP providers. Efforts to expand CALEA continued in 2010, when the FBI first began to complain about "Going Dark":
In 2010, the FBI began its "Going Dark" campaign. Despite the fact that we are in a Golden Age of Surveillance, the campaign is a charm offensive to convince politicians that FBI is unable to listen in on Internet users' digital communications after obtaining a court order because of recent advances in technology. The proposed legislation would have forced all communications services to build secret backdoors for the government to spy on users and to decrypt any encrypted messages exchanged via the service. The proposal's problems were many, and it quietly died after a tremendous amount of uproar.
In the beginning of 2013, it was reported the FBI was again pushing for a wholesale expansion of CALEA to all Internet communications services. Similar to 2010, the FBI wants to force all companies with messaging services to engineer their products with a secret government backdoor and to decrypt all encrypted messages. The proposal also adds another component: fining companies for not cooperating. In May 2013, the New York Times revealed that the White House was "on the verge" of backing the proposal. While the bill was not introduced in 2013, updating CALEA was a stated priority for FBI Director James Comey in 2014 and we expect it to be so for 2015 as well.
Original Submission
Related Stories
The Intercept reports on an email obtained by The Washington Post: Top [Intelligence] Lawyer Says Terror Attack Would Help Push for Anti-Encryption Legislation:
The intelligence community's top lawyer, Robert S. Litt, told colleagues in an August email obtained by the Washington Post that Congressional support for anti-encryption legislation "could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement." So he advised "keeping our options open for such a situation."
[...] A senior official granted anonymity by the Post acknowledged that the law enforcement argument is "just not carrying the day." He told the Post reporters: "People are still not persuaded this is a problem. People think we have not made the case. We do not have the perfect example where you have the dead child or a terrorist act to point to, and that's what people seem to claim you have to have."
On Tuesday, Amy Hess, a top FBI official, told reporters that the bureau has "done a really bad job collecting empirical data" on the encryption problem. FBI Director James Comey has attempted to provide examples of how law enforcement is "going dark," but none have checked out. Only Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has been able to provide an example of encrypted technology maybe blocking one possible lead in a murder investigation.
Litt was commenting on a draft options paper from the National Security Council that includes three proposals for the Obama Administration: oppose compulsory backdoor legislation and come out in favor of encryption, defer any decisions until after an open consultation, or do nothing. No option calling for backdoors was included.
In other news, the EFF has issued its first certificate as part of the Let's Encrypt initiative. Microsoft researchers have published a paper and code (MIT license) for FourQ, a new and faster elliptic curve cryptography implementation. Cryptome's John Young has announced that some of his public PGP keys have been compromised.
Related:
June 7: FBI Official: "Build Technological Solutions to Prevent Encryption Above All Else"
July 30: Ex-Intelligence Officials Support Encryption in Editorial
September 10: Justice Department Considered Suing Apple Over iMessage Encryption
Top law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, met on Friday to discuss topics related to support for terrorism on social media, as well as encryption:
Media were not invited to the Silicon Valley meeting. NPR talked with spokespeople from several companies who were attending, and got a copy of the email invite. It's a powerhouse list: White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James Clapper.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was there. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo were among the other companies that confirmed attendance.
The word "encryption" is mentioned in the invite. But companies who'd be very relevant to that conversation, like Cisco, were not invited. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said encryption was likely to come up at the meeting, but he described it as a "thornier" issue.
[...] A spokesperson from one company at the meeting, who didn't want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issues involved, said it's almost as if the administration wants a Madison Avenue ad campaign, only coming from tech geeks. Another criticized the event as a "bait and switch." Companies were told, more or less: "Hey, the government wants to brainstorm with the very best engineers about how technology can help fight terrorism," the second source said. It was similar in tone to the White House's call for tech support after the massive failure of Healthcare.gov.
But as the planning for Friday's meeting evolved, so did the tone. And in the 11th hour, companies fought to bring their lawyers, because it's clearly not just a technical conversation.
