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FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

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Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#171

Post by mnw21cam »

jjawssd wrote: post #15
adrr wrote: post #13

Putting in backdoors is sure fire way to kill US based mobile phone producers. Criminals will just use foreign produced phones and only way to counteract that is to outlaw those phones. Can't wait till they criminalize having certain firmware on your phones.

It's already a violation of the law to import and sell routers with unlocked firmware

Um. So, if I have a laptop, running Linux, with a built-in ethernet port, and plug in a USB ethernet adaptor, it is suddenly illegal to import it?

Crazy.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#172

Post by Arnt »

grandalf wrote: post #30

From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…

Comey is not just someone with a job at a particular organisation, he's also a servant of the state, and he is a citizen. Any servant of the state has a duty to the constitution. His job description comes second (or later).

It's not at all natural that he should argue for hollowing out the constitution, or favour the needs of own organisation over the rest of the state or over the entire society.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#173

Post by icantdrive55 »

mlindner wrote: post #105
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. In the 1950's it was s/terrorist/communist/, but it was a remarkably effective political tool. We might be in the same situation. But this time, our fates are all linked. Once shipping backdoors becomes mainstream, it might…

Most people I've met who work in security at large companies would rather lose their job than participate in the erasure of security for all. Apple showed this pretty obviously, but I think many companies would have most of their software engineers quit before accepting such a request, even if it was a direct order. The government cannot order you personally to write software, that's blatant first amendment violation…

I have found people like to claim they would do the ethical/moral thing, but from what I have seen; it's maybe 1 out of a thousand that will walk, especially when it comes to their job/career.

There's this weird denial that takes place. I see it in all professions.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#174

Post by dhimes »

cm2187 wrote: post #149
grandalf wrote: post #30

From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…

There are threats against the US that are more than a few crazy people. The rise of Islamism is real. But the reality is that the number of casualties due to terrorism in the US is dwarfed by those of gang or drug violence, even including 9/11 (which is now more than 15y ago...). We do not hear anyone suggesting restricting civil liberties to reduce gang violence. It is kind of a curious massively asymmetrical tolera…

We do not hear anyone suggesting restricting civil liberties to reduce gang violence. It is kind of a curious massively asymmetrical tolerance to crime.

The fear, of course, is such restrictions would be next. You start by going after the boogeymen, terrorists and pedophiles, then expand to gangs, then drug dealers, then political enemies, then....

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#175

Post by joncrocks »

aub3bhat wrote: post #147
aswanson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad driving and cardiac/obesity DO cause more than 10^6 deaths per annum and get no where near the proportionate political/media attention that terrorism does. There are 10x the deaths in auto accidents than the worst terrorist attack in US history every single year. The DHS budget alone dwarfs any proportional safety return that could be made by simply raising the legal driving age by a year.

>>The DHS budget alone dwarfs any proportional safety return that could be made by simply raising the legal driving age by a year. What?? What does legal driving age has to do with DHS budget? You are simply rambling, different mortality causes have different risk models. Or to explain simply you are comparing "Apples to Oranges".

I think what he's saying is that a disproportionate amount of time and money is spent on saving a tiny number of lives.

If your goal as a government is to minimise the number of lives lost that were preventable, then the argument is that there are many more effective ways of doing it other than spending huge amounts on security services.

I presume there's some stat somewhere that says that young drivers are more likely to be involved in fatal traffic accidents. No-one would claim that dying in these accidents is not tragic.

So if you were to raise the legal driving age by a year, you may end up saving lots of lives, and that would be a lot cheaper way of saving lives.

