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More Encryption Is Not the Solution

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Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#31

Post by fab13n »

DennisP wrote: post #24
fab13n wrote: post #18

Encryption can be circumvented. It's hard, but doable for a state, when it targets one high-value suspect. But if everything is encrypted, they can't go "big data" on it and collect everything about everyone: if proper encryption is generalized, spying doesn't scale anymore. Big companies' ability to break the encryption between them an you is irrelevant: if they're the legitimate receiver of the communication, they…

Half the article is talking about scalable attacks on encryption. For example: "To an intelligence agency, a well-thought-out weakness can easily be worth a cover identity and five years of salary to a top-notch programmer. Anybody who puts in five good years on an open source project can get away with inserting a patch that 'on further inspection might not be optimal.'" I agree we should continue this arms race but…

> a well-thought-out weakness can easily be worth [a lot]

Indeed, but my point is, in addition to be worth a lot, it's difficult to implement, and it's very fragile. Every time they use it, they gamble its secrecy, hence its effectiveness. So they won't use it for petty reasons, only for genuine national security matters.

The problem isn't that NSA works on ensuring national security: it's that the scope of what they consider national security, and thus justifies extra-legal measures in their eyes, grows unreasonably, becoming a threat to the robustness of democracy.

A spy agency's ideal environment is totalitarian, not democratic. For a starter, they're scared of free speech and accountability. There must be counter-powers, cancelling their natural tendency to push towards totalitarianism (this is in no way specific to the USA).

> If they decide they don't like you there are all sorts of other ways [than courts] they can screw with you.

Yes, but those ways don't scale. You can screw with a couple of people you dislike, but not with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#32

Post by tribaal »

qnr wrote: post #21

This viewpoint became very popular recently and it strikes me as odd. Does the author always leave his house unlocked because there is a law against theft? "Your" nation state over which you presumably have some degree of political control is absolutely not the only adversary. There are foreign states, there are cybercrime gangs etc. Also, while politics sometimes trumps cryptography, the opposite happens just as oft…

On top of that, increasing encryption definitely helps for mass surveillance - it's impractical to break all the keys for all the messages all the time.

Maybe they will still be able to spy on a select few individuals (just like they can order a locksmith to open a safe, or just blowtorch through). But then again, there are much cheaper and old school ways to spy on a select few individuals

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#34

Post by spellboots »

> Several nation-states, most notably the United Kingdom, have enacted laws that allow the police to jail suspects until they reveal the cryptographic keys to unlock their computers. Such laws open a host of due process and civil rights issues that we do not need to dwell on here. For now it is enough to note that such laws can be enacted and enforced.

Doesn't steganography mitigate this issue if used properly?

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#35

Post by DanBC »

One worrying thing about more encryption is that there is a sudden flurry of more bad encryption. Many products are trivially easy to break. (If I can break them any idiot can break them.)

The combinations[1] mean that many people are not protected, and do not know that they are not protected.

I think that I tend to avoid paranoia. But (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6132613) and the Debian rng bug (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/random_number...) are scary.

[1] Good products used carefully; good products used carelessly; bad products used carefully; bad products used carelessly.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#36

Post by Nrsolis »

fab13n wrote: post #18

Encryption can be circumvented. It's hard, but doable for a state, when it targets one high-value suspect. But if everything is encrypted, they can't go "big data" on it and collect everything about everyone: if proper encryption is generalized, spying doesn't scale anymore. Big companies' ability to break the encryption between them an you is irrelevant: if they're the legitimate receiver of the communication, they…

I think the take-away from this article is that the political/legal environment is part of implementation detail you need to consider when considering a "private" communication mechanism.

No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen. In the case where one of those parties is well-known and has something to lose, you can be certain that the powers-that-be will focus their attention on that party. (nb: Skype)

SO yeah, crypto en masse will make casual collection harder, but it's not even halfway towards what is needed. There has to be an awareness of the downside to reduced privacy that can be tangibly grasped by the populace otherwise we're all pissing in the wind. Any crypto-system that requires anything approaching trade-craft on the part of the user is probably going to fail miserably.

