As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

Broad solution to all this is building your lives in business in a way government can have a minimal control of. Just do what it requires and keep everything else encrypted and anonymized. And don't rely on government for anything, for we are heading for a world of global government failure: people and institutions are going to ignore and circumvent them all, and make them dysfunctional. In a way, that will be like communism: there is little government can be of help nowadays, and it is more and more becoming a nuisance.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#6

Post by EGreg » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 1:39 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #2

Why can't PFS be a solution for this?

PFS and other Deniable encryption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption) are great for deniability. However, they and everything else can be susceptible to unrelenting rubber-hose "cryptanalysis". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis)

It is said that the goal of cryptography is to make the attacker resort to rubber-hose cryptanalysis, revealing their intentions. In those cases, the best you can hope for is plausible deniability, i.e. decrypt some part of the cipher showing something embarrassing but not illegal, and hope that they think that was all that was there. Actually that's what TrueCrypt provides with its "secret encrypted volume". However, there are some tests for randomness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests) like the chi-squared test which can detect/identify many such encryption schemes if the size is large enough.

In short ... it's an arms race. Your best bet is Steganography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) which has been around for centuries. Just write messages where no one suspects. You can encrypt them with PFS and plausible deniability for best effect.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#7

Post by mrmekon » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 1:53 PM UTC

And as Feds demand skeleton keys to buildings, prepare for the death of cylinder locks?

Prepare for a change in how we use it, not for its death.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#8

Post by venomsnake » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 1:58 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #2

Why can't PFS be a solution for this?

PFS protects you if feds get google keys now to not be able to decipher what you told google 3 months ago. But if they have the current keys nothing can protect you.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#9

Post by pron » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 1:59 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #5

Broad solution to all this is building your lives in business in a way government can have a minimal control of. Just do what it requires and keep everything else encrypted and anonymized. And don't rely on government for anything, for we are heading for a world of global government failure: people and institutions are going to ignore and circumvent them all, and make them dysfunctional. In a way, that will be like c…

Don't rely on government for anything? What are you talking about? Almost 100% of scientific research and 100% of infrastructure around the world is funded by government. Almost all of education, health and welfare around the world (though less so in the US) is run by government. A lot of people are suspicious of government, but such fundamental disdain toward and alienation from government are peculiar American (and sometimes Russian) traits.

Re: As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption

#10

Post by digitalsushi » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 2:00 PM UTC

The only thing I get really spooked over, is that eventually it gets to a point where the government starts demanding passphrases for hard drives with no hidden encrypted partition.

Am I being paranoid? Someone sensible please dilute my paranoia.