The rise of the new Crypto War

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/encryption-crypto-war-james-comey-fbi-privacy

by jsnell • 11 years ago

145 55 11 years ago

droithomme• 11 years ago

“There is a misconception that building a lawful intercept solution into a system requires a so-called ‘backdoor,’ one that foreign adversaries and hackers may try to exploit,” Comey said. “But that isn’t true. We aren’t seeking a backdoor approach. We want to use the front door, with clarity and transparency, and with clear guidance provided by law.”

So, he is calling backdoors frontdoors, and then arguing that he's not seeking backdoors.

breakall• 11 years ago

Isn't their a fair distinction between an undocumented weakness ("back door") to which LEOs have access, and a provider providing a key ("front door") upon a lawful order, maintaining the strength of the encryption scheme?

It seems some believe that Comey is playing with semantics in order to obfuscate, or doesn't understand the argument he's making -- I don't.

username2• 11 years ago

They already have a front door. It's called "get a warrant".

EthanHeilman2• 11 years ago

Neither backdoor nor frontdoor are well defined (backdoor does not always imply secrecy). I never heard the word "front door" until this recent push, and generally key escrow has been referred to as a backdoor despite being public knowledge.

My personal definitional taste would be:

* Backdoor - an additional way to decrypt a communication without the consent of the communicating parties.

* Secret Backdoor - a backdoor which the communicating parties are not aware of (DUAL_EC).

* Public Backdoor - a backdoor which is built into the public description the of the encryption system so that the communication parties are aware of it (lotus email backdoor).

* Frontdoor - a type of public backdoor which requires a warrant to access and whose key is controlled by a neutral (disinterested) third party. I'm not sure this is exactly what the FBI wants.

Thus, frontdoors are a very specific form of backdoors.

CyberDildonics• 11 years ago

These guys are either idiots, or they think everyone else are idiots.

avn2109• 11 years ago

Pretty sure both of those are true.

logn• 11 years ago

Sounds like a solution which increases bureaucracy and spending yet has the plausible objective of fighting crime. I can see why this issue never goes away.

api• 11 years ago

It would also require crypto systems to be licensed and regulated, effectively limiting their deployment to huge vendors. Look into what FIPS compliance entails. These kinds of things always have a regulatory capture / monopolistic land grab component.

AdeptusAquinas• 11 years ago

Starts by talking about a discrepancy between technology and law, and I agree, but not in the way Comey is saying.

The discrepancy is that where once communications we considered private (loved ones, close friends) was generally face to face and phone lines were just used for business or more innocuous conversation, now all of it takes place along these lines the FBI and NSA want to have access too, along with personal information and other stuff that used to be only physical.

The discrepancy is that they want the law to grant them powers as if the internet is just a different type of phone line from the 60s.

forgottenpass2• 11 years ago

One of the panelists from last Wednesday's senate hearing Peter Swire (Huang Professor of Law and Ethics, GT) puts forward the case that we're in actually in a Golden Age of Surveillance. I largely agree, but unfortunately most of the coverage I've seen starts by uncritically accepting the "going dark" narrative.

Fede_V• 11 years ago

Short of banning math, how exactly can you prevent people from using strong encryption?

Even assuming the government can convince a lot of big corporations to put backdoors in their products, tech literate people will just use niche open source encryption for their own communications. Terrorists, or people that want to do evil, will switch to using secure channels - so the only people you will be able to monitor via sig-int will be average people that are not particularly tech literate. That doesn't seem like such a huge gain to me.

forgottenpass2• 11 years ago

Short of banning math, how exactly can you prevent people from using strong encryption?

