Posted on 09/29/2015 6:17:31 AM PDT by Izzy Dunne
To hear FBI Director James Comey tell it, strong encryption stops law enforcement dead in its tracks by letting terrorists, kidnappers and rapists communicate in complete secrecy.
But that’s just not true.
In the rare cases in which an investigation may initially appear to be blocked by encryption — and so far, the FBI has yet to identify a single one — the government has a Plan B: it’s called hacking.
(Excerpt) Read more at theintercept.com ...
And they can plant malware on your computer.
The publicly available records of this show the FBI as the good guys, and the people caught as the bad guys.
I'll bet that not all cases are on publicly available records.
Your tax dollars at work.
The real reason Windows is so slow; so many government agencies are monitoring you.
... for some values of "lawful process".
You have to laugh out loud at this.
Oh, good - they're "algorithmically constrained".
I was worried for a minute there...
Glad to see you've not stopped your anti-Microsoft trolling, drift. It warms my heart when ignorance captures so many while the truth is so far from your beliefs.
IMO, the truth of the matter is that the government thinks the American citizen is the enemy, and the actions they scheme, plan and execute are to protect the government house of cards and their viability in the long run. It has nothing to do with individual freedom or the US Constitution (except as a hindrance to them).
It would be impossible to “algorithmically constrain” something without decrypting it first. As such, decrypting the data is a violation of 4th amendment protections unless the person willingly gave up a certificate, password, private key, hash, etc. Once it’s open, the data therein is fair game.
This is like saying that the police can’t arrest you for the dead bodies in your living room because the warrant says they were there to confiscate drug paraphrenalia.
“Glad to see you’ve not stopped your anti-Microsoft trolling, drift. It warms my heart when ignorance captures so many while the truth is so far from your beliefs.”
LOL since when do I do anti-microsoft trolling.
Dont be a fool, I know thats hard for you.
Not so.
They're not talking about encryption here; they're talking about collecting the data BEFORE it's encrypted. Planting a key logger or some such to capture your keystrokes.
The whining about encryption is all about the ease of spying, but it won't make them blind.
The govt doesn’t care if its a violation of the 4th amendment. They consider everyone a criminal in the first place, they just need put you in jail.
They are gaining illegal access to peoples computers and accessing the data before it is encrypted.
Okay, so how is my statement untrue? If they’re capturing data before it’s distributed, encryption is not at play. My statement was regarding the ability to extract data from an encrypted packet that was specific to the provisions in a warrant. That’s just not possible.
All the more reason everyone should bone up on at least basic encryption technologies. Learn how to secure your email communications. Learn how to encrypt your local computer(s). Learn how to encrypt data on a flash drive. Learn how to avoid detection on the Internet.
It doesn't take a genius to outsmart the boffins at the NSA. They've literally outlined the data they mine, and the grand majority of it is from unencrypted web traffic, like the stuff on FR.
Why insinuate that any MS OS is slow because of spying? That’s an abrasive statement that’s untrue outside of a compromised OS.
“get the raw information by planting malware on your computer BEFORE your data gets encrypted”
3rd Amendment violation.
An under-discussed reason for “quartering soldiers” was to impose in-your-face constant observation of the home’s residents. Modern version is installing technological “agents” to siphon off data for evaluation elsewhere.
Don’t underestimate “the boffins at the NSA”. They’re top-level cryptographers et al with unlimited budgets and acres of supercomputers tapped into network backbones everywhere. Don’t think a few minutes on Wikipedia and downloading a free app will protect you. I don’t mean to belittle what _can_ be done, but don’t make the mistake of belittling the opposition.
Back a few years ago when the whole PRISM program was unveiled by the Snowden leaks, it was very clearly discussed how the NSA and CIA were gathering their data. Better than 50% of the data they collected was from simple unencrypted web traffic. If you browse to a site, like FR, without HTTPS, your traffic is gathered and cataloged. Bank sites, web retailers, webmail providers, and even Facebook provide SSL connectivity to their sites to cut down on the amount of unfettered sniffing being done by the fedgov. That doesn’t mean they can’t capture the data; it’s just meaningless garbled strings of useless information until it’s decrypted.
The problem here is that the NSA has to determine how to best use the resources at hand. A couple of 60 year old women sharing recipes on Pinterest aren’t worthy of the processor cycles on a government supercomputer. Meanwhile, terrorist organizations are using TOR or are routing data through multiple VPN hubs to obfuscate their locations and the data they’re transmitting, but the NSA isn’t going to be able to figure out what’s in that data stream without committing significant computer resources to decrypting the information therein. If you think that 4096 bit elliptic curve encryption can be hacked using an entire 100 acre server farm full of supercomputers in any realistic time frame, you’re deluded. Even the best supercomputer farms in the world have to churn for several days to crack basic 1024 bit RSA encryption. You’re right in that it can be done, but if you think they’re going around decrypting everything they find, you’re wrong.
NSA isn’t going to decrypt HTTPS traffic to Pinterest from old ladies precisely because they already know the content is irrelevant.
If you’re routing 4096 bit elliptic curve encrypted data thru TOR, heck yeah you’re likely up to no good, they’ll track you down, and take a good look at what else you’re doing & what data you emit while some supercomputers take a whack at decrypting some sample messages using advanced math you haven’t dreamed of yet - all to decide whether you’re suspicious enough to pursue further. Should you prove “interesting” enough, NSA may pass info on to CIA, which has few qualms about cracking encryption via “rubber hose cryptology” when appropriate.
Remember a few things:
- Unless you (rarestia) are somewhere at the NSA level of the subject, you’re likely just some schmoe (like me) having a smattering of knowledge. A few minutes of casual thought does not easily beat decades of top-tier vast-budget well-connected experts.
- There’s always much more to what you’re encrypting than just what you’re encrypting. Just the fact you’re using advanced encryption & delivery indicates you’re of the few worth scrutinizing, which doing so in turn narrows down a great deal about whether & what you’re up to.
- NSA is 5-15 years ahead of general “state of the art”. Look back 5-15 years and see what was “unbreakable” and is now passe.
Sure, NSA isn’t going around decrypting everything they find. I’m not saying that. But don’t for a minute think that if you DO have something to hide, they can’t find it because you spent a few minutes using popular technology.
I’m not hiding anything, but I personally use 4096 ECC cryptography for email, VPN, and web traffic to my home lab. If that makes them suspicious, so be it. All they’re going to find is a bunch of generic Windows servers in a lab used to test enterprise solutions in a confined environment. Oh, and maybe emails to my wife about our vacation plans.
It’s not whether or not I have something to hide that should be a concern. We still live under a Constitutional Republic, even if it is in tatters. I shouldn’t have to be concerned about a knock at my door at 2 AM for using cryptography to secure my network traffic.
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