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The New York Times reports that President Obama met yesterday with the nation’s top tech executives and company officials on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers amid a deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government. “What has struck me is the enormous degree of hostility between Silicon Valley and the government,” says Herb Lin. “The relationship has been poisoned, and it’s not going to recover anytime soon.”
American firms are increasingly concerned about international competitiveness, and that means making a very public show of their efforts to defeat American intelligence-gathering by installing newer, harder-to-break encryption systems and demonstrating their distance from the United States government. “In some cases that is driving them to resistance to Washington,” says Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, Michael Daniel. “But it’s not that simple. In other cases, with what’s going on in China,” where Beijing is insisting that companies turn over the software that is their lifeblood, “they are very interested in getting Washington’s help.”
Silicon Valley execs have also been fuming quietly over the government’s use of zero-day flaws. “The government is realizing they can’t just blow into town and let bygones be bygones,” says Eric Grosse, Google’s vice president of security and privacy. “Our business depends on trust. If you lose it, it takes years to regain.”
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday February 17 2015, @11:03AM
I think we took a wrong turn somewhere around Bernstein v. United States [wikipedia.org]. At the time, I thought it was advance for freedom. However, with hindsight, it appears that classifying cryptography as munitions may have been farsighted. Therefore, making cryptography a First Amendment issue rather than a Second Amendment issue has been somewhere between futile and counter-productive.
As noted in the recent topic about the (de)militarization of police, we have a situation where people exercise their right to be armed against tyranny. Government feels obliged to keep ahead of undesirables. ("Something must be done!") Then, good guys and bad guys feel obliged to keep ahead of a real threat. This creates an escalation of arms.
Now we have the same situation with cryptography. Citizens are *finally* seeing the benefit of cryptography but systems devised by corporations are being undermined by government for the purpose of catching terrorists/pedophiles/furries/baddie of the week. Unfortunately, government can trump any corporation based within its jurisdiction and therefore we find ourselves in a situation akin to a literal arms race: The well-grounded fear of tyranny is the catalyst which brings it forth.
However, if Bernstein had lost his argument, we would possibly be in a better situation - or at least, with more rabid defenders of freedom. Specifically, we'd be in a situation where corporations are people and people have a right to bear arms (cryptography). This would sidestep the argument that it is acceptable to silence the speech of criminals. And we'd be in a situation where survivalists and Silicon Valley billionaires would be united against government tyranny.
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