There are plenty of things that are technically possible but illegal. Most things that are illegal are physically possible to perform if I so wished. The efficacy of law is never 100%, how often people break it is often based on the ease to do so, the ease to not get caught, the scale of punishment, personal morals, interpersonal pressure, and societal standards.

dasil003• 11 years ago

I think the distinction is that cryptography is much closer to thought-crime than to any physical crime. It's on the continuum of banning speaking in private. There are a lot of ways to slice it, but it boils down to privacy being illegal per se. It would be unconscionable by the majority if the implications were clearly understood, but because it's "technology" somehow the fearmongers are able to spin it (as they do so many things) as a national security issue.

nitrogen• 11 years ago

I think the point is to carve the division between tech-literate and common communications in stone -- to prevent privacy and security from ever going mainstream. If encryption is outlawed, people using it will be easy to identify and manipulate.

nly2• 11 years ago

Short of banning math, how exactly can you prevent people from using strong encryption?

You don't. You just make in imprisonable offence not to turn over keys: like here in the UK

schwarze_pest• 11 years ago

Well, the problem is: You can't enforce this rule and call yourself a Rechtsstaat at the same time.

scintill76• 11 years ago

Bingo. There's no way these guys can truly believe that e.g., forcing Apple to decrypt iPhones on demand is going to put a big dent in terrorism. I guess they are a) hoping to get an upper hand on a few small-time/unsophisticated criminals and don't mind stretching the truth to sell it to the public, or b) they view this as the first of many long-term steps in killing encryption/privacy in the US altogether, or c) they plan to deploy this much more widely than they are letting on, possibly even internationally through things like trade agreements (in which case it could actually be useful for counter-terrorism.)

michaelt• 11 years ago

I would imagine here in the UK our politicians will use this narrative:

* Evildoers aren't born knowing how to use tor and having all the right onion urls memorised. New recruits are onboarded/radicalised with tools the average person regularly uses. Like facebook, twitter, gmail, https-encrypted websites and so on.

* Active terrorists learn to use encryption properly before they start committing crimes, so we can't monitor the active terrorists. As our only option is to monitor new and prospective recruits, we'll have to monitor people who aren't yet committing any crimes. As we'll be monitoring the widest part of the recruitment funnel, monitoring huge numbers of innocent people is just the only option.

* People might be recruited through channels we're not already aware of. When a terrorist is recruited we need to be able to find out how they were recruited, so we can find new channels we need to monitor. And it could be months or even years between the recruit learning to use effective encryption and them being identified as a terrorist. So we need to store an internet history for every person for several years.

* Privacy? Well, there will be strict legislative safeguards in place of course! Unfortunately all the work will be top secret so only insiders can audit compliance and it'll be illegal for them to take any evidence of wrongdoing to the press. But the legislative framework will be very strict, yes sireee.

* This is the best option we have to keep our children safe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31575908 you wouldn't want any more schoolgirls going off to join ISIS now, would you?

mirimir4• 11 years ago

This is a profoundly US-centric perspective. Consider Microsoft's efforts to isolate data in Irish servers from US jurisdiction. US providers have already lost substantial global business since Snowden's releases. If mandated lawful access could short circuit jurisdictional disputes, US providers would arguably lose far more global business.

AnthonyMouse4• 11 years ago

That is a very important point from the other side too. Clearly other governments are not going to accept the US FBI having a world-wide backdoor into the communications of their citizens. But if all the "criminals" have to do is buy their phones in Mexico (or wherever) then what are we even talking about?

jjawssd• 11 years ago

Get a warrant in Mexico. Case closed.

nly2• 11 years ago

"Consider Microsoft's efforts to isolate data in Irish servers from US jurisdiction."

Maybe I'm a cynic, but isolating any servers in Ireland from US jurisdiction just seems like a another way of saying tax avoidance

mirimir4• 11 years ago

Well, earning income overseas is a standard approach for corporate tax avoidance. But this is a distinguishable issue.

charles20133• 11 years ago

no, not necessarily.

consider guidance from new zealand's Health Information Governance Expert Advisory Group (HIGEAG) [0]:

Unless an exemption is granted by the National Health IT Board, all personal health information held in an identifiable form and associated clinical or administrative data must be fully domiciled in New Zealand.

[0] http://healthitboard.health.govt.nz/standards/use-cloud-or-h...

charles20133• 11 years ago

secondarily, many non-US companies with data centers located in the US have been impacted from the global backlash.

lurchpop• 11 years ago

I think the argument of backdoors making services less secure is the wrong approach.

