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The FBI and other LEOs often complain about the risk to preventing and protecting against crime posed by the use of encryption on the internet. Recently, there have been several senior figures stating quite categorically that encryption will enable criminals to operate with impunity, completely defeating the efforts of those 'trying to protect us'.
In fact, next Wednesday, both the Senate Intelligence Commitee and the Senate Judiciary Committee are hosting "hearings" for [FBI Director James] Comey, about the issue of "going dark" due to encryption.
[...] So it's rather interesting that before all that, the US Courts had released their own data on all wiretaps from 2014, in which it appears that encryption was almost never an issue at all, and in the vast majority of cases when law enforcement encountered encryption, it was able to get around it. Oh, and the number of wiretaps where encryption was even encountered has been going down rather than up:
The number of state wiretaps in which encryption was encountered decreased from 41 in 2013 to 22 in 2014. In two of these wiretaps, officials were unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. Three federal wiretaps were reported as being encrypted in 2014, of which two could not be decrypted. Encryption was also reported for five federal wiretaps that were conducted during previous years, but reported to the AO for the first time in 2014. Officials were able to decipher the plain text of the communications in four of the five intercepts.
Obviously, if more communications are encrypted by default, it's true that the numbers here would likely rise. But the idea that there's some massive problem that requires destroying the safety of much of the internet, seems more than a bit far-fetched.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:21PM
Not to discourage you and not saying you're wrong (your conclusions are spot on in my opinon) exept one thing (and sorry if you've heard this before, not meaning to be a bore): you don't need to use encryption to get “internet AIDS”, I guarantee you that you already have it.
You don't need to read anything, you don't need to load a page after the fact, or (if by e-mail) the mail never needs to be delivered to your spam box or even sent; it's enough that it was somewhere where it was accessed (either in transit or on a corrupted node including any endpoints) and that it somehow involved or referenced you or has some kind of association with you.
You have never done anything at all, never mind whether it would be good or bad. It still doesn't matter.
Now then (if you read this) what precisely do you think my signature is? It is (purportedly) text strings the XKeyscore [wikipedia.org] system looks for in any and all MIME [wikipedia.org] content (or S/MIME [wikipedia.org] for that matter) the massive surveillance and manipulation system gets access to (not just e-mails but html pages, any html page bulk text like this comment is MIME, the details are in the given Wikipedia link). According to the snippets of leaked XKeyscore ruleset/configuration it flags anyone/thing associated with hits matching these strings as an extremist. Maybe they've changed that now or maybe they haven't, and who knows what else the ruleset looks for, it could be anything.
This is why there are millions of ordinary boring people on various lists already. Like you and me.
Not enough to get you into trouble on its own, enough to prove a point about where we are right now.
If this wasn't enough the system (i.e. not just XKeyscore but all of it) simply doesn't care if you have “internet AIDS”: it takes everything it can get and tries to get what it can not yet get. You are facing pretty much every government on the planet, every single “secret” service no matter if they're allies or not, exponential technological improvement, billions and billions of yearly expenditure, and some of the “smartest”/most capable people who have ever lived who nevertheless are for most part unable to realize where this thing “ends”.
It's hard to explain the horrors of this without sounding insane, even more so to people who aren't particularly interested or who can't overcome their innate disbelief or who simply don't understand the details. I'm no good at it. This is something that can be improved.
Another thing one can do is to speak ones mind openly.
Maybe the above is stupid, but I try not to do anything too stupid, deciding on my own terms as each should do for themselves.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:10AM
Thanks for the post. You and I think a lot alike.
I am convinced of exactly what you pointed out - we are all on a list - just like at credit reporting agencies. With the numbers beside our name indicating correlation of our perceived allegiance to different memes.
Like you say, I feel one thing I can do is openly speak my mind. And I do. Here. Probably too much.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]