How difficult would it be for these so called terrorists to develop their own end to end encrypted app? Perhaps something masquerading as something common like any port under 1000?
It is feasible that the elimination of whatsapp/telegram/signal encryption would just lead to a way more complicated encryption system developed internally to these organisations.
UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
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Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#12what if the guy read a book and agreed with it because he was an sad angry teenager with no life
They have access to library records because of that scenario. They would be able to access online bookstore records.
The book may not have been purchased of course, or may have been banned for sale in a country - many illegal copies of books were made in Communist states in the 80s for that reason.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#13Is it technically feasible to have a back door and still be `end to end` encrypted ?
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#14It's an incredibly foolish thing for a minister to suggest. She demonstrates a complete lack of understanding on the subject and has commited political seppuku. Has she never read Orwell, Huxley, seen articles about tyrannical governments or even heard about the reasons the US constitution was drawn up?
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#15"He sent an encrypted message from whatsapp" Yes, and then he went and did something stupid with easily accessible tools and acted alone. You might have an argument if he was part of a coordinated attack against something but lone-wolf terrorism has always been defined as unpreventable by security services such as SIS. Once radicalised it's impossible to prevent individuals doing stupid stuff. The only thing she has…
> You might have an argument if he was part of a coordinated attack
No.
Even ignoring the erosion of privacy angle, this just doesn't work. Outlaw encryption, and only outlaws will use encryption. Provide government backdoors into the popular commercial messaging apps, and people coordinating terror attacks will just use custom, unknown, private encrypted messaging apps.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#16> She said it was a case of getting together "the best people who understand the technology, who understand the necessary hashtags"
Our Government is an absolute disgrace; and unfortunately, one to which there is currently no credible, strong opposition.
(from https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewchampion/necessary-hashtags)
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#17How difficult would it be for these so called terrorists to develop their own end to end encrypted app? Perhaps something masquerading as something common like any port under 1000? It is feasible that the elimination of whatsapp/telegram/signal encryption would just lead to a way more complicated encryption system developed internally to these organisations.
You just described a rather common programming assignment at most schools..
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#18For two decades I've been waiting for popular support for a complete or at least Clipper-chip-style encryption ban in the "free world". It always was on the other far end of the spectrum, directly oppsite questions like IV/nonce choice, PRNG initialization flaws, RSA attack vectors. I have great fear for the freedom and living standard of my kids when I read these top-level news pieces. We stand a real test and we will have to argue against hatred, fear and terrorism. Let's just hope our leaders have no-nonsense advisors as well as those that inspire such news.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#19How would that have prevented anything? As if they'd have responded within 2 minutes to some guy sending weird messages.
The message he sent right before the attack will likely not have been his first communication about it. There's been a pattern of Isis operatives abroad guiding and supporting terrorists in detail via end-to-end encrypted messaging for weeks or months, right up until the moment they attack: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging... Presumably the British police are assuming that this is like those previous attacks, but they haven't managed to obtain the actual message contents after the fact this time around for some reason.
Re: UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable
#20Amber Rudd is the UK's Home Secretary not just any minister.
"We need to make sure that our intelligence services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted Whatsapp."
She has said she is "calling in" technology companies this week to try to "deliver a solution".
Marr asks if they refuse to do that, will you legislate to force them to change? She's not drawn on that.
Interview is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08l62r7/the-andrew-mar... [from 45:18]
I understood that UK IP Bill already mean that she already has the ability to e.g. demand a backdoored version of Whatsapp be sent to a target device, but that's not covered in the interview.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/30/investigatory_power...