The government just needs to convince lawmakers they've come up with a scheme where only they can access the backdoor, not criminals. The opponents scream, "that's impossible," but LEOs only need to persuade lawmakers it's unlikely the backdoor will be compromised and they've won the argument with "good enough." If there's a terrorist attack and they claim weak encryption could've prevented it, "good enough" will suffice.

The more important argument is the government has repeatedly demonstrated they can't be trusted with the special access and they're pretty much guaranteed to abuse it. They'll even exploit those backdoors to spy on the very politicians from whom they're trying to get the new authority.

The threat of the government using new powers to violate the 4th amendment rights of innocent citizens is orders of magnitude higher than the threat of sophisticated criminals exploiting LEO backdoors.

ObviousScience• 11 years ago

The OPM leak is a good example of why we shouldn't just take their word for it that they can keep things secure -- they leaked everyone's personal details and security clearance interview details, why would we expect them to do a better job with people's communications?

dmschulman• 11 years ago

I'm a little perturbed by the length of this article. Those who are aware of issues in crypto already know a lot of the background here. The challenge is to engage the public on the issue and break it down in a sensible way.

With the response to Paul Ford's "What Is Code?" article in Bloomberg, longer thought pieces on technology are now in vogue but the author could have made their argument in a more concise way.

I try to comment on substance generally and not appeal to complaints like mine but I only bring it up because this new fight around crypto is an issue with as much public bearing as the net neutrality debate but with infinitely more complexities (which makes it more challenging to engage regular people on)

allemagne• 11 years ago

“IP networks are different from packet-switched networks.”

Minor gaffe, probably meant to say circuit-switched

dsfyu404ed• 11 years ago

Oh too bad. Law enforcement has had it absurdly easy for the past ~15yr, all they had to do was cry "terrorist" and they could read whatever they wanted (I'm glossing over a lot of details here) If the FBI can read everyone's email (and other communications) then the people who really have stuff to hide will find other ways of hiding it and they'll waste their time (and our $$) screwing innocent people or catching dumb people they would've caught in other ways.

As encryption becomes more common they've gotta choose who's communications they look at rather than entering "keywork=bomb" checking the "wiretap all in results" box. Bugging a room or vehicle isn't new but you need a semi-legitimate reason to justify that sort of stuff (reasonable investigations have an ample supply of legitimate reasons). They've got ways to look a a suspect's communications if they want to, especially on US soil.

The more I read about this debate the more I think that the FBI (law enforcement in general) is just whining because, rather than just tapping everyone of interest and sifting through the results, they have to find a different way of doing things and that requires work and work is hard. I don't feel sorry for them

This is the same problem the music industry is possibly starting to to get over. The way they do things is outdated and they're complaining that progress is causing more work for them. Legislating the past back into existence doesn't work well. Just ask the Taliban.

Short sighted bunch of fools...

nickpsecurity• 11 years ago

The thing that gets me in all these discussions is people acting like we can't build a protection mechanism that stops A from getting in but not B. Yet, these same people in another context say we can using words such as VPN, port-knocking, TLS, SSH, and so on. We do it all the time with some solutions being quite strong. If anything, a robustly-designed R.A.T. or escrow is nowhere near as threatening than the average app or network protocol on endpoint: practically backdoor generators in practice and their 0-days are the main way High Strength Attackers hit targets.

So, first we should stop with the double standard. There exist mechanisms that work well enough in practice which allow selective access to systems (aka front-door). There's also decent work in limiting such access, auditing it, escrowing, and so on. NSA also already does the escrow for its Type 1 encryption products with all key material managed and protected by their EKMS system [1]. If it got visibly breached, we'd probably have seen evidence of it. So, I'll skip straight to the other issues that popped up in peer review when I published a few attempts at a secure solution to the L.I. problem.

Will it have security problems in general? Yes. Damage can be limited in a number of ways, esp if scheme is decentralized. Yet, it adds risk on top of what we already given even rigorously-built solutions have had issues.

