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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

#201

Post by masscrypteria »

kyboren wrote: post #200
masscrypteria wrote: post #153

There’s no discussion of how to build exceptional access encryption that solves the weakening issue, just that it “can’t be done”. The spirit of this initiative in 2019 is likely more about stopping strong encryption at scale, which is certain to be a frustrating black hole for LEO and the IC. Perhaps HN would do well to ask how to solve the problem from a technical perspective, given the requirements. This includes…

> This includes both how to build a better mousetrap (one that doesn’t have a “backdoor” or significantly weakens the encryption mechanism), and how to solve concerns about abuse of exceptional access. There is a simple way to solve concerns about abuse of "exceptional access": Not to include any "exceptional access" mechanisms. Securely implementing a cryptosystem is a daunting task almost never achieved. Intentiona…

Let’s leave politics and assumptions about me out of it, please.

Same point: figure out a technological and procedural solution to the human attack vector. If “security professionals” all agree on ideology or theory that it’s not possible and thus refuse to help solve the problem, then exceptional access solutions generally will be worse off for it. It’s independent of whether they actually are deployed.

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

#202

Post by thomastjeffery »

inetknght wrote: post #135
cortesoft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I happen to agree with you, I think it's important to distinguish the two:

What A.G. Barr is insinuating is to regulate algorithms.

Copyright is regulation of implementations.

For example, GPG is a software implementation of encryption algorithms. It has a copyright (used as the basis for its copyleft license). RSA, however, is an algorithm: a mathematical reality that can be described by copyrighted works, but never itself copyrighted.

A.G. Barr has expressed a desire to compel every American who implements that algorithm to do so incorrectly.

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

#203

Post by thomastjeffery »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #134
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.

There is an important distinction here:

Encrypted data is information.

Encryption algorithms are math. Math can be expressed with data, but the immutable intangible reality that is being expressed is not information, nor property.

By your logic, the government can argue banning encrypted data, and encryption algorithm implementations.

The latter hits close to the mark of what A.G. Barr is insinuating. It would still be a significant for a government, especially the U.S. government, to ban the implementation of specific algorithms. That would equate to banning the writing of specific mathematical formulae, which is equivalent to censoring speech.

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

#204

Post by JudgeWapner »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #203
JudgeWapner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is an important distinction here: Encrypted data is information. Encryption algorithms are math. Math can be expressed with data, but the immutable intangible reality that is being expressed is not information, nor property. By your logic, the government can argue banning encrypted data , and encryption algorithm implementations . The latter hits close to the mark of what A.G. Barr is insinuating. It would stil…

I agree, and I could have been more precise. I highly doubt we'll live in a world where the AES algorithm or source code or even binaries is illegal. The crime will simply be if the gov can show you were using information-hiding practices illegally, such as without an adequate key escrow system (for a large-scale deployments) or refusing to decrypt communications when asked to by LE.

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

#205

Post by [deleted] »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #202
inetknght wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I happen to agree with you, I think it's important to distinguish the two: What A.G. Barr is insinuating is to regulate algorithms . Copyright is regulation of implementations . For example, GPG is a software implementation of encryption algorithms. It has a copyright (used as the basis for its copyleft license). RSA, however, is an algorithm: a mathematical reality that can be described by copyrighted works, b…

[deleted]

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

#206

Post by nixpulvis »

braythwayt wrote: post #199
salawat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are not illegal per se. Words uttered in a situational context that renders them of immediate harm are illegal. I can say "Fire!" in a theater while giving a lecture or putting on a show. I cannot knowingly claim the theatre is on fire when it isn't to cause a panic. Point is, it is not the Word or content that is illegal. It is the union of word and context that is illegal. Subtle difference, but it's the only…

I agree with you, and make the same point about numbers. The number is not illegal, it’s the number in conjunction with a situational context that is illegal. We may disagree with the intent of the law, but the argument that we are making numbers illegal, or math illegal, is parallel to the argument that other laws make words illegal.

Ha but when a number is uniformly "random", and the context is lost, as in it's just a bunch of bits floating around in storage, what argument is there?

Ok maybe you could catch me attempting to decrypt it, and be like "gotcha, that was in fact a secret!" But I'd reckon it would be more effective to simply wait until you finish decrypting the data, and simply take it from you.

If there are going to be laws around this, it's sure to be very pathological, and scary.

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

#207

Post by nixpulvis »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #204
thomastjeffery wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an important distinction here: Encrypted data is information. Encryption algorithms are math. Math can be expressed with data, but the immutable intangible reality that is being expressed is not information, nor property. By your logic, the government can argue banning encrypted data , and encryption algorithm implementations . The latter hits close to the mark of what A.G. Barr is insinuating. It would stil…

I agree, and I could have been more precise. I highly doubt we'll live in a world where the AES algorithm or source code or even binaries is illegal. The crime will simply be if the gov can show you were using information-hiding practices illegally, such as without an adequate key escrow system (for a large-scale deployments) or refusing to decrypt communications when asked to by LE.

I guess that's one way to take over the tech industry.

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

#208

Post by nixpulvis »

cal5k wrote: post #85
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…

Well no, here's another inaccessible bit of information: face-to-face conversations where there are no recording devices present. Hence the importance of testimony in a criminal investigation. Should we now require all buildings to, by law, record audio conversations in case such conversations might one day be "needed" by law enforcement? Or perhaps there are other ways to perform targeted wiretaps?

You mean your Google home?

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

#209

Post by youareostriches »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #185
youareostriches wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really quite incredible how these subversions of our privacy (even including blatant disregard for the constitution) are rarely questioned when it comes to preventing terrorism, but when it comes to mass shootings that have actually killed far more people in the US, those guns are sacred objects. But notice how the label of “terrorist” is uniquely applied to the ethnic “other”, and now consider the first real gu…

It's not incredible at all if you understand that all the power in the world is ultimately derived from people with guns.

In case it wasn’t already blatantly obvious, my point is that terrorism in the US is fundamentally associated with “brown” people, and elicits the most immediate and direct attention from governments, whereas mass shootings are almost always committed by white men, and even the worst mass shootings against children elicit no real action.

But yes, guns have been regulated in the past — when? After the Black Panther party brought open carry weapons to the state capitol during a protest.

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

#210

Post by braythwayt »

nixpulvis wrote: post #206
braythwayt wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and make the same point about numbers. The number is not illegal, it’s the number in conjunction with a situational context that is illegal. We may disagree with the intent of the law, but the argument that we are making numbers illegal, or math illegal, is parallel to the argument that other laws make words illegal.

Ha but when a number is uniformly "random", and the context is lost, as in it's just a bunch of bits floating around in storage, what argument is there? Ok maybe you could catch me attempting to decrypt it, and be like "gotcha, that was in fact a secret!" But I'd reckon it would be more effective to simply wait until you finish decrypting the data, and simply take it from you. If there are going to be laws around thi…

If I have a random number without context, how is it illegal by itself? It isn’t.

If the context around the number is that it is stored in a .mkv file with a name that looks like a Disney property, or a .key file attached to a program that uses such things for some kind of encryption the government unwisely bans, well, the number suddenly has context around it that makes an argument about the number and the context.

Same for words, really. Words about a threat to a government leader are probably fine in a text file that looks like a short story. Those same words in combination with a history of advocating violent revolution, &c. might make for a different argument.

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