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from the trust-us-we're-the-government dept.
The Washington Post has a story which says:
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Tuesday renewed a call for tech companies to help law enforcement officials gain access to encrypted smartphones, describing it as a "major public safety issue."
Wray said the bureau was unable to gain access to the content of 7,775 devices in fiscal 2017 — more than half of all the smartphones it tried to crack in that time period — despite having a warrant from a judge.
"Being unable to access nearly 7,800 devices in a single year is a major public safety issue," he said, taking up a theme that was a signature issue of his predecessor, James B. Comey.
Wray was then quoted as saying:
"We're not interested in the millions of devices of everyday citizens," he said in New York at Fordham University's International Conference on Cyber Security. "We're interested in those devices that have been used to plan or execute terrorist or criminal activities."
He then went on to promote the long-disparaged idea of key escrow:
As an example of a possible compromise, Wray cited a case from New York several years ago. Four major banks, he said, were using a chat messaging platform called Symphony, which was marketed as offering "guaranteed data deletion." State financial regulators became concerned that the chat platform would hamper investigations of Wall Street.
"In response," Wray said, "the four banks reached an agreement with the regulators to ensure responsible use" of Symphony. They agreed to keep a copy of their communications sent through the app for seven years and to store duplicate copies of their encryption keys with independent custodians not controlled by the banks, he said.
To me this is more of the utter nonsense the government has spouted. When will they understand that key escrow only works when one trusts the government and the keeper of the keys?
Previously:
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday January 10 2018, @09:13AM (2 children)
Every government secret gets leaked sooner or later, every credit card gets compromised, every merchant gets hacked, entire nations cough up their identify systems, cpu manufacturers can't keep one process out of another processe's clutches.
But key escrow could work you say? If only there was trust in governments?
Trust all you want. All your keys are belong on sale on the "Dark Web"tm.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday January 10 2018, @10:04AM (1 child)
Totally agree.
Besides, how much stuff that the people are interested in... like how much of our tax monies are spent for stuff is cloaked under "that's classified".
I will concede that some things, like what's said in a football huddle, or our national defense capabilities and strategies, should be classified. For a little while, anyway.
But our own government certainly isn't any shiny bastion of righteousness, either.... but have the benefit of "classified".
So, now everyone is going "classified".
Monkey see, monkey do... first monkey complains that the second monkey's doing it too.
Its called a "balance of power" and is necessary for a free society to continue.
If we can not protect ourselves from our own government ( covertly organize if it comes to that ), we become quite vulnerable to slide into the same muck-ass condition NK is now in.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @11:12AM
Actually, communist regimes come to power as a result of underground conspiracies, and first thing they do is to remove the ladders they themselves used, while there is still genuine popular support for them.
Covert organization by itself is not a tool (or weapon) only for good, it is just a means for underdogs to evade identification and purge by topdogs, for any (underdog, topdog) couple and any combination of moral alignments.
For freedom, while still in democracy, anonymity and visibility is much more important, but there is problem with verification - any dictatorship, either soft or hard, can prevent or fake checking of facts published by leakers if the source of information is under its control.
Also, a dictatorship (or any organized interested party) can pressure any choke points such as public forums (it could happen here too, and I've seen it before on the green site), by flooding them with fake (or just recruited) shill commenters comments or moderation.
So, I would say, we need some novel cryptographic solutions for novel problems. We need safe anonymity for everyone, and participation by almost everyone (or immediate census of amount of public participation) in determining real public opinion, possibility of independent verification of facts (that would probably require that every information of potential public significance must be signed and signatures protected by a distributed blockchain), assignment of exactly single vote for each poll to every verified real but at same time anonymous identity, ... etc.
And, if all that fails, or creates yet another dystopia, then, we would once again need covert communication and storage of information. However, if it comes to that, that covertness is last resort of good, that usually means that reason and courage among the people are in deep retreat, and then perhaps it is a better strategy to let it all rot on its own (like it always does, for exactly the lack of reason and courage) and start over again from remaining muck or ashes. No need for heroes and martyrs, just for inventors, teachers and philosophers. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.