The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp • Hacker News Board

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#201

Post by nickik » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #192

nickik wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it dies give some protection. Sure when swat comes to your house, guns will not save you. However in a extrem case were masses of people feel threatened by government and their is real civil unrest, the cost for the govemnet to put this down by force will be massivly higher. In that sense its the same as encryption, it all boils down to an argument of economics. When the NSA wants to hack you, you are fucked.…

> However in a extrem case were masses of people feel threatened by government and their is real civil unrest, the cost for the govemnet to put this down by force will be massivly higher. It didn't seem to stop them at Waco. Since they're getting army surplus from actual warzones I'm not sure the civilians can put up much resistance.

Because Waco was cheap? That the worst example ever.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#202

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

niij wrote: post #179

danieltillett wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did the supreme court rule this law was unconstitutional?

He said nothing about it being ruled unconstitutional. I assume what parent is trying to say is that the restriction on their 2nd amendment rights (which is what this law is-- a restriction of a right) is, in many people's opinion, contrary to the intended purpose of the 2nd amendment. Now, there is a difference between restricting of a right and a ban of a right, but it becomes a very fine line.

There are already a large number of restrictions on the ownership of arms. Try to go and buy any true arms (military grade weapons) and see how far you get. The intended purpose of the second amendment was gutted long ago.

My question is why have the anti-gun lobby not gone after ammunition. So far I have not had one good response answering this question.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#203

Post by dllthomas » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #10

jessegreathouse wrote: post #5

If the government wins any of these court battles, it's only a matter of time until one-way encryption is outlawed. It follows logically that if criminals/terrorists can't use iPhones to securely communicate, then they'll just move on to the next convenient encryption app. The government will continue to order companies to break their one-way encryption until the government realizes they're playing musical chairs and…

Anyone have any insights into why the commonly used guns argument is not good enough for encryption? If we ban guns(encryption), only the criminals will have it. The only thing I can think of is that the majority of people who advocate for encryption are anti-gun, and don't want to give strength to that argument?

> Anyone have any insights into why the commonly used guns argument is not good enough for encryption? If we ban guns(encryption), only the criminals will have it.

Guns are defense against guns in a way that encryption is not defense against encryption, so the notion that we are depriving non-criminals of an important defense against encryption-toting criminals carries less weight.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#204

Post by ethbro » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #185

ethbro wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I had this same thought today while listening to a This American Life on Shay's Rebellion [1]. The right to keep and bear arms has more bearing on access to encryption than any other recognized right. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

Er, no, the right to choose how and with whom you communicate -- which is what encryption is about -- is not closely related to the RKBA, but it is related to (and, in fact, the whole point of) the rights to speech, press, and assembly in the First Amendment. Even insofar as encryption is a metaphorical defensive weapon that safeguard against government tyranny, which makes it loosely analogous to the RKBA, it's stil…

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but case law has held that the First Amendment does not provide a right to privacy. It provides a right to self-controlled conducting of ones business. It provides the right to communicate with others whatever subject one desires (x09 F9?). But it doesn't state that the government can't know these things -- only that it cannot act on many of them. Which, sounds familiar to metadata / automated search positions expressed in Congressional testimony?

The 2nd - 6th on the other hand, watered down though they may be by subsequent court opinions, do directly deal on the relationship between things that an individual may possess which the government would seek to take from them for its own ends.

To me, the second set strikes far closer to the intent of privacy. Privacy is not some passive manner of communication. Privacy is fundamentally a weapon whose very existence challenges and bounds the desires of the state. Because privacy is fundamentally unknown.

Let's not pretend we're talking about encrypting just "the good messages". We're talking about encrypting child pornography, chemical formulas and processes for explosives, copywritten media, white/black/hispanic/asian supremacist propaganda, firearm schemics, computer viruses, and explicit pictures of ex-relationship partners.

The state has a reasonable interest in wanting some of this suppressed. But you have to make an all-or-nothing choice on whether it should be able to do that... or not.

This isn't about expression: it's about how we as individuals and citizens relate to our government and it to us.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#205

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 11:01 PM UTC

mitchty wrote: post #181

danieltillett wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought a lot of laws were cute intents to work around the constitution. Any such law would work its way up the legal chain until it got to the supreme court (assuming they chose to take it up the case). As the federal law on armor piercing bullets shows [1] there does not seem to be anything stopping congress passing a law regulating or banning ammunition. Instead of just limiting the ban to armour piercing it cou…

The bans of armor piercing bullets have their own reasoning behind them. Banning all bullets would ensure any arguments presented would amount to banning of armaments. It would be akin to banning cars by banning the sale of wheels. You will be hard pressed to say your intent is to stop people getting run over by stopping wheels from running people over. It is patently obvious your goal is to stop cars from being used…

I think you might have missed the point of my question. I am not suggesting banning ammunition, but asking why legislating their killing power be restricted as an approach to gun-control has not been tried. It appears that it is constitutional to limit the killing power of ammunition (i.e the armor piercing bullets) - what interests me is how far this approach can be taken and still be constitutional.

I will say once again I am not personally in favor of gun control, just asking why the anti-gun lobby is not trying to go after the weak point in the regulation of guns (the ammunition) rather than the strong (the second amendment).

