Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Address Conference on Cyber Security • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by mattnewton » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102

mattnewton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can also destroy evidence! This is already a crime we deal with. Encrypting and throwing away the key is deleting with more steps - in fact it is often an implementation detail of deletion in some software systems. It is already illegal, and already something our justice system deals with. No power grabs necessary.

> Sure, you can also destroy evidence! This is already a crime we deal with. That is just assuming the premise. Destruction of evidence is a crime, but destruction of private lawful communications is not. The FBI has no right to a married couple's sexting. The usual case for destruction of evidence is one of two things. Either they produce some emails where you're conspiring to destroy evidence, or that they catch yo…

The fact that the FBI has no right to a couple sexting without a warrant is exactly why encryption is fine. When they present evidence to a judge that there is something they need in those conversations to prove a crime, and get a warrant, then it becomes evidence in a criminal investigation.

IANAL or law enforcement, but I don’t see the problem with this system.

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

#122

Post by redisman » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

me_again wrote: post #15

yawboakye wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds to me like he's trying to kick off a conversation about how to go about making it difficult for the bad guys to hide behind encryption and other security products. It's really not an easy solution as there's very few bad guys we need to expose but many good people we need to protect, for reasons currently known and, more importantly, unknown. This one is a hard dichotomy that will be interesting to solve: (1)…

They can issue as many decrees as they like but they can't solve the problem with decrees any more than they can decree that water is dry. All they can decree is that it is illegal to use effective encryption, which would be, um, unfortunate.

Breaking encryption would cause breaches orders of magnitude more catastrophic than encrypted communications between bad guys.

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

#123

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #61

slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…

> For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. This doesn't matter. Our rights are not premised on the ultimate physical availability of any given piece of information. There's no "we can always break into the safe" provision of the 4th Amendment. Fundamentally, the government does not have the right to any piece of your information. A war…

I'm going to reply to myself and also point out that we don't require safe makers to make "breakable" safes.

Safe manufacturers make the strongest safes they can, and in parallel, the government develops their own capabilities to attack those safes to execute warrants.

The same thing is true for encryption. At its base theory, encryption is just math--but it is implemented in software, and software is imperfect. The government can, and does, attack devices to break encryption systems to get what it needs.

In fact, the Justice Department Inspector General found that the FBI did not go far enough in trying this, before it tried to sue Apple in 2016. And ultimately the FBI did get into that iPhone by breaking it.

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

#124

Post by jki275 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

thetrumanshow wrote: post #114

MrLeap wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Many people do that already, perfectly legally. Certainly some percentage would choose not to follow laws banning them.

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

#125

Post by athenot » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

Ultimately, enforcing agencies want privacy for themselves and transparency for everyone else. At the scale and speed of digital services, this asymmetry can go down very fast towards an authoritarian path.

There can only be 2 solutions:

- enshrine a right to privacy. Individuals should have a way to communicate in a way that is completely secure and free of evesdropping because they are believed to be innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, enforcement agencies should be granted the same to do their work.

- adopt symmetric transparency. Individuals will then be allowed to follow the intimate communications of any leaders or enforcement agencies, with the same level of ease. So if you want me to have to file a FOI to get info about an official, an equally difficult/time-consuming process should exist the other way around. OR if you want an officer to be able to monitor any individual in real time, then I should be able to monitor any officer in real time.

That second case should be automatic anytime the "nothing to hide" argument is invoked.

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

#126

Post by mattnewton » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #89

mattnewton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they already did, but in the layers they control, like Chinese apps and telecoms.

So, not that different from AT&T's infamous Room 641A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ).

Right, just with more people onboard and also owning the apps in user space.

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

#127

Post by jki275 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #36

ngngngng wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I can just refuse to decrypt my data. They can just break physical locks.

This is what a lot of people in our community seemingly refuse to recognize. For all intents and purposes, encryption is a unbreakable lock that can serve to perfectly hide valuable criminal evidence. Such a thing wasn't possible when our laws were written and has never before been possible in the physical world. Its existence has potential to be a huge shift in how we enforce the law. Regardless of our views on encr…

It's impossible to entertain this kind of absurdity -- there is no world in which you can effectively ban math.

The law can say anything it wants -- math is still math.

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

#128

Post by QuotedForTruth » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

thetrumanshow wrote: post #114

MrLeap wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some people would, yes. Especially rudimentary single shot weapons. However, its much harder to make a reliable gun than it is to make reliable tough encryption. There are designs available for both and there always will be, illegal or not. But making a gun is manufacturing whereas using encryption would just require installing some software. Trivial.

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

#129

Post by lisper » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #103

lisper wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could use the exact same argument for why you shot a police officer who broke down your door after securing a warrant. No, I couldn't. The operative word there is not "shoot", it's "warrant." The fourth amendment explicitly makes an exception for warrants. If the government has a warrant then I am legally bound to hand over my keys. If I don't, they can put me in prison for that.

Your initial comment seemed to imply that a warrant to break the encryption was "government overreach". If not, I don't see how what you originally posted is an argument against ways around encryption. The question is whether the government should be able to access this information and not whether the government can be trusted with access to that information. If your argument is the latter, than you are arguing again…

> Your initial comment seemed to imply that a warrant to break the encryption was "government overreach".

I have no idea how you could possibly reach this conclusion. My initial comment did not contain the word "warrant".

By "government overreach" I mostly meant spying on me without a warrant, e.g. the activities brought to light by Edward Snowden, and the common practice of seizing devices at the border.

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

#130

Post by rossng » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #120

Shared secret keys may work, with one key shard in the hands of the user themselves. That way a court order may compel the user to give up the key shard, but no govt. agency or other authority can unilaterally access the device.

Then the shard _is_ the secret key. The court has no more power to compel you to give it up than any other secret key. I'm not sure what you're proposing here.