Why Outlawing Encryption Is Wrong - InformationWeek

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Comments
Why Outlawing Encryption Is Wrong
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ashepard233
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ashepard233,
 User Rank: Apprentice
11/3/2014 | 4:59:36 PM
Founding Fathers believed in strong encryption.
  Founding fathers of America used strong, very strong encryption that was not broken untill 1942 with Alan Touring's computer at Blechly park.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk

    "First invented by Thomas Jefferson in 1795, this cipher did not become well known and was independently invented by Commandant Etienne Bazeries, the conqueror of the Great Cipher, a century later. The system was used by the United States Army from 1923 until 1942 as the M-94.  "

    Imagine using encryption that would not be broken for over 100 years or past our death.
 
    Even if it is encrypted, message traffic shows connections of criminals. Enough for law enforcement to figure out who might be a bad guy.

   People use hard encryption now. The FBI put out a call for people who speak ebonics because the FBI does not. "Damn, the shizzel dog." (in English - "It is true my friend")

   A new worry. What happens when a person tells the truth "I forgot the key" and they can not un-encrypt a message under court order?  How many times do we forget passwords of systems we are using let alone a message encrypted years ago.

  This is still a new area of law IMO.
PaulS681
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PaulS681,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/25/2014 | 5:28:21 PM
Crazyness
This is just crazy. The FBI is admitting they can't decrypt everything so the answer is outlaw any encryption it can't decrypt? The crazy part is how do they plan to enforce this? Or do they think the bad guys will help them out?

 
asksqn
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asksqn,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/25/2014 | 1:40:30 PM
Freeh Redux
Considering that Comey & co.'s fairy tale villans of the Infopocalypse have been debunked time and again with facts, it is comical that he continues to speak against encryption.   Further, it is clear that he does not grasp the concept of encryption since he attempts to pay lip service to the Fourth Amendment and then immediately contradicts himself.  We've seen this struggle over encryption in the 90s when Louie Freeh as director so all this happening now is just warmed over crap with the government desperately hoping to usurp civil liberties in the name of apprehending child molesting terrorists who kidnap. (and probably have ebola just to add to the FBIs FUD.)  Same lot of lies, different decade.
PedroGonzales
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PedroGonzales,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/23/2014 | 10:59:23 AM
Re: Agreed
I agree that allowing for back doors in current encryption systems is a terrible idea.  From all the info we have found out about the NSA they don't need a back door, they already can and did access our data.  I understand the point that government employees are people too with their good and bad traits.  A bad employee can really do huge damage to a person or entity by access such information through a back door. 
Brian.Dean
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Brian.Dean,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/23/2014 | 9:33:03 AM
Re: Agreed
Encryption is an on-going business, it has to be on-going otherwise security standards will not increase and businesses will not be able to protect their customers. It hurts the economy if data is compromised, Target and Home Depot are a few examples -- carrying cash is a waste of human time resources as each additional trip to the ATM is not adding anything to the GDP.

The number of players in the market that are developing encryption is too large, collecting and securing back-door keys from each firm is going to cost a government. Keys will need to be collected from firms that are operating outside the economic region. Keys will need to be shared with other economic regions as well, because their governments also want to catch their bad guys.

One solution could be that the government should setup a super computer facility for decryption (that will cost lot of capital). This way, law enforcement agencies could queue the facility much like scientists would queue for super computer resources to run their models. It would be transparent because lots of people would be involved, for instance, a judge making the decision that a certain user's information should be decrypted and next, an IT team viewing and decrypted data.

If anyone has a solution, please do share it with us.
Joe Stanganelli
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Joe Stanganelli,
 User Rank: Author
10/23/2014 | 2:06:55 AM
Boo-hooism
This whole thing is ridiculous.  Yes, it makes their job "more difficult" -- in the sense that closed/locked doors, coat pockets, and the Fourth Amendment make their job "more difficult."
Joe Stanganelli
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Joe Stanganelli,
 User Rank: Author
10/23/2014 | 2:05:21 AM
Re: Agreed
Indeed, the point about good eggs and bad eggs is well taken.

I had a client whose ex-wife left him for a local cop.

Surprise, surprise, he was not treated well by local police after that.
mak63
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50%
mak63,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/22/2014 | 6:41:48 PM
Let's get real
"FBI Director James Comey is making the news rounds to equate data encryption with letting child pornographers, kidnappers, and terrorists roam unchecked."

How many times we heard this argument in the past? It's getting old. Congress will never pass such a law. Doing so will hindered our rights under the constitution.

Let me be the first to laugh.

Yanda
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Yanda,
 User Rank: Apprentice
10/22/2014 | 6:41:20 PM
Re: Agreed
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Which my twelve year old daughter translated as, "who will clean up after these custodians?". Will the FBI director insist on everybody removing their bedroom curtains next? After all, only criminals want to conceal anything from him.
Thomas Claburn
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Thomas Claburn,
 User Rank: Author
10/22/2014 | 6:39:17 PM
Re: Agreed
Worst of all is the deja vu...we already had this argument and common sense prevailed.

From a Bruce Schneier blog post on the topic: 

We've seen this game before. During the crypto wars of the 1990s, FBI Director Louis Freeh and others would repeatedly use the example of mobster John Gotti to illustrate why the ability to tap telephones was so vital. But the Gotti evidence was collected using a room bug, not a telephone tap. And those same scary criminal tropes were trotted out then, too. Back then we called them the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: pedophiles, kidnappers, drug dealers, and terrorists. Nothing has changed.
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