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Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

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Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#111

Post by sb057 »

pgodzin wrote: post #99

> The Department has made clear what we are seeking. We believe that when technology providers deploy encryption in their products, services, and platforms they need to maintain an appropriate mechanism for lawful access. This means a way for government entities, when they have appropriate legal authority, to access data securely, promptly, and in an intelligible format, whether it is stored on a device or in transmi…

Is "technologists" a new term for someone who has a basic understanding of how math and computers function?

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#112

Post by jamesmadison66 »

The discussion on this from the pro-encryption team has to move towards explaining it in terms of national security, as national security is the reasoning the anti-encryption group uses.

National security is a major trump card across parties and administration, and will have to be responded to versus ignored, as that's where the argument is coming from.

It's easy enough to explain that Russia has mathematicians, ISIS has mathematicians the same way they had chemical engineers for the oil fields, China/PLA has mathematicians, etc.

The same fear mongering that is allowing an anti-encryption argument to advance can be used to fear monger right back towards encryption and be based in truth: Russia and terrorists can access my chats.

For the pro-encryption crowd, we know this is actually feasible technically and the end result of backdoors. We just have to explain it on common ground, where the argument lives.

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#113

Post by snuxoll »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #50
mbrumlow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you can be compelled to remember something you forgot. And nobody can tell you if you remember or not, or if you will ever remember again. So no, some judge may try to hold you in contempt of court, and it may work for a while, but at some point -- if you have a good lawyer it will turn in to a civil rights issue. Also, you could plead the 5th as well. NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and these are just my opin…

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...

It’s important to point out in this case the stated reason for the contempt charge is the “foregone conclusion” that there IS child porn on those encrypted drives, not the mere existence of encrypted drives with what could contain anything.

Police can’t compel you to provide a combination to a lock (encryption key) to go on a fishing expedition, but if they KNOW the safe contains illegal contents then you can be held in contempt for not providing it (they already know it’s in there).

Without spending forever delving into the case record I can’t comment on whether they should really have a high enough certainty that the drive does contain CP, but the argument in this specific case does match our interpretation of the 5th amendment when it comes to physical locks.

This is a good argument WHY encryption is important, however. Backdooring crypto would allow law enforcement to fish through everything they want with wanton disregard for the fifth amendment, instead of needing to build up a suitable case for illegal acts being committed with standard investigatory techniques. This right here is how the system SHOULD work.

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#114

Post by thetrumanshow »

MrLeap wrote: post #88
daveslash wrote: post #71

Modern encryption is really just math. Cryptography in consumer and off-the-shelf products (which Barr is targeting with his discussion) theoretically _could_ be modified in such a way that the government could decrypt it. The two ways of which I can think are (1) Encryption "backdoors" -- fancy math known only to the government; this would require new encryption ciphers or (b) key escrow. Both approaches have their…

Breaking encryption for the government is so furiously stupid it blows my mind every time it is suggested. Especially here, where people actually give the idea merit. It makes me miss oldschool /. where 100% of everyone was on the same page. Your point illustrates a huge reason as to why. Backdooring stupid.crypt and forcing law abiding people to use it just insures that big badguys will use any other kind of encrypt…

> This argument has merit, but if we DID amend out #2 and make guns illegal, over time firearm proliferation would decrease.

Hmm, then wouldn't some people just make their own firearms, just as you are describing with encryption, right?

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#116

Post by dewaine »

awakeasleep wrote: post #95
api wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, but I think encryption backdoors are more possible than people think. The target here is not nerds able to pull code from GitHub or run open source or enterprise software. The target here is consumer stuff by companies like Apple and Google. The government doesn't want it to be easy to do end-to-end encryption. For the average user, easy equals possible. The average user has neither the time nor the…

The scenario you described accomplishes both goals. By banning 'the masses' from using encrypted communications, it'll sort the haystack and everyone who continues to do so can be profiled, plus they're already involved in illegal behavior.

You better believe I would start streaming random data all over the internet just to be an asshole

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#117

Post by emiliobumachar »

mnm1 wrote: post #41

Either pass a law to do this or shut the fuck up. No one cares about his opinion and the justice department itself has no way to enforce this without a law being passed first which is not their purview. Otherwise this fucking moron should shut the fuck up because he clearly doesn't understand the technology and the rest of us are not interested in his stupid fucking rantings.

He's actively trying to pass such a law, in case this isn't obvious.

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#118

Post by redisman »

shawnz wrote: post #43
smacktoward wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of Bill Barr, but I don't read this that way, no. It reads to me more like he's saying that from a planning perspective it's better to figure the worst thing that could happen and have a plan already developed that could handle that, rather than being caught by surprise and then having law and policy made in a mad, panicked rush. (In other words, let's not do with cybersecurity policy what we did with coun…

> have a plan already developed that could handle that But... we do have a plan, which is to just not do it in spite of any crisis or whatever. He is misleadingly framing it here like we don't have the ability to backdoor encryption which has never been the problem. He clearly states that what we need to be weary about is public opinion changing , which is basically like saying that we should just get ready to compro…

Barr's is really just the same reasoning used for the Patriot Act. Something really bad could happen unless everyone gives up X rights.

Re: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security

#119

Post by wurst_case »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #109
daveslash wrote: post #71

Modern encryption is really just math. Cryptography in consumer and off-the-shelf products (which Barr is targeting with his discussion) theoretically _could_ be modified in such a way that the government could decrypt it. The two ways of which I can think are (1) Encryption "backdoors" -- fancy math known only to the government; this would require new encryption ciphers or (b) key escrow. Both approaches have their…

>are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal? If that's really what's being proposed, I'd urge people to consider "Illegal Numbers" and how effective that's been. I keep seeing this "implausibility" of enforcing illegal encryption brought up, and I really think it's wishful thinking. If such encryption algorithms ever are made illegal in some manner, it will be trivial for the government to get th…

True, and this should frighten everyone. You'd be a suspected terrorist or criminal for using a VPN or tor or any foreign service that doesnt use the gov approved crypt. As long as you stayed out of the limelight and kept your head down you'd be fine. But if anyone looked into your activity, it would be easy to determine that you weren't using gov-crypt. This is inheritely authoritarian.
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