Posted on 02/11/2016 8:46:27 AM PST by Swordmaker
Right now policymakers are deliberating a touchy question: Should governments force tech companies to insert “backdoors,” or intentional access points into their encrypted products?
Doing so would presumably aid law enforcement officials in their criminal and counter-terrorism investigations. (Otherwise they would be shut out from reading or intercepting certain data.) Yet any “backdoor” in a consumer product could also be exploited by hackers or spies, technologists warn.
Enter Bruce Schneier. The crypto expert and best-selling author has spent the last few months bolstering an economic case for why the U.S. should reject any proposed mandates for “backdoored” encryption. In fact, Schneier counts 546 reasons.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Encryption with a “backdoor” is a broken encryption.
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A backdoor only means that Americans are unprotected from our Gov.
Real terrorists have ways around the problem.
Government access to your data alone is enough reason for me to reject a backdoor. Seems a clear avenue for 4th amendment violations to me. The only way to keep the government from even further violations of the Bill of Rights is to ensure that they cannot physically do it, because the government absolutely does not pay any attention to its constitutional limitations.
Lots of other countries would refuse to do so, and their products would kick are arse in world markets. That’s pretty much the reason.
Instead of calling it a “backdoor”, a term programmers understand but the public may not, let’s just call it by a clearer name: “unlocked doors”.
That’s what we are talking about here. Do we really want the government forcing us to install an “unlocked door” in our SECURITY software? This would be equivalent to the government telling safe manufacturers that they had to add a second door to all their safes that has NO LOCKS on it!
I sometimes doubt if they would always take them out when the program is finished.
“Encryption” has been considered a “weapon” and restricted by law.
Something those advocating for weapon (gun) control to consider.
It needs to be called what it is: encryption for you, cleartext for the government. In other words, a false promise. Seeing how little government agents are held to the law/ethical standards, you can assume that your data is not safe.
BUMP! Like your thinking. You are right on the button.
Government spooks have even shown themselves incompetent to keep their data private to themselves.
Why should we ever want them to have a back door; what’s more even if they could, the market would soon find other things that would shut it, and the back door would languish.
If we had a government that would better honor the God who DOES know everything, we would have one with much less desire to engage in comprehensive snooping.
For government workers responsible for a data breech, there appears little to motivate them to do better. Their names are rarely exposed to the public and their punishment, if any, appears to be minimal.
They are not arrested, spend no time in jail and no time incarcerated. They receive a hand slap at worst.
Al Gore was pushing for this back in the 90s when he was VP. Remember the Clipper Chip?
“Encryption with a “backdoor†is a broken encryption.”
But we are smarter than anyone else...
Reason # 1.....
The FBI and the other co-opted and corrupted alphabet agencies cannot be trusted to NOT turn on the American people.
After seeing the likes of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, do we really want to give these cretins a backdoor to our private data?
Excellent timely post!
Privacy Ping!
Frankly, July, I would not even trust Ronald Reagan with such a powerful tool. The only way to be certain is to keep it away from EVERY government agency. The temptation to look is just too great. Try going ten minutes without think about the word elephant after someone challenges you not to think the word. If it's there, it WILL be used. That is the problem. There will always be a GOOD reason (read excuse) to use it. The first time makes it easier the second time, and the second time makes it much easier the third, and so on, until it is routine to use it for everything, including jaywalking.
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