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

justice.gov

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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by jki275 »

btouellette wrote: post #53
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…

Courts have ruled that providing a password to decrypt something is not in itself testimony and isn't protected by the 5th amendment. Judges can certainly hold you in court indefinitely on a contempt of court charge as well. Considering the nature of the charges that this typically comes up in (see Francis Rawls) I wouldn't count on trying to make it a civil rights issue doing much in your favor.

Other courts have ruled the other way on that. It is not settled law.

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

#133

Post by ianai »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #87
phkahler wrote: post #20

He claims encryption is "warrant proof" which is not true. You can have a court order someone to open the lock. They want the ability to dig through people's stuff without them knowing. That's what it's really about.

With how prevalent parallel construction has become it seems obvious that any encryption backdoor would be immediately exploited as soon as law enforcement had even the slightest justification to poke around. If they find something, you can be sure they'll come up with a legal way to arrest you for it. If they find nothing, oh well, better luck next time. Not like you'll ever know they were even there (probably).

Do you have a good reference for more info on parallel construction?

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

#134

Post by JudgeWapner »

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…

For centuries, the law has recognized information as property. Encryption is just a transform of information. The government can argue that they're simply banning certain types of property - something they've done for at least 100 years, maybe longer.

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

#135

Post by inetknght »

cortesoft wrote: post #107
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…

I totally get what you are saying, but it is quite the rabbit hole if we determine that 'we can't have any illegal number... everyone should be able to share any number with anyone else' That basically means we have to entirely get rid of copyright, since all data (books, movies, software, corporate secrets, state secrets, etc) are just very large numbers. Do we believe that there should be no restriction on the shar…

Care to run down that rabbit hole? I happen to think copyright is a concept which is intrinsically broken with the advent of modern computing power and connectivity.

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

#136

Post by AcerbicZero »

ianai wrote: post #133
AcerbicZero wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how prevalent parallel construction has become it seems obvious that any encryption backdoor would be immediately exploited as soon as law enforcement had even the slightest justification to poke around. If they find something, you can be sure they'll come up with a legal way to arrest you for it. If they find nothing, oh well, better luck next time. Not like you'll ever know they were even there (probably).

Do you have a good reference for more info on parallel construction?

No not really, as its more something I've read about on/off over the years, in a variety of articles, and I am by no means an expert.

The wikipedia article on the topic does have some decent links to specific examples from reputable sources and is probably a good place to start - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

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

#137

Post by MrLeap »

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?

Sure, and you'd be hard pressed to get a lot of people to give up firearms they already own. If you sent agents door to door, statistically some result in conflicts to the death with people that weeks earlier were considered law abiding.

Can you imagine asking every gun owner/computer owner to go to their local police station to surrender their guns/functional encryption?

That would be pretty spooky to me.

Not trying to make this a gun control debate, but for the longest time encryption was considered a munition, so it's not THAT non sequitur.

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

#138

Post by AndrewKemendo »

phkahler wrote: post #20

He claims encryption is "warrant proof" which is not true. You can have a court order someone to open the lock. They want the ability to dig through people's stuff without them knowing. That's what it's really about.

A warrant doesn't decrypt a message, a person does.

Barr is specifically addressing cases where people refuse orders to decrypt their phones or messages and just go to jail instead. That's what he means by warantless.

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

#139

Post by SkyBelow »

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…

>In these discussions about the government being able to decrypt stuff, are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal?

All images are binary. All binary is just a number. We have made many such numbers illegal and even have software that will detect them and report you when you share the number with such number sharing services (dropbox, facebook, etc).

So making math illegal sounds entirely possible.

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

#140

Post by adamc »

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 always been possible, and frequent. People have had innumerable conversations relevant to criminal intent, and refused to divulge information on them. The founders were certainly aware of that when the Fifth Amendment was added to the constitution.

It was the development of telephone communication, and warrants for wiretapping, that first made such private communications accessible to the government.

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