[More After the Break]
Like other politicians and government officials, President Trump's nominee for the position of Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, wants to have it both ways when it comes to encryption:
At his confirmation hearing, Sessions was largely non-committal. But in his written responses to questions posed by Sen. Patrick Leahy, however, he took a much clearer position:
Question: Do you agree with NSA Director Rogers, Secretary of Defense Carter, and other national security experts that strong encryption helps protect this country from cyberattack and is beneficial to the American people's' digital security?
Response: Encryption serves many valuable and important purposes. It is also critical, however, that national security and criminal investigators be able to overcome encryption, under lawful authority, when necessary to the furtherance of national-security and criminal investigations.
Despite Sessions' "on the one hand, on the other" phrasing, this answer is a clear endorsement of backdooring the security we all rely on. It's simply not feasible for encryption to serve what Sessions concedes are its "many valuable and important purposes" and still be "overcome" when the government wants access to plaintext. As we saw last year with Sens. Burr and Feinstein's draft Compliance with Court Orders Act, the only way to give the government this kind of access is to break the Internet and outlaw industry best practices, and even then it would only reach the minority of encryption products made in the USA.
Related: Presidential Candidates' Tech Stances: Not Great
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:37PM
In a free society the job of the police is to make the lives of the citizens easier.
In an authoritarian society the job of the citizens is to make the lives of the police easier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @02:15AM
Yes. The minute someone suggests that we surrender our liberties for safety and to make the jobs of law enforcement easier is the very minute you know that they don't really care about the principles a truly free society should aspire to.
"Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go," Steinbach said.
Yes, it is, you piece of garbage.
And court orders, at most, only allow the government to *attempt* to get the unencrypted information. It does not grant them some sort of right to a guarantee of success. Fuck them.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday June 08 2015, @07:50AM
The "we" he is referring to are not you and I, regular people, but rather what the FBI wants.
And for secure gov't communications, they will need to implement a separate system that has no 'front door', because Congress isn't about to let the FBI spy on them without them knowing about it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:44PM
Because the terrorists would rely on broken encryption from the U.S. instead of non-broken encryption they get from elsewhere. Especially if the U.S. openly tell everyone that their encryption is broken.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:52PM
FBINSA is just trying to buy time until they have quantum decryption. If the majority of Silicon Valley Web giants hold off on end-to-end encryption due to public pressure or a legal requirement, then more targets (a term that includes terrorists, or anybody else) will end up using compromisable platforms. Some Web giants may try to move operations out of the U.S. in response to a legal requirement, but that could be costly. Better to "respect local laws" like most of them do in China.
Did you paste an ellipsis character into the subject?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:40PM
There are possibilities for quantum resistant encryption, that do not require quantum devices.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by compro01 on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:23PM
Even if they can create a quantum computer, that can be worked around. For symmetric encryption, dealing with a quantum computer is basically as simple as doubling your key size. 256-bit or better is already basically unbreakable via quantum computing. Asymmetric would be more problematic, as the algorithms themselves would be broken, but there are already algorithms (e.g. McEliece) that have no fast solution even on a quantum computer and thus could be transitioned to.
(Score: 2, Informative) by dingus on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:57PM
With some minor tweaking ECC is safe as well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:43PM
The next step is to outlaw "unsafe" encryption in the USA. That way,
unhappy citizensterrorists won't be able toorganize protestscoordinate attacks on theillegitimatefreedom-loving government and it's people.War is peace.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday June 08 2015, @01:01PM
Yes, but then they can make using non-broken encryption a crime and put their vast resources towards detecting it. They don't care why the alleged terrorists are in jail, all they care about is getting them at any cost.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:51PM
Enough with the submissions that link to The Register.
Within just the past 12 hours we've had these submissions that all link to The Register:
The first two are actually in a row, one after the other!
If I wanted to read The Register, then I would go to their goddamn site. I come here for some variety of news, not just shit taken from The Register.
