A Few Thoughts on Ray Ozzie’s “Clear” Proposal

CAs aren’t exactly as bulletproof as you seem to think they are, and mess things up quite often, despite playing an easier game.

Easier because a properly run CA doesn’t hold the private keys for all certificates it has ever issued, so key theft allows you to sign new certs and impersonate people, but it doesn’t allow you to passively eavesdrop on encrypted communications, or decrypt old messages — forward secrecy holds.

Easier because there is a trust structure where certificates can be revoked. We can revoke wrongly issued certificates and the compromised signing keys, and we have contained the damage. Compare and contrast this proposal, where there is no mechanism to secure phones in the wild once their keys leak.

>That dynamic is undemocratic. Whatever you may think about the US government, it is still far more legitimate to make these decisions than some guy in a basement and the CXOs of Google and Facebook.

For one, it's not the CXOs of Google and Facebook that cause the disruption in what's decided politically. If anything those are totally in bed with the government, and the US government at that (e.g. not the government of the rest 96% of the planet, who are still their customers).

It's the average Joes and Janes that adopt said technology as a means to circumvent the govermental dictums. And that perhaps not for Bitcoin and Tor (which, in the end, are both fringe activities, the 99% of the population doesn't participate in), but e.g. for things like DRM (tons of people use cracked DRMed content and stuff).

Second, there's nothing much "democratic" in the overeach of government in all areas of social life just because they can.

If anything, your argument can be inverted completely:

It's the government that loves the idea of increasing its reach beyond any previously accepted limits and loves using technology to achieve that.

Whatever privacy breaks or surveillance the government does for example wasn't possible, and wasn't even considered to be mentioned in the law, pro or against, 10 or 40 years ago, before technology gave them the opportinity.

So it's the government who loves to "re-interpret" the law to extend its powers through technology (and does that at a massive scale) and not the "tech community who loves the idea of subverting the law with technology" (they do, but they have done very little in that regard).

P.S Plus, CAs as an example of "safety"? LOL. Because they're so secure, and everyone loves their competence and the CA system, right?

I’m not sure the benefit to Apple or other phone manufacturers. This looks like a substantial cost with zero benefit to those others than law enforcement. And substantial new risk for misuse or abuse.

What’s Ozzie’s true motivation? Is he looking to start a company running Clear and raking in patent revenue? I get why the governments want this, but not why a citizen would propose this.

If it weren’t Ray Ozzie, I would think this was just part of some propaganda push.

Tor was created and released to the public by the United States Naval Research Laboratory; it's an example of the US government giving people a useful tool, not of technologists subverting the US government.

https://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/chacs/dingledine-tor-second-gen...