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FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

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Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#121

Post by hackuser »

As much as I object in principle, it's an interesting technological puzzle. I've been wondering about a hardware-based solution:

* A fuse that when broken reduces the cost of cracking the security from 'impossible' to something an organization with large resources, such as the FBI, can do in a day.

* When the fuse is broken, a message is displayed to the user indicating it. At least, the device might not boot, tipping off the user that something is wrong.

_

It would meet these requirements (am I overlooking any important ones)?

* Nobody could mass-crack the devices. To crack it, you would need the device in your possession and a day of significant computing power.

* It would require a significant investment of resources, so it wouldn't be done for trivial issues.

* Users would know when their device has been cracked: It would have to be out of their possession for 24 hours and they would be notified.

_

The question is, could such a thing be implemented in a way that it couldn't be hacked (without great difficulty)?

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#122

Post by ThrustVectoring »

derefr wrote: post #85
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge lack of systems thinking. It's like they believe that the universe somehow cares about what they were trying to accomplish. * If we reward schools for increasing student test scores, then we'll have better schools. * If we fund a "war on drugs", we'll reduce the damage drugs do. * If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. T…

I don't know about the universe; I think it's rather a weird sort of overly-strong faith in the capacity of other humans. Legislation at every level seems to treat the people implementing and enforcing the legislation as a fleet of magic genies, who will Do What You Mean and achieve exactly your goal with no side-effects. Though also, do note, if you apply systems thinking to legislators, establishing that they're "d…

Thanks for your comment about applying systems thinking to legislators. It much more clearly captures the point I was trying to make about political incentives.

The best ideas I have for fixing political structures are weird utopia-ish things that you can't get to from democracy. Things like government-by-prediction-market, which would distribute decision-making to people who think they have a better idea than everyone else and pay for performance.

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#123

Post by ex3ndr »

Tepix wrote: post #24

If all US crypto is backdoored, the rest of the world and the criminals will use non-US crypto. The FBI also wants to infiltrate communities of human rights activists. There are many reasons not to overly trust them.

Our Project (actor.im) already started to adopt russian encryption.

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#124

Post by grandalf »

hackuser wrote: post #121

As much as I object in principle, it's an interesting technological puzzle. I've been wondering about a hardware-based solution: * A fuse that when broken reduces the cost of cracking the security from 'impossible' to something an organization with large resources, such as the FBI, can do in a day. * When the fuse is broken, a message is displayed to the user indicating it. At least, the device might not boot, tippin…

See my other comment in this thread for a solution

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#125

Post by andrewla »

It's not clear to me where this article gets the idea of what the FBI wants. I haven't seen anything from the FBI or from Comey that indicates that they want to place limits on future cryptographics systems.

It even seems like Comey is aware that the particular technique he is asking Apple to use will not apply to future phones made by Apple, and that the reality is that cryptography will soon reach the point where the FBI will not be able to rely on decrypting data as part of their investigative approach.

Yes, if Apple creates this exploit, then that exploit will potentially be available to other state actors and criminal enterprises. But only for iPhones older than the 5s. Fundamentally, as other commenters have pointed out, this is not creating a backdoor -- this is using an existing backdoor to install a bigger backdoor. It is, of course, possible that in the future even newer iPhones might find themselves vulnerable to unauthorized decryption, but really, the FBI's ask in this particular case really is narrow in scope, because it does only apply to older phones.

I don't see the slippery slope here that many people seem to think exists. The slope begins and ends with a phone released in 2013. All any person (criminal or otherwise) has to do is buy a newer iPhone, and then this whole discussion no longer applies.

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#126

Post by maxerickson »

taf2 wrote: post #60
kbenson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front door is a less useful metaphor than your safe. We have safes in addition to locked front doors because it's accepted getting into the house is generally not that hard, whether you be law enforcement or a criminal.

My parents worked for the NSA before there was an NSA. A guy came in to do a talk about how there is no such thing as security. He had a table with a bunch of common locks and even some safes. He proceeded to unlock each one in a matter of seconds to demonstrate his point. Modern encryption however is changing the game. It's no longer true that security is just a matter of perception. It's becoming a reality and that…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#World...

What did they do?

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#127

Post by noonespecial »

allemagne wrote: post #34
taf2 wrote: post #4

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.

The only reason they aren't actually advocating for exactly that is because it's easy for them to break into a locked home. If there were some new technology that made breaking into a house almost totally impossible, this is exactly what would happen.

Reality is waaayyy ahead of you.

https://chicagocrimelaw.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/this-week-i...

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#128

Post by ThrustVectoring »

duaneb wrote: post #82
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge lack of systems thinking. It's like they believe that the universe somehow cares about what they were trying to accomplish. * If we reward schools for increasing student test scores, then we'll have better schools. * If we fund a "war on drugs", we'll reduce the damage drugs do. * If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. T…

> If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. To be fair, this does in fact help many people afford housing. It just doesn't fix the endemic issue.

These are political favors to local interest groups. It actively hurts the ability to find housing for everyone not blessed by the powers that be.

Dense housing is affordable housing. When there's an empty apartment that you're moving into, where do you think the old resident moved to? There's only a few options - a new place got built that they moved into, the old resident died, the old resident moved out of the housing area, or the recursive option that cashes out into one of the previous ones. If you stop building units ("affordable housing" mandates) or arbitrarily keep low-income residents from making housing bids (rent-control), the only bids for housing are going to be from tech workers and market-rate housing gets ridiculous.

Fundamentally, the problem is that there's X people who want to live in the area, and only Y housing units. The price is going to go up until the market clears. Handing out political favors so that the people who vote for you don't feel this reality isn't solving the problem: only building more housing will.

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#129

Post by chillacy »

andrewla wrote: post #125

It's not clear to me where this article gets the idea of what the FBI wants. I haven't seen anything from the FBI or from Comey that indicates that they want to place limits on future cryptographics systems. It even seems like Comey is aware that the particular technique he is asking Apple to use will not apply to future phones made by Apple, and that the reality is that cryptography will soon reach the point where t…

The issue isn't a technical one as much as a legal one. If the FBI can get the government to interpret the All Writs Act the way they want (any private entities must do what the govt says to aid a criminal investigation unless explicitly forbidden by law) to force Apple to write a custom version of iOS for them this time, the fear is that they can use the same law to install backdoors in ongoing versions. Legally there would be precedence for Apple to have to allow investigators to access other phones as well by means of making Apple write code to do so, which in the future could mean tracking location, turning on microphones and cameras, etc.

Re: FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

#130

Post by rietta »

andrewla wrote: post #125

It's not clear to me where this article gets the idea of what the FBI wants. I haven't seen anything from the FBI or from Comey that indicates that they want to place limits on future cryptographics systems. It even seems like Comey is aware that the particular technique he is asking Apple to use will not apply to future phones made by Apple, and that the reality is that cryptography will soon reach the point where t…

I do understand what you are saying and it is precisely because of Director Comey's public statements on the matter that I called him an expert statesman in the article, which he is. The legal precedent set in this case when Apple is forced to comply will invariably change how companies implement cryptography within their systems.
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