Senior Trump administration officials met on Wednesday to discuss whether to seek legislation prohibiting tech companies from using forms of encryption that law enforcement can’t break — a provocative step that would reopen a long-running feud between federal authorities and Silicon Valley.
The encryption challenge, which the government calls “going dark,” was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter.
On a related note, just today head of the American regime, Donald Trump, joked about murdering journalists with the head of the Russian regime, Vladimir Putin.
Gosh tootin’ darnit, I wonder what profession relies on encryption.
The governments exist to serve the citizens. Hence the citizen’s rights, including right to privacy, trumps the governments’ need to police them.
However, even though this is clearly specified in the US Constitution, it feels like simple fear mongering can help persuade the public to stand behind legislation to take away their basic freedoms. Simple (loaded) questions like “if ou have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” comes to mind.
(Everyone has something to hide. Otherwise we would walk without clothing — or at least in transparent ones, not lock our doors, and give our bank passwords out. Since we don’t do those actions, it would be reasonable to assume we want to “hide” some stuff).
sukru,
What we need is a country founded on individual freedoms and liberties :/
I certainly agree that we should be entitled to privacy (especially from government snooping) and there are many reasons to oppose “You have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. But I don’t really agree with your examples. Take nudity: not everyone believes in the protestant values that would have us feel shame over nudity and our natural bodies. I’ve seen some exhibitionists who let it all out in remote public parks, but for better or worse they could face fines and even arrests if they’re caught by law enforcement walking around unclothed. If we weren’t so repressed by organized religions that turned it into something perverse, it just wouldn’t be a big deal – just like with the remote tribes of africa who haven’t been tainted by “nudity = wrong”.
…a bit off topic. Anyways, I think the problem banning crypto will be the same as it’s always been: there’s no way to enforce what the government would want, and it could fall into the wrong hands (or even fall into the “right” hands and get used illegitimately! NSA bad track)
http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/the-nsa-tried-this-before-what-the-90s-debate-over-the-clipper-chip-can-teach-us-about-digital-privacy-debates/
Why governments don’t open their archives and keep everything secret? I mean, they are working thanks to our money and are serving us, hence there should be no privacy at government level, yet there are still many things under the shadow and we are requested not to ask questions. So why the double standard ?
Kochise,
Absolutely. Of all the places where privacy is not deserved, government operations are one of them. I could understand maybe a temporary curtain on time sensitive military information, but all government data should automatically get published as it was paid for by taxpayers and done in our name. Taxpayers ought to be entitled to oversee what we are paying for. It’s outrageous that government agencies operating on our behalf would feel entitled to keep secrets from us. The only way to have an informed electorate is with all the facts and not some censored version of them. Government deception and omission ought to be considered crimes in and of themselves.. Just think of the many times when governments are caught abusing our rights, laws, and covering up war crimes, nobody responsible ever gets prison time except for the whistle-blowers!
Some might say that governments tell us what to do and keep secrets from us for our safety, but If we genuinely believe in democracy and freedom of the people to rule themselves, then we can’t endorse a government that actively depraves citizens of information and imposes non-democratic agendas. Good and bad, what our governments do can not be a secret if it’s purpose is to serve the people. The fact that we have agencies operating in the dark costing us billions of dollars/year violating constitutionally granted rights is proof in and of itself that the government views itself as above the people rather than as the will of the people. Sadly, many of the very politicians who sell the illusion of freedom end up curtailing actual freedom.
Thom,
Respectfully, in the quote he did not say to murder them. He said get rid of them. That could mean plenty of things including murder, jail time, kick them out of your country, put pressure on a company to fire them, or otherwise. You may find each of those things distasteful, but it still doesn’t change the fact that inferring “murder” from what he said is incorrect. Does that not make you part of the journalistic problem that he was discussing?
Is he not right in being frustrated with “fake news” when he is often misrepresented? Various reports show the accusations of Democrats against him have been wrong. I’ve certainly seen both major parties misrepresent others in calloused ways. But, it seems especially strong and frequent with Democrats.
