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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

#71

Post by fweespeech »

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. 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.

Its not a tech problem or a solvable problem in the way you imply. It sounds reasonable but it is like solving lightning strikes. You can't actually "solve" lightning.

You can reduce the causalities through reasonable precautions but people are still going to die.

Its frankly irrational to talk about this problem as an actual problem. Terrorism is less dangerous to me than preventable medical errors for fuck's sake.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-...

> In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media.

> In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.

> Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

Shaving 1% off 98,000 deaths a year will save more people than preventing the Paris attack.

How the fuck is it rational to be focusing on anything other than major causes of preventable deaths?

Sorry, honestly, at this point I'm just disgusted with anyone who suggests terrorism is a threat worth throwing billions of dollars and lives away on while they casually ignore far more dangerous sources of human deaths.

Get back to me when funding preventable harm in medical care is worth hundreds of billions of government funding.

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

#72

Post by mike_hearn »

buffportion wrote: post #47
SeanDav wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the UK, there are very strong gun controls - and guess what, there has not been a single mass shooting incident since these gun controls were introduced - whereas in the USA there seems to be mass shooting incidents every other month. EDIT I should have said mass shootings incidents in the UK are extremely rare, but of course not impossible because people can still legally keep shotguns and rifles.

France also has very strong gun controls. It is of course, more complicated than that. And, by the way, a man shot and killed 12 people in the UK in 2010 with legally held rifles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

France's gun controls are looser than the UK's, but more importantly they don't have a defensible border. Laws are one thing: successful implementation of them is something quite different. The EU has a very weak border in general and especially once former eastern bloc countries joined Schengen, stockpiles of former Soviet weapons overnight went from one side of the border to the other.

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

#73

Post by mc32 »

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, it's an opinion, however, many nations have suppressed many other nations and it's historically atypical for the aggrieved to lash out to others of indirect involvement. Have Congolese (after the conflict ended) gone and bombed Belgium, or why not Albania, who had no relation to Belgium's involvement?

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

#74

Post by mike_hearn »

helicon wrote: post #25

The IRA were known to recruit top stem students from universities in Ireland during their campaign to make bombs. Surely an entity as large and as well financed and ISIS would have little trouble finding bright young engineers & technologists sympathetic to their cause to simply build their own encrypted services? And then so much for the spooks 'backdoors'

Because PGP has been so successful?

The tactic you're suggesting has been tried before (the software was called Asrar, I think). It doesn't work well for them, for a couple of reasons:

1) Custom terrorist software is no easier to use than something more mainstream like PGP, but is a lot more incriminating if you're found to be using it.

2) Is it really made by fellow jihadis? Or is it a backdoored plant by western intelligence? How can you know?

The latter question is a bigger issue than you'd expect. Terrorists don't like to helpfully announce their real names and backgrounds on their websites, so the provenance of jihadi software is frequently unknown. It just sort of floats around on the internet. So it can be much harder to trust than just a plain old copy of PGP.

You might think that IS can solve these problems because it's bigger and more organised than a group like al-Qaeda. But it's not like IS has an official website with a nice SSL certificate and a big download button (CA's will generally not sell to sanctioned entities). They use networks of ad hoc and quickly suspended twitter accounts to communicate, and apparently, Telegram. So for them to distribute custom crypto software wouldn't be easy.

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

#75

Post by caskance »

coldtea wrote: post #15

How about this: we assume terrorists can fucking talk covertly whenever they like (since there are myriads of channels and codes that they can use) and that mass surveillance is not the way to catch them plotting their next act. And from then on, ONLY use surveillance on specific targets under investigation. And while at it, maybe even have a limit on the number of targets each agency can investigate, so they chose t…

Surveillance on specific targets is only useful if we are allowed to assume that surveillance sometimes works.

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

#76

Post by l0stb0y »

I always assume these types of stories are red herrings and intelligence agencies already have back doors or decryption methods that they want to keep hush. Make a big song and dance about how encryption is secure and push criminals towards it, meanwhile its a trap. Look at all the Tor takedowns as evidence. It's all fine by me really.

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

#77

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

I generally agree with your tack... I just want to grow out there that I'm a little concerned about our use of the word shrill. It means high pitched and piercing, and is typically used for women's voices for obvious reasons. There's nothing actually bad about being shrill... That just means you are a woman (high pitched) whose message is getting through (piercing). There's no similar word for men who are being heard and the listener is uncomfortable with it, that I know of.

It's often used as code for "a woman is speaking, plz ignore" the same way bitch is.

I would just politely suggest you use a more descriptive word for what you were alluding to.

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

#78

Post by caskance »

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?

It's not a productive line of argument. We want to keep doing those things. Might as well say that the solution to traffic accidents is for everyone to stop driving.

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

#79

Post by Retra »

iamsohungry wrote: post #27
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. 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…

The US doesn't have to be harming countries to be the target of terrorists, it only has to be thought to. So unless your alternative is for the US to go out there and forcibly quell all dissenting speech...

People are good at having enemies, whether they deserve them or not. There are people who would kill me right now having done nothing particularly wrong. There are even places where it is legal and encouraged to do so.

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

#80

Post by uptown »

stcredzero wrote: post #6
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??

> there is absolutely nothing they can do to enforce terrorists to use backdoored encryption, I suppose they could deceive the public and put something in without telling us. That would be a real improvement! Oh wait,...Snowden... The more I hear about what Diane Feinstein proposes in areas outside her expertise, the more I wish someone would defeat her in an election. She keep proposing stupid stuff that sounds good…

Watch this clip around 1:48. According to Diane Feinstein, she seems to imply that she sensed 9/11 was coming:

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/is-isis-video-abou...

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