FBI Wants It to Be Impractical to Deploy Strong Encryption Without Key Escrow

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #14

emodendroket wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people can be bothered if it's not a turnkey solution?

Like I said it's not about the average person, it's about someone with something to hide. Those with something to hide will always go the extra distance. The issue I take with the FBI approach is it will have no effect on those that have stuff to hide but destroy any semblance privacy for those that don't. Terrorists will use GPG, citizens will use their backdoored iPhone full disk encryption and everyone but the ter…

Post by saosebastiao » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

autotune wrote: post #108

saosebastiao wrote: post #102

I think an interesting approach that could be taken by Apple is to concede to letting the FBI have a master key, so long as they hold an insurance policy that covers the damages in the case of a key leak, including but not limited to the potential damage to Apple's brand and market value, and the same damages to all of Apple's customers that relied on their security. That would force the FBI to reconcile the costs of…

I, for one, would gladly enjoy having to pay for the insurance policy in the form of taxes out of my paycheck to cover the stupidity of having a master key system in place, not to mention when the premiums skyrocket after said key gets stolen and all of our iPhones get breached. /s

Post by crottypeter » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #93

qb45 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only good guys used guns, nobody would need them. It actually is "we know bad guys already have guns, so better if good guys have them too". Same with crypto, btw.

That's not completely true. If bad guys didn't have guns, we'd still want good guys to have them. I don't want police having to take on a guy with knives and a baseball bat, themselves only armed with knives and a baseball bat.

Post by visarga » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

graycat wrote: post #69

mike_hearn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this objection raised so frequently, and I feel it really misses the point badly. The tech community tells itself that it won the first "crypto wars". You cannot win "wars" against governments in that sort of sense and the first crypto war was never actually won at all. I think in light of events in recent years we need to reinterpret the events of the 90's in a new light - the tech industry didn't win, rather,…

Yup. By analogy the lawyers can outlaw six egg omelets with butter and orange flavor. So, then McDonald's won't be able to sell them, but I can still make them in my own kitchen. The lawyers can outlaw strong encryption on products from Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. and, then, crooks who use those products can more easily be caught, and that will amount to nearly all the common crooks. But I can still get some simpl…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #90

hamburglar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People challenging this anti-crypto movement should really push this example because it is really perfect. Before we consider key escrow, please explain exactly how physical key escrow was breached in New York and tell us how that will be prevented when the key in question isn't even something you have to physically get.

This should always be presented as an additional argument, though, not the only argument. Because an argument based solely on securing the backdoor implies that if it could be kept secure enough, there's no other reason not to do it. Even if we could somehow guarantee absolutely that the backdoor will only be used by the intended users, backdoors are still not acceptable. For much the same reason that it's not accept…