I’m not saying you have to like the guy or the way he governs. I certainly did not vote for him (nor Sanders and Hillary for that matter). But, if we keep putting words in each others’ mouths, how does that help freedom of speech and the press? Does that not just encourage governments and politicians to take away such things?
cacheline,
While there is some bias in the media, sometimes even egregious, it’s still fair to say that most of trump’s problems with the media stem from getting caught in his own lies, disinformation and embarrassments being reported accurately. I’ve never cared much for political parties, be it democrat or republican, IMHO it’s better to stand for your own values rather than have to identify with those of a party. I will say this, most of trump’s criticism is deserved, not because he’s republican, but because he’s a pathological liar who surrounds himself with others who he expects to cover for him. Senior officials who originated from both parties continue to resign or be let go leaving an administration largely without a moral compass. Trump wants to be a dictator where even the other branches of government bow to him, this violates constitutional norms, certainly more than any president in my lifetime. Fortunately the constitution has defenses against the abuses of a single branch, but unfortunately political partisanship seems to be weakening the willingness of congress to oversee the whitehouse. As always, political parties keep trying to cheat the system to gain more power for themselves.
For example, republican controlled congress stalled filling supreme court vacancies for over a year just so they could place their own judges on the bench. Just this month this same supreme court has ruled to allow individual states to gerrymander their election districts, which gives incumbents the power to dilute and strengthen blocks of voters with the intention of controlling the election outcome. With modern computer modeling, this practice has become extremely precise and dangerous for democracy. Both parties have been guilty (republicans being more guilty so far), but the real concern is now that this practice is deemed allowable by the courts, it can lead to widespread abuse with incumbents redrawing maps with the intention of suppressing opposition voters. It’s just unthinkable that this is allowed to happen, and yet this is where we are.
Links.
So the people cannot use encryption that the government cannot break.
Is it also forbidden to make a vault that the government cannot open? Do they expect the master-vault-maker to have a master-key available?
Is it also forbidden to have a gun that can be aimed at the police?
Was it forbidden to forge a sword that could break a shield?
Let’s say government can break 256 bit encryption but not 512 bit encryption. Does that mean all tax-forms should now be send with 256 bit encryption? How about all certificates that have already been issued and messages allready send?
If you have to leave a backdoor for the government, then that same backdoor can be used by the government’s enemies.
Additionally, the crossover between government and private sector software development libraries etc, mean that inevitably, the governments own communications will end up compromised.
It’s such a fundamentally dumb idea on so many levels.
The1stImmortal,
Earlier attempts like the clipper chip and limited SSL crypto strength did help adversaries because the law mandated the use of weak algorithms and public security suffered for it. Personally I think it’s futile to mandate it and the government will hit the same problems as in the past. Restrictive laws will only push security R&D out of the US, and it certainly won’t stop bad actors from using strong crypto.
Never-the-less in principal we can create strong crypto that leaks keys to the government and doesn’t have the “adversary problem”. For example, generate a symmetric cypher key as usual (AES/RC5) and encrypt that key using an NSA issued asymetric public key (RSA/ECC). Bake into the standard that this encrypted key must get passed along with the ordinary encrypted payload.
This method can be just as cryptographically secure as the crypto you are already using since it uses nothing more than the same cryptographic primitives that you already rely on anyways (ie PKI SSL certs). Obviously it would require the government to keep it’s private key safe, but so long as it did so external adversaries wouldn’t be able to decrypt the symmetric cypher key. One of the reasons the government doesn’t like this approach is that unlike crypto algorithms that have key escrow built in, users could trivially modify the procedure and abstain from providing properly encrypted key information. Foreign governments might even mandate their public keys be used, which would impede the US government’s own efforts. The US/NSA would prefer to push backdoored key escrow algorithms such that anyone using said crypto will necessarily reveal their keys to the US agencies every time. Alas this can introduce weaknesses and is where the adversary problem comes up.