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FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

thehill.com

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Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#121

Post by viraptor »

yyyk wrote: post #96
unsungNovelty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly my thought when I read this article. But the scariest thing is that, what US Govt decides have huge implications for the whole world! Having a backdoor in software NOT only enables US government and other cyber criminals to have access. It also enables other governments like Russian, Chinese, Israilean, North Korean governments too! Keep that in mind too.

Chinese and Russian governments already got access to every local device, even from Apple itself, with no protest from anyone. Israel can apparently hack into the devices without a backdoor (according to Cellebrite), and isn't a justified part of your list - it's a democracy not a dictatorship. NK doesn't allow any devices, not that it bothers with any excuses.

> Chinese and Russian governments already got access to every local device, even from Apple itself,

We'll really need sources for claims like that...

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#122

Post by tempguy9999 »

spunker540 wrote: post #114
tempguy9999 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I draw the line on the side of privacy. It's easy to be abstract - what if it had been your family & family? Or do strangers not count? > there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering which you've not given, twice. > It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors. It's difficult and I see what you're saying even if I don't yet agree.

The reason you're getting downvoted is it seems like you believe encryption should be illegal unless it has a govt backdoor. Encryption is just math, so it's a hard thing to criminalize and to enforce. Furthermore, if the government has a backdoor to all encrypted data then that means China and Russia and any independent hacker would be also searching for that same backdoor and once they find it everyone's screwed. I…

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm getting downvoted because people don't want to answer questions like, what if it was people killed who mattered to you, or, exactly what other avenues of evidence gathering?

I get that elsewhere too - ask about the limits of self-arming and bingo, downvotes without answers, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606212

It's the online version of turning away with an angry huff because they don't like where this is going.

OK, back to your point, and thanks for a decent response. The encryption issue is difficult and I made it clear I was ambivalent eg. "I care greatly about privacy...". I fully understand the implications of a legal backdoor, and I don't want it [x]. But if phones are the main comms tool now, and if further killings are pending and can be prevented, at least ask the questions.

So I'm wondering if there is some compromise or something. Some way of putting a backdoor in which a 2nd party has a key to (not the gov't). Or something. Yes I'm aware that gov'ts may unfairly lean on the 2nd party. Is there some way through this? Let's try to be creative.

Perhaps this is a mathematically way of proving, based on some assumptions, that I can't have what I want then we can stop wasting time on it and we can get on with the fight against government strong-arming.

Can we at least have a conversation on it without angry, downvote'y silences? This isn't a constructive. It gets us nowhere.

edit, add clarification [x] that if a compromise can't be found and I had to choose between the government having backdoors or not, I'd fall pretty rapidly on the side of Fuck, No. They will be abused. I probably know this better than you.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#123

Post by weberc2 »

bredren wrote: post #50
pdkl95 wrote: post #49

> Attorney General William Barr said in a speech last month that encrypted messaging services allow "criminals to operate with impunity." The cost of encryption is “ultimately measured in a mounting number of victims — men, women and children who are the victims of crimes, crimes that could have been prevented if law enforcement had been given lawful access to encrypted evidence," This disgraceful, emotionally manipu…

It isn’t just detective work, it is personnel with the skills to identify and pursue likely evidence. Digital forensics is way outside typical leo training and believe it or not you can make a lot more money in the private sector with IT training. Local, state and federal case loads get backlogged behind, leaving the highest priority cases to get staffed.

What stops LEO from contracting with a digital forensic company or consultancy?

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#124

Post by JohnStrangeII »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #92
NohatCoder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it would be nice to have access to the phone, but it is just one of many pieces of evidence that may be gathered, and mostly it is redundant with other sources. If he used the phone for contacting co-terrorists there are trails in many other locations, unless he really knew how to hide his tracks, in which case it is unlikely that he would have left any trails on his phone either.

You may be right, but I'm not convinced. > and mostly it is redundant with other sources The main means of communication other than face-to-face is telephone calls and this newfangled web with its many features. Both are provided by a modern smart phone, which most people seem to live through. Therefore you can expect most to all non-F2F comms to go through the phone (typically; not necessarily). So I can't accept wh…

Anyone who wants to commit a serious crime with the help of others will physically destroy the evidence that leads to those helpers before committing the crime. Getting the phone data after the crime has been committed is not going to help preventing these crimes.

Terrorists have been on the radar of secret agencies and police in countless cases. Unfortunately, if the police interviews a potential terrorist or mass killer for "behavioral irregularities" or whatever you call it, this will only radicalize the person more and prevent nothing. Or, at least, it is not a very effective intervention. If there is no crime, the police cannot do much.

To be clear, the NSA could probably easily eavesdrop into all cell phone activity within the US and collect heuristic indicators, and it's very likely that they could predict most of these mass shootings quite well based on these indicators. The problem is that this would be unconstitutional and based entirely on thought crimes like "conspiring to commit a terrorist attack". The laws for this are in place and used against international terrorism, but they are highly problematic and shouldn't be extended to domestic terrorism.