No, I won't submit my own submissions here. I've seen how the editors will mangle perfectly good submissions into total shit. I'm not wasting my time with that.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:55PM
Here's what I'm going to do in response to your plea:
1. Continue submitting stories with links to The Register.
2. Repeat.
I won't bother refuting what you have to say about The Register, because that's a waste of my time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:01PM
Do what's worst for this site if you really must.
SoylentNews is already seen as a site of crackpots and wackos, even by those at Slashdot and Hacker News.
Constantly linking to shitty sources like The Register surely doesn't help.
Not only do shitty submissions marginalize this site, but they also marginalize the topics being submitted upon.
Serious topics become jokes in the minds of the general public when people perceived to be cranks or weirdos keep on focusing on these topics, and referring to questionable sources while doing so.
(Score: 1, Informative) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:06PM
Heh. Your trolling doesn't help the site, The Register isn't a shitty source, and my submissions are polished turds at worst.
What's best for the site is for you to leave it - forever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:33PM
SoylentNews is already seen as a site of crackpots and wackos, even by those at Slashdot and Hacker News.
Sure, it is. I doubt many people at Slashdot and HN even know of SN, much less have this sort of impression. And how is posting about stories from the Register supposed to make that impression worse? The Reg is pretty mainstream for a tech site.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:42PM
HN?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:03PM
Hacker News [ycombinator.com]. It's where the people who actually work in the industry discuss things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:21PM
> Do what's worst for this site if you really must.
Like posting obnoxious self-indulgent whines?
Yeah, you are really helping. I don't see any submissiosn from you.
> Serious topics become jokes in the minds of the general public when people perceived to be cranks or weirdos keep on focusing on these topics,
You don't say?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:55PM
If we're seen as crackpots and whackos by the Slashdot hive, then we must be doing things right. I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member and all that.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @03:16AM
Those "crackpots and wackos," as you term them, had the moxy to fork Slashdot to Soylent when Dice began killing the cherished community that we had all loved for the better part of 17 years, nearly the entire history of the Web and a goodly chunk of many of our professional technical careers. They didn't sit around passively-aggressively whining how other people are not doing exactly what they think they should be doing. They have already put in countless hours, blood, sweat and tears to make this place a reality, and they did it because they love technology and the tech community. And in the 1 year they've been at it, this is already a better site, technically, than Slashdot was after many. The signal to noise ratio here is also better here than it has been on Slashdot for the last 7 years.
These guys have done a damn fine job, and they deserve gratitude, compassion, and understanding for it (when things don't always go smoothly) far more than back-biting.
But then, I don't think yours is a sincere criticism. Someone who says Slashdot did not have its "crackpots and wackos" clearly doesn't know much about Slashdot; it was rife with "crackpots and wackos" from the beginning and has always ever been. Frankly, any person who uses those terms as pejoratives also has not one clue about technology or science in general, or anything geeky or nerdy in any way--geeks and nerds are "crackpots and wackos" by definition. Yours is the sort of cutting remark the cheerleaders and beautiful people in high school said about the kids in the math club, the sort of words that drip from the mouths of sales people after the sysadmin has told them for the 500th time that they cannot surf for porn on their work computer, the sort of belittling dismissal that issues from PHBs or MBAs who cannot fathom the slightest iota of what your average engineer has mastered. It rather takes "crackpots and wackos" to make civilization, technology, and general advancement work, and I personally wouldn't seek the company of any other kind of cat.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:31PM
Post your own stories that are based on material from elsewhere. Others can submit what they wish to read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:17PM
Come on. Read the comment before you reply to it. That was addressed already:
No, I won't submit my own submissions here. I've seen how the editors will mangle perfectly good submissions into total shit. I'm not wasting my time with that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:45PM
Take your pick:
Now why are any of them better that The Register for this story?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:32PM
Except for the Reddit link, all of these are more reputable than The Reg.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:41PM
All the stories are correct. Having a big name doesn't necessarily mean any better content.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by GungnirSniper on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:41PM
That's like quoting Hitler on the health problems of smoking when there are more reputable sources. Just because it's correct doesn't mean it isn't tainted by the source.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @02:03AM
That's like quoting Hitler on the health problems of smoking when there are more reputable sources.
