Three former intelligence and defense officials have published an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting encryption and rejecting the Department of Justice and FBI Director Comey's campaign to weaken encryption using backdoors or key escrow:
Mike McConnell is a former director of the National Security Agency and director of national intelligence. Michael Chertoff is a former homeland security secretary and is executive chairman of the Chertoff Group, a security and risk management advisory firm with clients in the technology sector. William Lynn is a former deputy defense secretary and is chief executive of Finmeccanica North America and DRS Technologies.
More than three years ago, as former national security officials, we penned an op-ed [paywall] to raise awareness among the public, the business community and Congress of the serious threat to the nation's well being posed by the massive theft of intellectual property, technology and business information by the Chinese government through cyberexploitation. Today, we write again to raise the level of thinking and debate about ubiquitous encryption to protect information from exploitation.
[...] Today, with almost everyone carrying a networked device on his or her person, ubiquitous encryption provides essential security. If law enforcement and intelligence organizations face a future without assured access to encrypted communications, they will develop technologies and techniques to meet their legitimate mission goals.
TechDirt speculated that the Washington Post "unpublished" the editorial, but the Post reuploaded the story, saying that a "production error" had caused it to be posted prematurely.
At the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently went off the "Going Dark" script:
FBI Director James Comey, who opened the annual Aspen conference on Wednesday night, warned that his agency is "going dark" because of the use of unbreakable end-to-end encryption. It's an argument Comey has been making for months now. Johnson's comments were a reminder that authorities can see plenty.
"We have developed good capabilities to detect plotting, to detect efforts to do something bad in our homeland," he said. He then added that he wasn't disputing Comey's conclusion. "Um, we do have the problem of going dark that Jim talked about last night, very definitely."
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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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:34PM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by chrysosphinx on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:07PM
Actually, being an ex-intelligence officials is the new masquerade for intelligence officials just after their original cover was blown, enabling them to continue operations as before but now in much more effective secrecy.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday July 30 2015, @10:41PM
Actually, it's a fairly common stance for ex-spooks to take. Sort of "stop me before I kill again", but probably a case of getting out of the environment and finally feeling what it's like being on the other end of the gun.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 31 2015, @01:31AM
Still leads to the same ex-intelligence official status.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @03:44AM
> I mean, with an attitude like this no wonder they are "ex-intelligence officials".
You have cause and effect reversed. Having left the public sector they are just advocating for the interests of their new private-sector clients. This isn't an issue of principles, its an issue of allegiances and dollars.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 31 2015, @03:52AM
(my point: they were clearly intelligent enough to see that working in intelligence wasn't going to pay to the level of their ambitions - the attitude I was alluding to - no wonder they got to be ex-officials by their own choice).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday July 31 2015, @07:17AM
This whole thing made a real turn for the worse once we started using the word "homeland".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:21PM
So many propaganda terms. [gnu.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:35PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:59PM
Some of these definitions are clearly propaganda the other way.
While they make sense in a war of viewpoints, some get quite absurd in a normal discussion context. Anyone clinging to the suggested substitute will quickly end up back in his basement complaining to his echo chamber about the lack of tolerant interlocutors...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @07:18PM
I'd say they're more logical and allow for more clear communication, not propaganda. This propaganda is pushed by multi-billion dollar industries and the government, so it has to be squashed.
(Score: 2) by kadal on Thursday July 30 2015, @04:15PM
I'm being lazy but does anyone know if these guys took meaningful steps in this direction when they were in office?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 30 2015, @04:19PM
I seem to remember McConnel vacillating to one side and the other of reasonable. That is - he wasn't the draconian prick that General Alexander is today. The other two, I really can't recall.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 30 2015, @04:33PM
How is anyone surprised? These ex-government officials have passed through the revolving door and have now been told by their new masters that the government is bad for business. They are toeing that line.
If anyone needs more evidence that the government is totally corrupt and worthy of burning, here it is.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @11:15AM
Any act where the sovereignity of the people is not respected tells you the government is corrupt, and this is a clear example, I agree.
Burning down governments, OTOH, replaces them with the organized crime, because those are the next in line with an infrastructure. It happened in the soviet union and many times since.
A different way of fighting the power is to be as self reliant as possible, if enough people can do without the government, the government can't treat you like the cattle they EXPLICITLY think it is. Then anarchy, if you're still inclined towards that, becomes easier to implement.
I say explicitly because politicians, no matter the color, always display the "trust me, things are too complicated for you to figure out yourself" attitude.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday July 30 2015, @06:20PM
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/30/obama-administration-war-apple-google-just-got-uglier/ [firstlook.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @03:50AM
More reason for Apple/Google/Facebook/et al to get out of the business of being a middle-man. If the errorists aren't using Apple's property to communicate, you can't accuse Apple of providing material support to a suspected terrorist.