Social workers and maybe mental health support by people who do not have to report to the police probably work much better against radicalization and decrease the probability of an incident. I might be wrong but my guess is that in the US almost zero efforts are spent by social services to improve the social situation of right wing gun nuts and de-radicalize them. Again, no need for getting what's on their phone.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#125

Post by michaelmrose »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #95
kelnos wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access. It is a balance though, and USAins may draw the line differently from brits like me. I draw the line on the side of privacy. I'm absolutely fine with potential unresolved loose ends in a criminal investigation if it means we actually get to practice real security and gain all the privacy that en…

> I draw the line on the side of privacy. It's easy to be abstract - what if it had been your family & family? Or do strangers not count? > there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering which you've not given, twice. > It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors. It's difficult and I see what you're saying even if I don't yet agree.

I'm not the OP but its hard to be particular about alternative means of gathering evidence that is itself hypothetical.

For example if you wanted to know who the person associated with he almost certainly communicated with people in a way that could be obtained by serving a warrant to his ISP.

If you want to know what influenced him looking at his web traffic would be advantageous.

Instead of working backwards from hypothetical lets reason the correct way. What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#126

Post by michaelmrose »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #122
spunker540 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you're getting downvoted is it seems like you believe encryption should be illegal unless it has a govt backdoor. Encryption is just math, so it's a hard thing to criminalize and to enforce. Furthermore, if the government has a backdoor to all encrypted data then that means China and Russia and any independent hacker would be also searching for that same backdoor and once they find it everyone's screwed. I…

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm getting downvoted because people don't want to answer questions like, what if it was people killed who mattered to you, or, exactly what other avenues of evidence gathering? I get that elsewhere too - ask about the limits of self-arming and bingo, downvotes without answers, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606212 It's the online version of turning away with an angry huff because the…

The truth is that hypothetically we already probably possess enough intelligence to pick out the whack jobs as a class but not which of them is definitively going to actually going to go off.

However we have consistently shown that we are often incapable of competently using that information even when say the family members of a terrorist call us on the telephone and forewarn us let alone when the worrisome info is buried in a mountain of data.

We don't need less privacy or better technology to gather intel. We actually need a smarter system and better tools to sift the mountain of data we actually already possess.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#127

Post by JohnStrangeII »

sokoloff wrote: post #118
JohnStrangeII wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your challenging the definition of a mass shooting they use because it somehow doesn't cohere with your personal thoughts about it. But the problem of defining a mass shooting and that various definitions are controversial is mentioned in the very first paragraph of that page. I cannot find anything disingenous about choosing an official definition and mentioning that it is problematic in the first paragraph.

I would characterize the home invaders as the "perpetrators" in that particular story and exclude them from the injury count, consistent with the language of that definition. From the article: Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks shootings and their characteristics in the United States, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrators, are shot in…

Yes, they use the official definition of the term "mass shooting", as it was adopted after 2013 by the US congress, which defines it as a shooting with 3 or more victims. Moreover, they mention in the very first paragraph that the definition is controversial and problematic, and they mention all alternative official definitions (e.g. before 2013) explicitly in the following paragraphs.

You probably have another definition in mind, since in your mind "mass shooting" is somehow associated with classic amok runs and terrorism. But how is that a counter-argument to using the official definitions and terms, as they are defined by US congress and used by police and the US judicial system? Why on earth would it be disingenuous for them to base their statistics on the official definitions?

Sure, some people think that e.g. gang-related gun violence shouldn't count as a mass shooting even if many victims are involved, but the US congress chose otherwise and the page makes it crystal clear that the definition is problematic.

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#128

Post by rayiner »

Causality1 wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Let’s take away a specifically enumerated constitutional right to better protect, maybe, one that appears only in the “penumbras” of the document.

I honestly don't know what your position is because the right against unreasonable searches and seizures and right to arms are both specifically enumerated in the fourth and second amendments, respectively.

Requiring manufacturers to include back doors to be used only pursuant to a valid warrant would not be a “search.” (There might be a commerce clause issue, though.) Many types of surveillance typically does not involve a search (because it relies on data that either can be gleaned from public activity or through cooperating third parties).

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#129

Post by bubble_talk »

01100011 wrote: post #63

We (HN commenters) all know that the demonization of encryption is bullshit. What we need to do is to figure out how to communicate that effectively to the public.

"Only thuggish regimes and failed dictatorships demand for things like removal of encryption."

Re: FBI tells lawmakers it can't access Dayton gunman's phone

#130

Post by yyyk »

viraptor wrote: post #121
yyyk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese and Russian governments already got access to every local device, even from Apple itself, with no protest from anyone. Israel can apparently hack into the devices without a backdoor (according to Cellebrite), and isn't a justified part of your list - it's a democracy not a dictatorship. NK doesn't allow any devices, not that it bothers with any excuses.

> Chinese and Russian governments already got access to every local device, even from Apple itself, We'll really need sources for claims like that...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/24/apple-moves-to-store-icloud-...

* Nearly all iPhone users use iCloud.

* If obeying 'local laws' is enough for Apple to allow external access to iCloud, the same logic must apply to the iPhone.

* Note that Apple refused similar requests by American courts.

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