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#206

Post by somesay » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 2:06 AM UTC

nickik wrote: post #195

ibejoeb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp does not give an indication of what software the remote party runs, as far as I know. You'd have to trust the third party in order to rely on the encryption.

Nothing you say makes it even close to 'irelevant'. Even badly thought out end to end encryption message app is importend when rolled out to 300 million people.

No. Actually, I would say fake encryption is even dangerous. WhatsApp might not always run end-to-end encryption for compatibility issues, there isn't even a visual indication for encrypted connections, there is no way to verify keys (if at all, they are verified by WhatsApp servers), so leaving a lot of room for all kind of man-in-the-middle attacks. The encryption itself isn't documented, and at the same time WhatsApp had added an option for (likely insecure) cloud backups. Yes, WhatsApp does fake security. But people believe it's secure. Now more than ever.

But those cases are only saying that companies can't comply to disclosure requests. That doesn't say if the encryption itself is weak or if the user has to completely trust that company. Just like the Apple case, where a 4-6 digit PIN is basically protected by Apple's secret firmware and its signing infrastructure.

There is nothing worse than a messenger that is commonly called secure but actually isn't (like the current implementation at WhatsApp). Cryptocat already had a massive disaster related to this problematic. Known as the chat program for activists in danger, it had a mathematical bug that made it nearly as weak as cleartext. Another one: As long as people aren't always explicitly using Secure Chats, Telegram isn't more secure than WhatsApp and doesn't use any end-to-end encryption. Still hyped for its security. While secure clients can definitely exist, most of the famous everyday solutions are just FUD and bullshit.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#207

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 3:42 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #204

dragonwriter wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, no, the right to choose how and with whom you communicate -- which is what encryption is about -- is not closely related to the RKBA, but it is related to (and, in fact, the whole point of) the rights to speech, press, and assembly in the First Amendment. Even insofar as encryption is a metaphorical defensive weapon that safeguard against government tyranny, which makes it loosely analogous to the RKBA, it's stil…

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but case law has held that the First Amendment does not provide a right to privacy. It provides a right to self-controlled conducting of ones business. It provides the right to communicate with others whatever subject one desires (x09 F9?). But it doesn't state that the government can't know these things -- only that it cannot act on many of them. Which, sounds familiar to metadata / autom…

Encryption may be necessary for privacy, but it's an aspect of manner of communication.

And time, place, and manner restrictions on expression are limited by the First Amendment (case law gives them slightly less protection than content-based restrictions, intermediate rather than strict scrutiny.)

And encryption restrictions that permit it for certain uses and not for you others are, arguably, content-based restrictions.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#208

Post by nickik » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 9:27 AM UTC

somesay wrote: post #206

nickik wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you say makes it even close to 'irelevant'. Even badly thought out end to end encryption message app is importend when rolled out to 300 million people.

No. Actually, I would say fake encryption is even dangerous. WhatsApp might not always run end-to-end encryption for compatibility issues, there isn't even a visual indication for encrypted connections, there is no way to verify keys (if at all, they are verified by WhatsApp servers), so leaving a lot of room for all kind of man-in-the-middle attacks. The encryption itself isn't documented, and at the same time Whats…

I have never said that WhatsApp is secure. You seem to have completly missed the point. For people that are above avg in their security need should of course investigate and find the best tool for the job. That has always been true.

Listen to what Im saying. End to end encryption, however badly imemented, rolled out to 300 million people is a extremly big deal.

Just for the fact that it counteracts the belief that only suspect people use encryption. Also even badly implemented end to end encryption stops lazy dragnet survailance. The policy or the FBI simple do not have the ability to MITM billions of messages every day.

Remember that most texting was essentially done in cleartext before this.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#209

Post by ethbro » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 11:47 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #207

ethbro wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but case law has held that the First Amendment does not provide a right to privacy. It provides a right to self-controlled conducting of ones business. It provides the right to communicate with others whatever subject one desires (x09 F9?). But it doesn't state that the government can't know these things -- only that it cannot act on many of them. Which, sounds familiar to metadata / autom…

Encryption may be necessary for privacy, but it's an aspect of manner of communication. And time, place, and manner restrictions on expression are limited by the First Amendment (case law gives them slightly less protection than content-based restrictions, intermediate rather than strict scrutiny.) And encryption restrictions that permit it for certain uses and not for you others are, arguably, content-based restrict…

The content-based encryption argument is interesting, but I doubt we'll see any "certain use" laws. The problem/benefit of encryption is that if it's well designed then you have no idea what its contents are - mooting any content based restrictions.

We'll see how it goes though. I doubt the courts will be thrilled to do anything that circumscribes their own power.

Re: The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp

#210

Post by progressive_dad » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #66

chongli wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Obama Administration simply will not throw their own (the FBI) under the bus. Fortunately for us the Democrats do not control congress so Obama is unlikely to get his wish here.

Nor is Obama's position that of the larger Democrat party.

Well that's simply because they don't know any better. If they were privy to the security and policy briefings Obama received then they would SURELY support the president and senator Feinstein in securing their own liberty and freedom. All they would have to do is submit a FOIA request and wait 10 years...