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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: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:09AM
I suspect the TLAs are worried more by the future, with projects like "Lets Encrypt" and the fact that people are slowly finding and fixing all the holes in VPNs, and SSL/TLS. They are worried abut the inclusion of encrypted email by default that several companies are suggesting, Mozilla, Facebook, etc. The want to nip it in the bud. They don't want client side encryption in phones without a back door.
I think they can see a ground swell of encryption if all those things get come to pass.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:22AM
The funny part is that for the most part they've brought it upon themselves too. If they'd been obeying the law and getting warrants for intercepts as opposed to scooping up everything things would have happily continued as they always had.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Sunday July 05 2015, @06:02AM
They're essentially whining that their illegal surveillance is no longer as effective as it used to be. The most irritating part is the incredulity with which they react when they're told they never should have had those capabilities in the first place, and indeed only got away with it for so long because of lack of real oversight and secrecy (the later thankfully shattered by Snowden).
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @09:52AM
Their focus is on the citizens. All of us. They feel it's their inalienable right to harvest as much data from as many people as possible. This allows for all sorts of parallel construction chicanery.
Not willing to spy on your neighbors? We can tie you to a crime 1,000 miles away with enough circumstantial evidence - and your lack of evidence that you didn't do it - even though you are innocent. And if you don't get convicted your reputation will be shot, you'll lose your job, you'll be broke from the legal fees and we have complete immunity. So help us nail your neighbor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @10:29AM
Of course they might not be able to use that method too often or the masses might start getting suspicious. That said I'm sure you can convince the masses that it's very prevalent or something like that.
What you need to do is make sure all your HDDs are fully encrypted - so that they need to wipe stuff to put the porn on it- and recreating the entire HDD (software, emails, browser history, etc) to make it look like you've been using it is going to be a lot more work. So at least make them work a lot to hang you.
But how many will do that? Full disk encryption is a lot less convenient - plus a lot more fragile in the face of drive and other errors.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @07:04PM
Full disk encryption doesn't have to be inconvenient. It's the default for Apple now. The problem comes with whether or not the FDE routines are backdoored.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @02:43PM
It is amazing that they were able to catch anyone before there was an internet.