US attorney general William Barr says Americans should accept security risks of encryption backdoors

DOJ and FBI Show No Signs of Correcting Past Untruths in Their New Attacks on Encryption
July 31, 2019
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/...ng-past-untruths-their-new-attacks-encryption

 

Sure, but doing so "would put lives of [millions] of people at risk". So it'd be a dumb move.

 

Sadly a lot of people believe this arguments and for whatever (to me unknown) reason prefer to believe politicians over experts.

 

People love to fights law enforcement's and their mass surveillance until their family become victims, then they do a 180° turn and beg them to use every means at disposal even the illegal ones if possible.
All that fanfare is just hypocrisy...

I wait impatiently to see what a privacy fanatic will answer when the FBI will tell them: "we think we may pinpoint the location of your kidnapped daughter, but we must act fast and break the criminal phone but it is illegal, would you agree?"

 

Government badly needs a new message on encryption

https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/opinion/government-badly-needs-new-message-encryption

 

And monitor everyone's thoughts, for sure. Just think about all those evil thoughts hiding out there!

 

It might be funny to me right now but I'm not sure that I'll be laughing to this few years from now... If technology will allow them to read our minds I'm sure it will be used. You know - to make us all more "safe".

 

For sure. First at airports.

 

Hard to fathom, how far people have fallen to even trust that any govt has your best interests at heart. On the contrary they basically couldn't care less as a whole. I wonder how long they're going to keep shoving the false narrative "it's for your own protection" and other such like nonsense down our necks.

 

because the unawares don't care and have more significant preoccupations, like making a living?

 

You should really be a politicians speech writer... The only missing words from your post are 'pedophiles and 'terrorists'.

Do you think encryption back doors are going to solve anything? Come one, you are not that stupid. It will not stop bad people doing bad things. Mass surveillance is about one thing and that thing is control. Control over the general public. You know full well the first people to adapt to new technology are criminals and the people who have the most to lose. If they introduce back door's what will happen is that well resourced groups and individuals will just roll their own crypto and design their own apps and even design their own hardware if need be, in fact they already do this and have been doing this for years.

You can not ban encryption or backdoor it. That train has left the building 25 years ago. This debate has always been about control of society.

 

In this situation most people would probably agree to break in since they are emotionally affected. If they would ask the same people "should we torture a suspect that doesn't want to tell us where your daughter is?" they would probably also say OK, do it. But that doesn't mean that we should legalize it.

 

@ComputerSaysNo Control of society is what difference us from animals and the prehistoric era; it was and will always be. Look at weak-controlled countries where tribes kill and rape each others, you want it or a more controlled society even with its flaws? i guess you will say the second...so please, stop the hypocrisy.

and about criminals making their own stuff, indeed they do already but at least you prevent those of smaller caliber and hamper those with resources.

p.s: thanks for the compliment, bu im not a so good writer (joking)

 

laxness in control and over-freedom is the reason why western countries drown with violent crimes and other school shootings made by delusional and perverts that were allowed too much liberty; in more controlled countries, it may also happen, of course, but not so often and this amplitude.
Not so easy to shoot a school when surveillance is everywhere.

don't get me wrong, i talk about security-oriented control and surveillance only, not hunting of political dissidents/activist.

Anyway we can go on 100 pages, some seems to believe that privacy overweight citizen's safety, sorry not me.
I don't waste my time theorizing and fantasizing about how govs may/do corrupt the idea of mass surveillance for personal gains, it probably does it already but i rather live in a safe and controlled society where my kids can go play to the park without being abducted by some perverts even if few top officials get more power (if they abuse too much then someone will probably ''make arrangement'' so no big deal).

 

Well I guess we just see situation differently so we don't agree. No problem.

 

If it walks like a duck, if it sounds like a duck, it's a duck.

 

That's it in a nutshell. You often [more often than not] hear people referring to surveillance type activity for purposes of selling private details to 3rd parties to serve targeted ads. As obnoxious as that is, it pales into insignificance against the type of control the powers that be have in mind.

 

Barr says the US needs encryption backdoors to prevent “going dark.” Um, what?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...ure-but-is-govt-really-at-risk-of-going-dark/

 

Drinking from firehoses is always so damn tempting.

 

I would recommend people base their threat models based on actual evidence, including history, and some recognition of iatrogenics. If we are intending to pursue rational policies for ourselves, this is what's badly needed, rather than bogeymen threats that are tiny in comparison with other threats.

Unfortunately, I think it is eminently rational to be extremely wary of my own (Western) government, sadly they are part of the threat and are certainly awful at rational rather than populist reactions to threats.

I also do not believe that we can prevent all bad things from happening, and attempts to do so are normally worse than the disease, especially when those "cures" are in the hands of rabid politicians.

 

Encryption and lawful access; the problem with Barr’s judgement

https://www.information-age.com/encryption-lawful-access-barr-123484548/

 

Well written. I agree. I think the issue is that likelihood of state becoming totalitarian in short-to-mid-term is low, so people don't care that much about that. Unfortunately people do not realize consequences of such event are really bad - history shows these events may cost lives of literally millions of people.

 

You can't outlaw math, no matter how much Malcolm the, "Laws of Mathematic don't matter", Turnbull want's you to belive ...

In addition to traditional tor and private openvpn and openssh tunnels that anyone can setup (just rent a VPS from some sane country and you are good to go), there will always be unbackdoored, open source end-to-end encryption available for masses.

Those with enough coding skills could even make their own new apps.

Just few examples from Top 12 Open source messengers with end-to-end encryption
https://medevel.com/10-end-2-end-messengers/

Signal Messenger
https://signal.org/

Signal Protocol C Library source code:
https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-protocol-c

Signal JavaScript Library source code:
https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-protocol-javascript


Linphone: open source Skype alternative with end-to-end encryption
https://www.linphone.org/

Source Code:
https://gitlab.linphone.org/BC/public

Wire Messenger
https://wire.com/en/

Source Code:
https://github.com/wireapp/wire

And more ...

P.S:

Any backdoor will be eventually found and abused
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/resea...ry-and-they-say-its-partially-the-nsas-fault/

 

FBI reportedly can't get into Dayton mass shooter suspect's phone

https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-reportedly-cant-get-into-dayton-mass-shooter-suspects-phone/

 

Yes, and not that long ago. The veneer of civilized behavior is thin, and nation states are weak.

Even on a less cataclysmic scenario, LE is known to lie and cut corners when it comes to inconvenient protections of law and evidence. There is no point in increasing your exposure to false positives. A guy has just got released from 3 years in jail for liking someone on FB, turns out she's the wife of some drug lord - he gets locked up based on false identification. And then there's all the various databases and lists that can get you on watch-lists or inhibit your employment, based on rubbish data. Not their problem - it's yours, a big threat.