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A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

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Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#51

Post by jpapon »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #36
russnewcomer wrote: post #8

Encryption backdoors are a lightning-rod topic on HN, but instead of repeating all the common-talking points, I'd suggest the following: Think through something like this, outside of your expertise, that you think the powers-that-be should just do. Maybe it's something with your local municipality's approach to road resurfacing, maybe it's the quarterback on your favorite football team, maybe it's your local zoning b…

>So politicians and intelligence services calling for encryption want, institutionally, to keep people safe. Why are they knowingly allowing people who fought for ISIS to return to Europe?

It's kind of a tricky legal situation. If they're European citizens, can you really stop them from coming back from Syria? What if they claim they didn't do anything illegal there?

People don't lose their rights just because they travel to the Middle East...

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#52

Post by ksmithbaylor »

geekamongus wrote: post #22
mangeletti wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is the same as gun control. If a technology exists, you cannot tell people to not use it; otherwise, all you've done is put law-abiding citizens at a competitive disadvantage while arming the bad guys. To argue otherwise is absolute ignorance.

That's not was said, though. Pera said that there's nothing you can do to force terrorists to use encryption containing a back door. You are saying that you can't tell people not to use something.

I think what mangeletti meant was that you can't force anyone not to use strong encryption if it exists.

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#54

Post by CM30 »

jpapon wrote: post #51
bobcostas55 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So politicians and intelligence services calling for encryption want, institutionally, to keep people safe. Why are they knowingly allowing people who fought for ISIS to return to Europe?

It's kind of a tricky legal situation. If they're European citizens, can you really stop them from coming back from Syria? What if they claim they didn't do anything illegal there? People don't lose their rights just because they travel to the Middle East...

Well, the UK government are trying to cancel people's citizenship if they go to Syria to fight for IS. But you're right, it's questionable, and it might be a legal hassle to do anything about this.

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#55

Post by marcosdumay »

iamsohungry wrote: post #44
iamsohungry wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So politicians and intelligence services calling for encryption want, institutionally, to keep people safe. How can tech companies do that without breaking or backdooring encryption? That's the real problem to solve, and the first person to figure out how to do that will be way ahead. I don't think this is a technical problem, and I don't think it's our responsibility to solve it. If the US wants to stop terrorism…

Anyone care to enlighten me as to why I'm being downvoted?

No idea. Also no idea why the GP isn't being downvoted.

Just because some politician claimed that it's tech's people responsibility to fix their flaws, it does not make it true.

It's repetitive, but the police did have all the information they needed to go after such people even before the murdering. What does the GP want? A machine that queries the news from the day after tomorrow? (Because tomorrow won't do - the police had warning that it would happen at the previous day.)

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#56

Post by petra »

pera wrote: post #4

> but debates about whether the technology should have a "back door" for intelligence services are heating up again What "debates"? there is absolutely nothing they can do to enforce terrorists to use backdoored encryption, any debate is just a waste of time, money, and maybe even lives. What are they thinking??

Once everybody only uses backdoored encryption, it becomes possible to detect those who use illegal encryption. And that's very valuable.

Of course there's the issue of steganography ,but i think it's technically and theoretically much harder than encryption - so maybe the balance of power there benefits intelligence agencies more than encryption.

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#57

Post by vonklaus »

tw04 wrote: post #48

I've gotta believe these organizations can find one or two developers among the billions of muslims on this planet. Why wouldn't they just write their own apps for android and call it a day?

The Mexican cartels captured and paid engineers to build them there own private cell network[0], so it isn't out of the realm of possibility that ISIS is doing something similar.

I am sure they have at least a few engineers kicking around what amounts to be an entire country. I haven't heard many people harping on about encryption, TBH, except people defending it here and that idotic NYT article.

However, if you had 10 amazing engineers you would likely have strike capabilities orders of magnitude higher than a few suicide bombers. So sure, gather surveillance, but let's play some defense. Shore up our infrastructure much better than we do now, because after they make their own apps and networks, they are going to come for ours potentially.

[0]http://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#58

Post by marcosdumay »

aninhumer wrote: post #40
coldtea wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we don't depend on the unavailability of nuclear bombs to the bad guys on them being "illegal".

No, we depend on the enforcement of that illegality, which is usually assumed when people discuss banning something. (EDIT: Previously said "making something illegal", which I realised was ambiguous.)

What, do you plan to make talking about crypto illegal too?

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#59

Post by ck2 »

api wrote: post #43
ck2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already knew about most of these people and had wiretaps on a couple of them.

Mohammed Atta was also a person of interest. This has always been the case and was the case all the way back to 9/11, and it illustrates why mass surveillance won't stop terror. How do you tell the difference between someone who will actually act and someone who holds beliefs that overlap with terrorist ideologies or who simply talks trash on the Internet and is never going to do anything? Any dragnet will simply dro…

Many of them are recruited in prison.

Just like American prisons where petty criminals learn to become more violent and escalate their crimes when they get out because prison offers nothing else for them.

Re: A Back Door to Encryption Won't Stop Terrorists

#60

Post by hbbio »

Apparently, the terrorists that attacked the concert hall in Paris last week were using... unencrypted text messages to communicate between themselves and/or their "boss".

According to the newspaper Liberation [1], they sent a text message at 9:42pm telling: "we're out we begin".

[1] http://www.liberation.fr/france/2015/11/18/la-piste-du-sms-e...

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