FBI Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said, “The FBI has been really, really consistent about our stance on lawful access encryption. We’re actually big, big supporters of it, but it has to be reasonably responsibly managed so that we can get what we need on the other side.”
So they want to keep the backdoors but have the Chinese government stop naughtily using them when they’re only for American use. Good plan! A quick call to Xi Jinping should sort the whole thing out.
I’m no encryption expert, but wouldn’t a backdoor of any kind be inevitably exploited by a malicious actor?
Yes, but politicians and police keep fantasizing about a magical crypto-backdoor that only they can use, no matter how many times people explain this to them or how many times they get burned.
On the first day it was released to the public.
The encryption specialists at universities knew about the eliptic curve backdoor before it was implemented, and kept recommending that it not be.
Remember that if the police can read your stuff, so can foreign interests, industrial spies, organized crime and militants of large scale political movements.
Besides which here in the States, law enforcement is notorious for abusing their access to technology to bypass protections of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.
And usually the judges don’t mind.
Can you cite me some specific examples? I would love to do aome further reading
often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Here’s a whole ass Wikipedia article on the very subject, because it’s been so widespread for so long it has a fucking name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemisphere_Project
Here’s a Wikipedia article on the mass surveillance by the DEA, which is where the data used for parallel construction was sourced.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805/
Here’s a good example from the first Wikipedia article about how the Feds pass signals intelligence to local law enforcement so they can start cases and claim they found the initial evidence some other way than illegal mass surveillance.
For more history about attempts to install backdoors, see:
That’s a wicked response. Thanks big!!
Go onto Techdirt ( here ) and check Tim Cushing’s blog. His beat is the abuse and corruption of our justice system. The latest issue I recall was using drones to peek into fenced backyards, into windows and deep across property lines, all without a warrant or probable cause.
During the 2010s IMSI spoofers were being used but the Stingray corporation required precincts sign an NDE so parallel reconstruction (creating an alternative plausible path of investigation to lead to the same discovery of evidence) was the norm. Eventually defense lawyers learned to press the issue, as even FBI would drop cases before admitting they used IMSI catchers to spy on where a suspect’s phone was.
One of my bigger beefs is the misuse of detection dogs, which have up to a ~90% false positive rate, called Probable Cause on Four Legs it’s known that most departments prefer trick-pony dogs who just signal a lot, in contrast to dogs who can actually detect stuff.
Interestingly, there is a subset of the K9 sector who train and handle detection dogs (which are still legitimately used, say to detect explosives in long lines of luggage at airports), and thanks to the common use of dogs to force a search, the public has been losing confidence in them, and courts who believe dog searches are for real.
Animal slavery? You know, just the other day I heard about humans using dogs to hunt coyotes, it seems a lot of humans use these dogs as a slave species…no bueno
The cooperative relationship between humans and dogs has always been a working one (that is, centered around the collaboration of productive tasks), so I have less concern with dogs on duty. In this case, dogs are being used not for their keen sense of smell, but as dousing rods on the pretense of their keen sense of smell.
I did not mention dogs used as attack dogs, which absolutely abuses the dog. Not only that, but the dog is regarded as an officer if a victim fights back, what has only become a controversy when an attack dog was used on a fellow officer.
As for dogs used to hunt, that’s the first thing we collaborated in doing, and we seem to have developed our relationship with dogs at the same time we developed agriculture, so they’d definitely be used to hunt vermin including foxes and coyotes.
u/floofloof is speaking sarcastically above, I believe.
The fact that existing backdoors have been completely taken over by Salt Typhoon hackers means fuck all to them, I guess.
Elsewhere the FBI suggests using encrypted texts because of Salt Typhoon. Talking out of both sides of their mouth.
Shows where the real priorities lie. Our governments view their own citizens as the enemy.
When you treat people as your enemy, they may become your enemy. Self fulfilling prophecy.
Are the Feds actually this smooth-brained? I mean, I know they have to maintain the appearance of control, so his words make sense from that perspective. But surely they have to be aware, the very backdoors they originally forced down our throats are EXACTLY WHAT’S CAUSING THIS PROBLEM NOW. These geniuses who purportedly protect American citizens, are either woefully inept, lacking basic understanding of how data security actually works, or LYING with malice. Which do you think it is?
They’re not smooth brained at all. They know exactly what they are saying, but them gaining full control always takes priority over all other factors. Just because a foreign adversary did it to us, which they don’t like, doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to do it to us.
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!
It’s D) All of the above.
The FBI can go fuck a duck. Use encryption or else. You are a fool.
Poor duck.
Read up on ducks. They were /screwed/ before the FBI showed up.
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Just say the words backdoor you fucking douchebag. What bullshit soft peddling political speech.
Their wet dream is to promote encryption toward widespread adoption and then force the major industrial players to give them back doors whilst giving people a false sense of security.
Open source standards are the only thing that can save us from these savages
Meanwhile CIA is promoting Signal. USA should sort itself out.
FBI is actually promoting Signal and WhatsApp as well. Which should make people raise eyebrows and question if they don’t already have access to both of those.
There’s nothing to access from signal, the keys are local to each chat. WhatsApp another thing.
then they are questioning the other security properties of the app. safery of used encryption algorithm or its implementation, healthyness of having proprietary google code built into the app, etc
But if you have notifications , I know those were compromised.
Does that mean the CIA can already break the encryption in Signal?
No.
This is a basic security measure, it is mind-blowing that they are taking this stance.
This has been their stance since basically forever.
It makes things easier for them and they don’t pay the costs of security breaches, the people do.
Me watching Kash Patel and Donald Trump drive the FBI into the ditch:
With the FBI being gone, the republican controlled Congress now passes a law to grant law enforcement powers to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
🙃
I’m looking forward to our inevitable return to roman style firefighting. Can’t wait to haggle with them as the fire they started in my house grows
Fascists need enforcement, if they actually kill it, something much worse will replace it
So their consistent position is consistently internally inconsistent.
Wonderful.
I saw another article claiming they said not to use VPNs either. Do they just hate security now?