Will there be authentication forgeries for LEO requests? Yes. This might be a one-off, quickly detected thing. It might be unlimited depending on how the breach goes. Sender and receiver must be protected across the board. LEO's track record isn't good. High risk here.

Does the government have a history of abusing its access and deceiving about its usage? Yes. A great reason not to do L.I.

Will the government agree to a L.I. scheme with a strong foundation for security that ensures read-only access for a limited period and can't subvert system? Clive Robinson suggests that even a theoretically, bulletproof L.I. system won't be acceptable if it limits them and it will be forced to be more "flexible" by their sway over courts/lawmakers. Seems true given current situation.

Can they prevent attacks via malicious sys-admins or infiltrators? Snowden says no and with quite the credibility. ;) High risk here.

And the big one: will the KEYMAT-holder survive the inevitable attacks of all intelligence services, hackers, and organized crime combined? And all the things they will do to the organization or its employees? Gravely, high risk here.

Dirk Praet brought up the last question in a discussion where I had tried to cover every single angle in design, personnel, and ops. In the end, Dirk and Clive are right: the government will force the system to have too much privilege, centralization, and/or accessibility; data will be mass compromised in a free-for-all by the opponents. Whatever concrete requirements come out of such legislation will present vastly higher risk than with key escrow or remote administration tools in general.

So, there's extremely high risk in warrant process, key storage even with HSM's, and organizations administering this even at SAP security level. More risk than any DOD, NSA, or FBI have faced before given the concentration of enemy effort that will occur. Their track record on smaller things shows they can't handle something that big. Even if they were honest as Boy Scouts, the risk assessment argues against the L.I. option 100% and regardless of what level of INFOSEC our mechanisms ensure.

Also, if they were Boy Scouts, they couldn't think like the attackers enough to stop them. Proposal is untrustworthy whether they are or not. That's No^2. ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Key_Management_Syst...

cb182• 11 years ago

Painting cryptography as a 'weapon,' as the header image of this article does and as was done in the past with the ban on it's exportation, is a completely wrong analogy.

Cryptography simply translates to the digital world mankind's right to be secure in our personal effects, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Unencrypted digital communication removes the temporal aspect of surveillance. If you have a conversation with somebody in the physical world and you are secure that that conversation is not being spied on, you can be sure that at no point in the future will that conversation be spied on. Encrypted digital communication simply translates that right to the digital world.

If an authority has pretty good knowledge that someone is in possession of encrypted digital files that only they have the password to access, this is simply the digital version of an authority having pretty good knowledge that someone has a buried treasure that only they have access to. This person cannot be coerced against their will to travel to the location of the buried treasure an dig it up just because an authority is pretty sure it is out there somewhere.

Others in this thread have pointed out that this is just law enforcement being lazy. And that is a very good point there are plenty ways to do law enforcement even if your target is communicating in codes and crucially it causes resources to focus on the important targets.

This is really crux of the matter, encrypted communication is not going to prevent law enforcement from doing their jobs. Crucially, what it does prevent, is the nation/world wide digital-technology enabled surveillance dragnets.

This is what must be kept in mind when considering this issue, we must make sure that we are creating future societies that are under no threat of nationwide spying from tyrannical governments.

In fact, any non-sense about 'going dark,' or terrorism and criminals is a smokescreen and should be struck from any reasonable, level-headed discussion of this matter. Terrorism and crime are rare enough and law enforcement is good enough that we are under no risk in seeing an upswing in crime and terrorism due to continued proliferation of strong(that is, actual) encryption. The continued development and use of cryptography is entirely about preventing the kind of massive scale, unlawful spying that has been shown to be taking place.

davesque• 11 years ago

The funny thing is that extending CALEA to information services and requiring baked in facilities for government digital wiretapping would do nothing to stop a smart terrorist or criminal organization. Cryptography is a field of mathematics. It's not some physical thing like a mineral which can only be mined in the United States. The knowledge of how to build a proper cryptographic channel is freely available to anyone who can understand it.

The rise of the new Crypto War

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