Any chance Hitler had any good, perfectly respectable quotes on global warming or some other currently politically charged topic? I would totally like to go around saying things like "Hitler said insulating your house is one of the most important things you can do to save on heating costs while helping to fight global warming."
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday June 08 2015, @02:09AM
Just because it's correct doesn't mean it isn't tainted by the source.
If it's correct, then it is correct.I don't know what you could possibly mean by "tainted" other than that illogical fools might dismiss it because of the source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:20AM
Ad hominem spotted! Attacking the source instead of the information itself means we can simply ignore you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:22PM
> > "Except for the Reddit link, all of these are more reputable than The Reg." isn't an ad hominem.
> Ad hominem spotted! Attacking the source instead of the information itself means we can simply ignore you.
Wow. I have not seen a more wrong statement in a long time.
1) You didn't spot an ad hominem (he didn't attack the character of The Reg as a means of invalidating the story, he just said he thinks they're less reputable).
2) You don't know what an ad hominem even IS. Ad hominem isn't about attacking someone. It's about irrelevantly attacking someone's character (instead of their arguments) as a means of making them look bad so people don't listen to them.
3) "we can simply ignore you"? Has ad hominem been made into a Rule of the Internet? Has a fatwah been issued stating we must shun the ad hominem heretics?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:09PM
Too bad all the idiot pedants had to come over from /. too. We'd be far better off without them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:45PM
By reading SN I only get the relevant stuff from that source. Otherwise one would have to wade through the 99% intellectual mud that SN submitters skipped.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @02:50AM
I don't know what process other regular submitters use, but mine means I often submit several in a row from the same source, because it's efficient. Doing it that way means about 5-7 minutes per submission. Running around to a dozen sites, scrolling through all their AJAX- and javascript-happy media pages just for the sake of not having your submissions come from one or two sites grows that preparation time quite a bit. I love Soylent, but I can't spend 2 hours per day doing extra legwork just to satisfy this very specific sort of objection, which, honestly, along with its follow-up post, strikes me more as whinging for pleasure and profit than serious, well-meant feedback, because it is a meta-criticism (as Quellenkritik always is) and because you have stated that you will aggressively not put your money where your mouth is and submit articles from "better" sources.
In a perfect world there would be hordes of submitters drawing from myriad sources, and during the week we're pretty good there. But on the weekends it's tough to keep the pipeline robust. If you're not prepared to either help remedy that or to overlook the source that the poor, beleaguered submitter pulled several submissions from, then you will continue to be unhappy here.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:33PM
There was some alphabet soup agency which was GIVEN A WARNING by Russian, that the Brothers Tsaernov were dangerous. That soup-brained agency investigated the Tsaernovs, and pronounced them harmless.
Now, WTF are idiots like this going to do with encryption back doors?
Maybe they should concentrate on the same things their predecessors concentrated on 100 years ago, and stop worrying about technology that is over their heads. These are the opposite of Luddites. They don't understand the technology any better than the Luddites, so they expect the world to hold their hands and explain it all in detail to them. They WANT the tech, believing that the tech will solve all their problems, so long as everyone else is denied the tech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:35PM
Perhaps they are really not concerned all that much with terrorists? Attacks are rare enough that they don't have to concentrate on the subject, and as you mention when they do get warnings they are often ignored or given a cursory look then disregarded. If one was really cynical one might think they welcome the occasional potshot from a terrorist group, it creates a much more sympathetic public when expansion of law enforcement power is discussed. What they really want this and other surveillance powers for is domestic "crime" and control.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:24PM
FBI are a bunch of Catholics and Mormons. Not only did they grow up in authoritarian households, but they've internalized that continuing the cycle of authoritarianism and control is doi g god's bidding. That's what makes the types working in American security services dangerous.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @03:20AM
You're right to put the emphasis on "control." This is the moment when they sense it all getting away from them, when the tech and science begin to strongly pull away from their ability to keep it locked down, and the People with it. In fairness, it's not just the FBI that perceives this on a Pavlovian level. The rest of their power structure feels it, too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:10PM
One Time Pad.
