Posted on 07/08/2015 8:57:30 AM PDT by Eric Pode of Croydon
SAN FRANCISCO — An elite group of security technologists has concluded that the American and British governments cannot demand special access to encrypted communications without putting the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger.
A new paper from the group, made up of 14 of the world’s pre-eminent cryptographers and computer scientists, is a formidable salvo in a skirmish between intelligence and law enforcement leaders, and technologists and privacy advocates. After Edward J. Snowden’s revelations — with security breaches and awareness of nation-state surveillance at a record high and data moving online at breakneck speeds — encryption has emerged as a major issue in the debate over privacy rights.
That has put Silicon Valley at the center of a tug of war. Technology companies including Apple, Microsoft and Google have been moving to encrypt more of their corporate and customer data after learning that the National Security Agency and its counterparts were siphoning off digital communications and hacking into corporate data centers.
Yet law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders argue that such efforts thwart their ability to monitor kidnappers, terrorists and other adversaries. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban encrypted messages altogether. In the United States, Michael S. Rogers, the director of the N.S.A., proposed that technology companies be required to create a digital key to unlock encrypted data, but to divide the key into pieces and secure it so that no one person or government agency could use it alone..........
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
When the Thompson submachine gun came out it was advertised as giving the advantage to the police because criminals would not be able to get hold of it. Of course the "trench broom" rapidly became the choice of discerning mobsters everywhere.
Once the ultra-secret decryption keys to the unhackable software have appeared on the dark net websites, it's lights out for everybody.
If government enjoyed even a little bit of trust then maybe some would consider allowing govt to have keys.
But there is not even a little trust. Most (including me) think that govt having the key doesn’t make us safer and maybe even makes us less safe.
Then too, there is the nagging issue of unauthorized, back channel recipients of the NSA, CIA and FBI intel products. The problem with crony capitalism is that it’s only a pillow mint away from crony government. Does the term “revolving door” mean anything to anyone? I’m not sure I’d want Halliburton or Wackenhut or Booz Allen Hamilton or Northbridge or Aegis, et al, to know my travel plans or who I like to hang out with. Crony capitalism is monopoly capitalism is fascism is Nazism. Any questions?
Not only that, but the "safeguards" are stupid and designed to circumvented with ease.
Let's say alphabet agency ABC (who we've already determined is not truestworthy enough to hold the keys themselves) gets a judge with his rubber stamp to agree to retrieve a "split" key as a part of an ongoing investigation. So, ABC contacts keyholder1, KH2, and KH3 to provide their key parts. It uses that key to decrypt whatever it is that they want to decrypt. Now, all the "key" is, is really just a very long prime number. So, the ABC agency now has posession of this number. How will we be able to validate that after it's use in this particular instance, that the ABC agency no longer has the "key"? Remember, we've already determined ahead of time that we don't trust the agency, which is why we have to safeguard the key in the first place.
Does anyone believe that the key will not be squirreled away for future use? If you do, I have a bridge I want to sell you.
Government = Cosa Nostra
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