Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption • Hacker News Board

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#141

Post by fwungy » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #97

fatcat500 wrote: post #19

Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory). The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For exam…

> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. I mean that's what "leader" means at the end of the day. Of course, though, leader isn't the only way to refer to politicians. In German leader translates literally to Führer ... which isn't really used since the ultimate demise of Herr Schickelgruber. We also use "Repräsentant" whose English counterpart is o…

Historically once people recognize the media is not trustworthy they discount it. You see this in the former USSR countries. People don't take the media seriously like they do in the west.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#142

Post by noelsusman » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others.

I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion.

Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They could post it on GitHub and it wouldn't matter because iPhones would refuse to run the code if it had been modified by somebody other than Apple to run on any device. You would need Apple's internal code signing keys to actually do any damage.

Currently, the security of your iPhone is dependent on Apple's internal security. If that gets compromised then your phone can be compromised. In a world where law enforcement can get a warrant to force Apple to unlock a specific iPhone, the security of your phone is still dependent on Apple's internal security. Nothing changes for anyone not targeted by a warrant.

You don't need to give law enforcement a universal backdoor key to enable them to execute warrants on devices. What am I missing?

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#143

Post by lovecg » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

93po wrote: post #136

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #132

I finished reading 1984 (the novel) yesterday, so my comments are under some influence. This global movement against encryption -- against citizen's privacy, really -- is all about power maintenance. Power groups want to have access to our conversations so when the election period approaches, they will be able to run sentiment analysis on the data collected from our conversations, and then fine tune their election ca…

I'd disagree. Democracy in the US is already extremely well controlled. You only have two realistic options, and the primary that led to those two options is fairly undemocratic. Between gerrymandering, citizens united, private control over corporate news, and a million other things, meaningful democracy may as well be dead (or perhaps never existed). Control over encryption is overwhelmingly about those in power kee…

The cool thing about technology is it works both ways. If backdoors are mandated it’s only a matter of time until all texts, location history, etc. etc. of those in power become public - we already learned that those people don’t have the strongest opsec to begin with. This will lead to a backlash and an equilibrium of sorts.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#144

Post by kevviiinn » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

alphanullmeric wrote: post #87

kevviiinn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you aren't answering the question, if a program for people in poverty isn't funded by society as a whole, are you having the people in poverty fund it because they're the ones who use it? Your argument seems to break down under examination

I answered the question before it was asked. If you want such a program to exist, you pay for it. If your idea is to make me pay for it, you don’t believe in paying your fair share. Whether or not it is practical to follow my rule to the absolute is a different question. I’m just tired of hearing the fair share people justify not paying their fair share.

No you haven't but what you have done is move the goal posts. Here is your previous statement:

>Nobody said anything about shutting down social programs, you can still have those without forcing people that don’t use them to pay for it

Which implies that the people paying for them are the ones using them

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#145

Post by lovecg » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #142

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They coul…

In the current world Apple is not actually able to compromise your iPhone, warrant or not, by design (remember the whole FBI debacle?). Encryption is done through separate hardware on the phone that they can’t remotely bypass. In the world you’re proposing they would have to be legally compelled to engineer a weaker system. That’s the problem.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#146

Post by plandis » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

alphanullmeric wrote: post #20

fleventynine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income tax is the problem. I wish governments solely relied on property taxes and user fees for funding, even if they had to increase them a lot to make up for the loss of income tax revenue.

But that would mean the “pay your fair share” people would actually have to pay their fair share, which they will never support. We all know that the fair share is a percentage of someone else’s income you feel entitled to and not a fee proportional to the amount of state services you use.

> We all know that the fair share is a percentage of someone else’s income you feel entitled to and not a fee proportional to the amount of state services you use.

So a kid with cancer needs to pay the government for Medicaid? After all, they are the ones receiving the benefit.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#147

Post by generalizations » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #142

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They coul…

To the degree that they can do it, they can only do that because they own both the hardware and the software, and they are tightly integrated.

You need hardware that can securely hold secrets; you need software to detect tampering and tell the hardware about it; you need software that the hardware trusts to communicate with apple servers. Without the whole integrated pipeline from local secrets cache to apple servers, protected because it's all owned and managed by the same secret-keeper, what apple does can't be done.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#148

Post by noelsusman » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #145

noelsusman wrote: post #142

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They coul…

In the current world Apple is not actually able to compromise your iPhone, warrant or not, by design (remember the whole FBI debacle?). Encryption is done through separate hardware on the phone that they can’t remotely bypass. In the world you’re proposing they would have to be legally compelled to engineer a weaker system. That’s the problem.

I could be wrong but I don't remember Apple claiming it was literally impossible for them to open an iPhone. If that were true then Apple wouldn't have had to fight them at all. The government can't force you to do impossible things.

Apple objected to being compelled to create the tooling to bypass an iPhone's security. That implies they can do it whenever they want, they just choose not to.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#149

Post by rekoil » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #142

>As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement while keeping it strong for others. I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion. Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant. They coul…

> What am I missing?

The fact that this is not how security on iPhones works at all.

There are unencrypted partitions of the storage yes, which means the device can boot into iOS without any user password, but the ones containing user data are encrypted and an OS update can at best remove the limit on how fast or how many times you can attempt to unlock the user data (or rather the Secure Enclave which stores the actual key for the user data).

Sure, if you have a 4-6 digit PIN code this is then quickly unlocked in that scenario you're talking about, but if you have an alphanumeric password you can make that attack completely infeasible.

Bottom line is there is no way for Apple to make a version of iOS that completely bypasses encryption, encryption doesn't work like that.

They could, I guess, make a version which silently checks if it's host devices serial number is in a certain list provided by e.g. law enforcement, and then silently removes the SEP encryption, IF the user unlocks the device AFTER that software is installed. But they would have to secretly add this code to the normal iOS releases which would severely compromise their customers data en masse if they did it this way, or create a way to push a specific build over the air to a specific device (which actually doesn't sound that far-fetched honestly, now that I'm thinking about it), without alerting the user that they are installing a backdoor for law enforcement.

I don't think that's feasible either way, because it would quickly come out that they've done that and once the cat's out of the bag they are losing big bucks, and would be criminals will simply stop installing updates on their iPhones.

Re: Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against Encryption

#150

Post by vkou » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #31

fatcat500 wrote: post #19

Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory). The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For exam…

> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. Someone called it "Manufacturing consent". I think this name describes it pretty good. What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.

> What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.

Those laws are incredibly unlikely to be turned against elites and former elites, and if a situation[1] ever arose where they would be, a lack of these laws on the books would not save them.

Populist uprisings are about the only things that elites are scared of, and these kinds of laws help prevent them[2].

[1] That kind of situation would require a complete and utter breakdown of the elite social contract. Things would have to get unrecognizably bad before we are at that point.

[2] Ever notice how, say, pro-gun politicians tend to want guns to be everywhere except near them? As a class, they aren't interested in dealing with the consequences of their policies.