If you can share a pad and keep it secure, you're golden -- undecryptable.
It's a pretty old technology, and not that complicated.
Sure it's not as convenient as modern crypto, but it *is* unbreakable.
Borking standard encryption only weakens security for the average person.
This is only a win for bad actors -- people who really want secure comms will still have them -- and the average person reliant on industry standards will be left wide open.
It'd be almost like your television could be sending audio & video of you to somewhere for 'analysis', or your refrigerator could start sending spam while your router started mining bitcoins. Oh wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:58PM
Even better: As soon as you have the encrypted file, you can create a "key" that "decrypts" that file to anything you want (as long as it has the same size). So if someone asks you for the key, you just hand them the false key instead. There's no way to prove that it is not the correct key.
(Score: 2) by WillR on Monday June 08 2015, @08:53PM
(Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Monday June 08 2015, @10:05PM
Because then I'd have to travel all the way back to Venus, and I hate to fly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:57PM
...ban encryption outright, and give U.S. citizens a reason to put that "right to bear arms" to good use. Cos' shit is gonna get whack (or at least, it should, but probably won't).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:10PM
If the billions (trillions?) of dollars that went into developing and buying weapons (and lining the pockets of warmongering despicable greedy mofo's) had gone into research into alternative fuel sources instead then the U.S. could have kept its nose out of the damned middle-east and not gotten itself into this mess in the first place! Unless that was part of the plan all along? Was it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @06:24AM
Unless that was part of the plan all along? Was it?
I think it certainly was. The cold war didn't make too much sense after Soviet Union imploded and there were thousands of people working for the military industrial complex suddenly feeling the very real prospect of unemployment. Billions of dollars might stop flowing their way. There was a desperate need for a new enemy. And like the war on any noun, this was the perfect enemy: it could be never vanquished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:27AM
If all the undermining, subverting, and ignoring of the constitution the government has done so far isn't enough reason to "put that 'right to bear arms' to good use" then nothing is or ever will be. Anyone claiming bullshit like "The second amendment is to protect the rest" while not taking any action is so transparently full of shit its disgusting. Something gun nutters fail to understand is that the second is meaningless when the constitution itself has been made irrelevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:00PM
Does nobody think of the poor bears? Yeah, you might have a right to their arms, but it's still cruel!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:00PM
it is strange way of arguing.
if there had been no snowden we would all still assume that everything we do is "invisible".
now we find out that the De-facto industry standard isn't "invisibility" at all!
people toke notice, company feel the pressure and the FBI .. complains.
i assume this article would not even exist without a certain person blowing a whistle ...
in a assumed post-snowden perceived world (everyone's invisible) how does the FBI even know where to start?
if we get the real "invisible internet" now (as some companies claim), what is the selector then that triggers a fbi person walking to a company and ask to speak to the IT boss to see some data about a possible user/terrorist?
this would be impossible and thus there would be no need for a front-side looking backdoor?
thus we can assume that all big companies already have this backdoor inside ...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:56PM
"if there had been no snowden we would all still assume that everything we do is "invisible"."
Who is this "we" you refer to? SOME OF US have been painfully aware of NSA programs such as Carnivore for many years. Snowden didn't break the news about NSA surveillance - he simply confirmed the news, with plenty of proof for skeptics. I can't pinpoint the date on which I started growing suspicious of the NSA, but it's well over a decade now. Wait - what is this? 2015, right? And, 9/11/01 was like 14 years ago? So, I've been taking note of surveillance reporting for fifteen years anyway.
2008 article http://arstechnica.com/security/2008/03/an-overview-of-the-nsas-domestic-spying-program/ [arstechnica.com]
article citing 1999 as the date when Omnivore was retired, to be replaced with DragonWare http://computer.howstuffworks.com/carnivore1.htm [howstuffworks.com]
2013 article, I include only because it specifically mentions Prism http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/is-nsa-prism-the-new-fbi-carnivore.html [internetnews.com]
Although primitive in comparison to stuff the intel communites are using today, Echelon dates back to my own childhood in the '60's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [wikipedia.org]
So, when you refer to "we", please be careful to specify who the hell "we" might be.
(Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:57PM
This article dates back to at least late 1998 http://mediafilter.org/caq/cryptogate/ [mediafilter.org]
Although much of the information was know and/or surmised by other sources before then.
Information about ECHELON was publicly disclosed in 1996, according to Wikipedia. This does correspond to some fuzzy estimates of when I first heard if referred by the code-name ECHELON. The cutest part was the legal wrangling: No the NSA doesn't spy 'in the US' it co-operates with other nations to spy on the 'US' when the US spys on their citizens. In practice the flow of information is primarily, but not entirely, one sided.
The contribution of Snowden is that he brought enough verifiable evidence to the table of nations that knew and had some clout that the open secret was promoted to open knowledge in the mainstream media. Additionally the "yeah, but ... " argument used to side line the illegal activities became harder to swallow:
'Yeah, but ... that is only international calls ...'
'Yeah, but ... I don't have anything to hide ... '
'Yeah, but ... they're not interested in me ... '
The truth has always been leaking for those who really wished to know...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:28PM
Great article. It seems that I remember reading about Buehler, but he didn't really mean anything to me back then. But, you definitely make my point, better than I did. This crap dates back at least sixty years - the article you link to implies that it dates right back to the end of WW2.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:04PM
Duh..
For anyone paying attention at all, it has been obvious for a long time that the communication links between all these internet computers was too tempting for any 3LA organization to let be:
1996 - ECHELON
2000 - Carnivore
2006 - AT&T employee Mark Klein, reveals the existence of Room 641A with "extra fiber links"..
2013 - Edward Snowden put right in everybody's face
In the beginning all these internet data went unencrypted via black box ISPs and anyone think any 3LA would be mentally capable to keep their fingers out of the jar?
No.....
It's like asking a 5-year kid to watch the candy store during the night.
Once it became this obvious everybody with a clue got onto the SSL bandwagon. It's a crap technology and adminstration, but it sure messes up the systematic approach.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:18PM
1. Encryption is a munition. 2. FBI wants to eliminate it. 3. Therefore, the FBI wants to ban all munitions.
Of course this isn't really logic. The idea that encryption is a munition--an idea put forth by the US government--was silly in the first place. Furthermore, it's much harder, dare I say impossible to eliminate encryption for everybody. The cat's out of the bag. The FBI would have to join the war on general-purpose computing. It'd have to be a global war, since imported GP-computers would become quite popular, not to mention all the existing GP-computers like the one I'm typing on. So yeah. We gotta get rid o' dat der encryption m'bob. Best way is to nuke the planet. Do you have the codes to launch the missiles? Oh wait... they're encrypted... I hope.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:28PM
Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, anonymous networks, digital
pseudonyms, zero knowledge, reputations, information markets, black
markets, collapse of governments.
-- Tim May
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday June 08 2015, @07:14AM
Collapse of governments is recorded throughout history.
Governments will be established by the people. This is even noted in the Bible. [biblegateway.com] ( I am not trying to be a Bible thumper here... What I linked to is a historical record of a priest's anguish over the people trying to establish a king when the priest was trying to keep the Church in authority - and he was losing it. I thought the reply was quite appropriate as to what a King would do. Things haven't changed much, eh? )
From what I see, the creation/empowerment of governments are an inevitable part of the human condition.
Overthrow of governments become inevitable when the government no longer serves the needs of the governed.
Sometimes it takes time... and the longer resentment is borne, the more brutal the overthrow.
The French gave us a good run at that one. Merely disempowering the elite was insufficient to quench the fire. People wanted heads.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:10PM
Disempowering elites is NEVER enough. When you have an oppressed mass of people, no matter how long or short the struggle was, disempowering is never enough unless there is some disemboweling involved.