11–20 of 184 posts
We're moving into a new era now. All it may take is a single attack in the US to drive the legislative and judicial branches to roll back all the fantastic improvements we've seen over the past few years.
Anybody here want to run for office and be a voice for tech rights?
So... the FBI is essentially arguing we should all keep our doors unlocked because they have had to do some investigations in the past where they came to a home that was locked and it was hard for them to enter the home.
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncom…
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
The issue I take with the FBI approach is it will have no effect on those that have stuff to hide but destroy any semblance privacy for those that don't.
Terrorists will use GPG, citizens will use their backdoored iPhone full disk encryption and everyone but the terrorists lose.
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncom…
The tech community tells itself that it won the first "crypto wars". You cannot win "wars" against governments in that sort of sense and the first crypto war was never actually won at all. I think in light of events in recent years we need to reinterpret the events of the 90's in a new light - the tech industry didn't win, rather, after realising how awful and worthless the software the cypherpunks produced really was, the government simply got bored of playing.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, gives one tiny shit about GPG. GPG is so bad, such truly unusable software, that terrorists would literally rather die or risk lifetime imprisonment than use it:
http://privacy-pc.com/articles/how-terrorists-encrypt-threatscape-overview.html
This is especially true because often people don't meticulously plan crimes out ahead of time: they either commit crimes of passion, or they make basic mistakes. So if you have to plan ahead and convince not only yourself, but all your accomplices, all to install some exotic and awkward to use piece of technology ... well, a lot of bad guys won't do it.
So. If the FBI succeeds in breaking the encryption used by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and a few other big names, then they've got 99% of the guys they want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
Like I said it's not about the average person, it's about someone with something to hide. Those with something to hide will always go the extra distance. The issue I take with the FBI approach is it will have no effect on those that have stuff to hide but destroy any semblance privacy for those that don't. Terrorists will use GPG, citizens will use their backdoored iPhone full disk encryption and everyone but the ter…
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncom…
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncom…
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
Apple could make it easy for a user to install such a library and then say (truthfully) that the cryptographic functions of their OS is not in their hands, since that feature is handled by a third party open source maintainer.
At that point it would be an infinite game of whack-a-mole for the FBI to try to get backdoors in open source crypto interface libraries which could be maintained outside of the US.
I wonder if anyone has explained to them there is this thing called open-source software. Sure you may be able to convince/force Apple to give you some sort of key escrow system but do you think you can convince the GPG developers? If you implement key escrow and it's public knowledge that encryption systems that implement it are useless then people that actually want to hide stuff will simply use GPG and other uncom…
How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?
Sort of a bummer that lawmakers don't have a better understanding of encryption in general and what it protects. They'd condemn hackers breaking into phones/accounts and stealing important notes/pictures, but turn around and condemn the very technology preventing that from happening to _everybody_ Anybody here want to run for office and be a voice for tech rights?