Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops

> What's the equivalent of thinking users are this stupid?

What's the equivalent of thinking security aficionados are clueless?

Security advice is dumb and detached from life, and puts ubdue burden on people that's not like anything else in life.

Sharing passwords is a feature, or rather a workaround because this industry doesn't recognize the concept of temporary delegation of authority, even though it's the basics of everyday life and work. That's what you do when you e.g. send your kid on a grocery run with your credit card.

Asking users to keep their 2FA recovery keys or disk encryption keys safe on their own - that's beyond ridiculous. Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes. Everything people are used to is fixable; there's always a recovery path for losing access to accounts or data. It may take time and might involve paying a notary or a court case, but there is always a way. But not so with encryption keys to your shitposts and vacation pictures in the cloud.

Why would you expect people to follow security advice correctly? It's detached from reality, dumb, and as Bitcoin showed, even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.

it's easy to design a system where the center doesn't have the key and thus can't be compelled.

but they didn't do so.

and it's surely just a coincidence, because m$ has always been such an ethical company.

and it's surely not by design to centralize power by locking out competing criminals from the user's data, but not themselves.

lol. truecrypt and veracrypt

Your credit card analogy is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it's carrying the wrong cargo. Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours". And; you know that you've done it, you have personally weighed the risks and if something happens with your card/key in that window: you can hold them to account. (granted, keys can be copied)

> Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes.

Brilliant examples of why you're wrong:

Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.

Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders. You've just argued for my position.

Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust. Microsoft's legal department is larger than most countries' regulators.

> even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.

Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours? The problem with Bitcoin isn't that keys are hard - it's that the UX is atrocious. The solution is better tooling, not surveillance capitalism with extra steps.

You're not arguing for usability. You're arguing that we should trust a massive corporation more than we trust ourselves, whilst simultaneously claiming users are too thick to keep a recovery key in a drawer. Pick a lane.

> nobody who is using Windows cares about encryption or even knows what it is!

Right, so the solution is to silently upload their encryption keys to Microsoft's servers without telling them? If users don't understand encryption, they certainly don't understand they've just handed their keys to a third party subject to government data requests.

> otherwise a regular user will happen to mess around with their bios one day and accidentally lock themselves permanently out of their computer.

This is such transparent fear-mongering. How often does this actually happen versus how often are cloud providers breached or served with legal requests? You're solving a hypothetical edge case by creating an actual security vulnerability.

Encryption by default and cloud key escrow are separate decisions. You can have one without the other. The fact that Microsoft chose both doesn't make the second one necessary, it makes it convenient for Microsoft.

> If you want regular FDE without giving Microsoft the key you can go ahead and do it fairly easily!

Then why isn't that the default with cloud backup as opt-in? Oh right, because then Microsoft wouldn't have everyone's keys.