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Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

theguardian.com

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Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#11

Post by rdl »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

Blackberry did always support "decrypt at the BES" which meant essentially corporate key escrow. It did mean the system owner (company) had full control of everything, but it meant governments/carriers/etc. didn't.

It's a great security model for businesses. For consumers, allowing "3 of 5 trusted friends" to do key recovery for you, with a 7 day delay, might also be a good model.

I actually have no problem with key recovery/key repository type systems (reluctant to say "key escrow" when it's not mandatory) -- as long as the users are explicitly informed and given a choice. For 99% of users, some kind of key recovery usually is the right choice.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#12

Post by Zigurd »

atmosx wrote: post #8
higherpurpose wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the news that Blackberry started giving Indian and Saudi Arabia governments access to their encrypted data actually hurt Blackberry's image in enterprise. Also some countries are banning US tech companies now not because they encrypt stuff but because they give access to the US government to their citizens' data (including officials). Maybe it's true maybe it's not, but they have the right to question…

Hm, maybe Apple can do that, but for Google not looking at the data is not an option, it's the core business. For facebook too. However maybe, just maybe, they can come up with a way to share with governments only a small fraction, protecting their customers/users. I don't see how, but their engineers are smart, they could figure out something that works. It's not just NSA or the US here. These corporations are multi…

Subscription services are almost always more profitable than ad supported services. If encrypted gmail and hangouts were priced like the storage I buy from Google, I'd be a paying customer.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#13

Post by rdl »

higherpurpose wrote: post #4
maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

Not to mention the news that Blackberry started giving Indian and Saudi Arabia governments access to their encrypted data actually hurt Blackberry's image in enterprise. Also some countries are banning US tech companies now not because they encrypt stuff but because they give access to the US government to their citizens' data (including officials). Maybe it's true maybe it's not, but they have the right to question…

IIRC Blackberry gave PIN-based/consumer/BIS messaging keys to those governments, and had key escrow for BES deployed in country, but when I took a US-BES Blackberry into UAE, India, KSA, etc., I still had end to end protection.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#14

Post by [deleted] »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

[deleted]

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#15

Post by wmf »

revelation wrote: post #7
maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

Blackberry is suddenly the posterchild for encryption? I thought Blackberry is this service where all your mail and communication is routed in cleartext through their services, a workaround from the days of 1G that they simply never got around to get rid of before smartphones flattened their business. That is not encryption, if anything it is the direct opposite.

I thought Blackberry is this service where all your mail and communication is routed in cleartext through their services

That's how consumer BlackBerry worked (while other consumer services at the time that had no encryption whatsoever) but the enterprise version was as secure as they could make it.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#16

Post by [deleted] »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

[deleted]

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#17

Post by csandreasen »

rdl wrote: post #5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak4ZwLU3aX0 is the raw video. I'm obviously a bit biased here, but I've always wondered if Baker actually believes his arguments or not.

Thanks for the link to the video.

I think his argument makes sense (just speaking with regards to encryption - they brought up a couple of things in the discussion), but you have to keep in mind that he's arguing from a completely different perspective than most of the folks posting to HN. Whereas it's usually in the best interest for a private citizen to have all of the data on his/her device encrypted and only decryptable by him/her, it's not the same case for corporate or government data, which is a huge portion of the market.

Baker is arguing from the point of view that a large organization needs to be able to monitor what its employees are doing because they're legally responsible for anything that those employees may do. Imagine having to secure a network where you couldn't look at the logs due to privacy concerns; or figuring out which disgruntled employee is siphoning data off to a competitor; or responding to warrant/subpoena when one of your employees is suspected of committing a crime. You're not in a very good position if the only one who can decrypt the data is the end user.

Not to mention that there are also situations, particularly in government, where it's in the best interest of the public to be able to investigate a government official for wrongdoing. If their IT department can't get to their e-mails when the Inspector General comes knocking, what's to stop that official from just saying "Whoops, I forgot my password." ?

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#18

Post by hendzen »

revelation wrote: post #7
maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

Blackberry is suddenly the posterchild for encryption? I thought Blackberry is this service where all your mail and communication is routed in cleartext through their services, a workaround from the days of 1G that they simply never got around to get rid of before smartphones flattened their business. That is not encryption, if anything it is the direct opposite.

BlackBerry (RIM) is the owner of Certicom, which holds many key patents related to efficiently implementing elliptic curve cryptography.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#19

Post by DannyBee »

Just from the timber of the comments, i had guessed this was Stewart Baker. The man does not, IMHO, deserve to be viewed as an expert on anything other than playing political games.

I'm not sure how he got to where he was, but i'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with competence (and that's something i'll rarely say).

If you want to form an opinion, he posts quite often on volokh.com as a blogger.

Re: Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

#20

Post by Spooky23 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

>"Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker. Baker is incompetent. Blackberry's primary advantage was its encryption. It branded itself as a business device and…

It is touching that a NSA lawyer cares so deeply about Apple and Google's business model.

BlackBerry fucked up their business the old fashioned way -- by screwing up. They were an early player that listened too closely to their early adopter customers. These customers, including the banks and federal government, cared about stuff like keyboards and CAC integration.

I've worked in very large IT environments, and users of our networks occasionally commit crimes, including heinous crimes that disgust me. Either way, when counsel tells me that we have a lawful warrant, we have a duty to provide the data. The argument put forth by this clown is complete bunk.

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