It's not a flawless argument, as one has to balance freedoms with restrictions and the fact that any historic analysis of attacks has to try and unpick the fact that security apparatus was in place in the past. Spending 0 money on security could have unforeseen consequences, and most people would accept that preparing and executing an attack would be easier.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#176

Post by AsyncAwait »

dntrkv wrote: post #126
grandalf wrote: post #30

From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…

The article specifically states that he doesn't want a backdoor: “We’ve had very good open and productive conversations with the private sector over the last 18 months about this issue, because everybody realizes we care about the same things. We all love privacy, we all care about public safety and none of us want backdoors — we don’t want access to devices built in in some way. What we want to work with the manufac…

No, he wants a "front-door", but it amounts to the same.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#177

Post by nkrisc »

miles wrote: post #125
gumby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. > In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. I really want to consider you paranoid, but sadly I strongly agree. This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country, but living through it is horrible. I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold Wa…

This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country ... I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold War (post "duck and cover") and somehow I was never able to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the threat was (and still very much is) real: Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war ht…

Those events, while very real dangers, were effects of the Cold War and the associated tension and paranoia, not the cause of it.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#178

Post by nkrisc »

C4K3 wrote: post #150
cm2187 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are threats against the US that are more than a few crazy people. The rise of Islamism is real. But the reality is that the number of casualties due to terrorism in the US is dwarfed by those of gang or drug violence, even including 9/11 (which is now more than 15y ago...). We do not hear anyone suggesting restricting civil liberties to reduce gang violence. It is kind of a curious massively asymmetrical tolera…

Terrorism can happen to anybody, that's the logic behind the asymmetry. "Regular" people see gang violence as something that can never happen to them.

Yes, this is it exactly. Terrorism is scary the same way a random murder in your neighborhood is scary.

Anecdote: I live in one of the lowest crime neighborhoods in Chicago. Every now and again though someone is shot in the area. The first thing I always wonder: was it random or was it gang/drug related? Nine of ten times it's the latter and I feel better because I don't associate with gangs or regularly participate in drug deals in a McDonald's parking lot at 4AM. It's scary when it's random because it's easy to think, "that could have been me, it could have been anyone."

That's why terrorism is scary (and that's why the terrorists do what they do). Of course protections should be in place, but there's simply only so much you can do before you're policing every aspect of everyone's life to prevent the tiniest chance that something happens to a tiny percentage of people. But, damn, is it scary.

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#179

Post by AsyncAwait »

bogositosius wrote: post #130
dntrkv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically states that he doesn't want a backdoor: “We’ve had very good open and productive conversations with the private sector over the last 18 months about this issue, because everybody realizes we care about the same things. We all love privacy, we all care about public safety and none of us want backdoors — we don’t want access to devices built in in some way. What we want to work with the manufac…

He says he doesn't want a backdoor and then spends all his time asking for one.

He is playing the word game, what a technical person might call a "backdoor" he will call a "front-door" or something else, so there's technically not a "backdoor" and he technically didn't lie, even if he wants what many of us geeks would indeed call a "backdoor". It's sort of how the NSA redefines the dictionary meaning of common sense words to mean something else, (for example something like: "surveillance" means breaking into someone's home to plant a bug in there, so technically almost no one is under that definition of "surveillance", even if capturing our emails, hacking webcams etc. would be considered surveillance as well, but since no one broke in to plant a physical bug, that's not "surveillance" - it's just a words game).

Re: FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

#180

Post by grandalf »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #160
grandalf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should try to think of some concrete steps to resist this. It feels like we have to try, since there's so much at stake. Great point. One idea I had recently is to start an organization in the same spirit as Open AI called OpenSurveillance that builds and releases all sorts of useful tools for thwarting surveillance efforts or acting as an adversary to an entity with pervasive surveillance power (generally speak…

>acting as an adversary to an entity with pervasive surveillance power (generally speaking, corrupt regimes around the world) >a user-friendly rootkit installer for easy installation >a program that trains a fleet of drones to follow a person all day, causes vehicle engine failure, etc. I'm afraid corrupt regimes would be the ones who benefit the most from such tools.

> I'm afraid corrupt regimes would be the ones who benefit the most from such tools.

They already do. But since the tools are under the radar there is not all that much pressure on technology firms to follow best practices.

For example, why don't we have fully auditable filesystems?

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