I was fresh out of the military when the USG was proposing the widespread deployment of the "Clipper" chip that included key-escrow as a fundamental feature for LEA access to keys. That failed, but I would not be surprised to hear that we got it anyway through quiet "arrangements" with major crypto-system equipment/software providers.

Have YOU inspected your CPU/Firmware/OS/Applications for backdoors? Even with the full source code?

It's a hard problem and requires a lot more than just neat technology to solve. In fact, it probably can't be solved with technology at all.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#37

Post by akie »

bigiain wrote: post #17
akie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a political solution is strongly preferable, but I'm not sure if that's ever going to happen. The only reason that the NSA can listen in on your Facebook, Google, Skype (etc) activity is because: 1. These communication tools are operated by a company under American jurisdiction, that can therefore be strong-armed into cooperation 2. These communication tools store your data unencrypted 3. The world outsi…

That's mostly true - but in the Facebook example (and Twitter, and to a much lesser extent gmail and Skype) - the whole purpose of using the service for most people is to be at least partially "public". Facebook wouldn't work if every message was encrypted - at least not unless it was encrypted in such a way that a large number of nodes on your social graph can all decrypt them. If my ~250 Facebook friends or ~500 Tw…

You make two good points, but only the first one is structural. How do you keep information secure if it's meant to be semi-public? That's a rather fundamental question, and I don't have an answer to it. There must be a better way than storing everything in plain text in a centralized database, though.

Just think about it: the current communication tools store all the world's communication in plain text databases on American soil. No wonder the NSA engineered access to it - it is a prize too good to be true. I think we can and should at least try to change that.

Regarding the availability and use of PGP key pairs and related technology: you're right. Almost no one uses them, save for security enthusiasts. They're difficult to use, overly technical, make you feel like a paranoid conspiracy theorist and are frankly a pain. Those are all issues that could be overcome, though. There are no real, actual, structural reasons why good security has to be difficult to use.

But what I'm really wondering about is the best way forward. Like I said, I would strongly prefer a political solution, but I'm skeptical if that will ever pan out. I've been mulling this for a while, and if we would really want decentralized, encrypted, open source means of communications, shouldn't we take a structural approach to this?

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#38

Post by mikkom »

fab13n wrote: post #18

Encryption can be circumvented. It's hard, but doable for a state, when it targets one high-value suspect. But if everything is encrypted, they can't go "big data" on it and collect everything about everyone: if proper encryption is generalized, spying doesn't scale anymore. Big companies' ability to break the encryption between them an you is irrelevant: if they're the legitimate receiver of the communication, they…

> Encryption can be circumvented. It's hard, but doable for a state, when it targets one high-value suspect. But if everything is encrypted, they can't go "big data" on it and collect everything about everyone

That's what they (NSA) actually are doing/trying to do right now, collecting everything about everyone and decrypting it later when/if needed.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-ns...

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#39

Post by Spooky23 »

fab13n wrote: post #31
DennisP wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the article is talking about scalable attacks on encryption. For example: "To an intelligence agency, a well-thought-out weakness can easily be worth a cover identity and five years of salary to a top-notch programmer. Anybody who puts in five good years on an open source project can get away with inserting a patch that 'on further inspection might not be optimal.'" I agree we should continue this arms race but…

> a well-thought-out weakness can easily be worth [a lot] Indeed, but my point is, in addition to be worth a lot, it's difficult to implement, and it's very fragile. Every time they use it, they gamble its secrecy, hence its effectiveness. So they won't use it for petty reasons, only for genuine national security matters. The problem isn't that NSA works on ensuring national security: it's that the scope of what they…

The problem isn't NSA. It's the President(s) and Congress who define the scope. Call me naive, but I think that most of the folks at NSA, even many of the leaders, are patriots who believe that they are protecting their country.
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