Posted on 08/06/2019 6:33:47 PM PDT by softengine
If you heard the reverberation of a few thousand heads exploding last week, it was the sound of information security professionals reacting to US Attorney General Barr saying that Big Tech "can and must" put backdoors into encryption.
In his speech for a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University, Barr warned tech companies that time was running out for them to develop ways for the government to break encryption. FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed with him.
At this week's big meeting of the "Five Eyes" countries, Barr was in attendance. His demands that internet companies break safe security standards of encryption -- with backdoors, or whatever gets the job done -- was one of the meeting's main topics.
Yep, you read that right — we're doing the "war on encryption," again.
Encrypted communication — the highest standard of security — means "converting the Internet and communications into a law-free zone," Barr told the conference, explaining that encryption made the web into a neighborhood that local cops have abandoned to criminals. He said that encryption's "cost" was measured in the victims left in its wake, and placed blame squarely at the feet of tech companies' "dogmatic" stance, likening the hard facts of computer science to a set of malleable beliefs.
Sure there is. It’s in your mind.
We likely know that the fey Wray is a BackDoor man, but it’s news that Barr is too.
The US government can't be trusted on any promise it makes. Not to the American Indians, not to other nations, and not to its citizens. Every word it utters is self-serving. The US government is way out of constitutional bounds, and the primary source of the claim it is in bounds? The US government says so through its own courts. All in cahoots, and all fundamentally dishonest.
You think fake news is bad ... it's a piker compared with fake government.
These daze, it’s pretty difficult to disentangle the intersectionality of Math with Physics.
And yet they know all about how bad Hillary, Obama, Brennan and Comey are. And they don’t go after them
= = =
Getting Hillary, Obama, Brennen, and Comey via a ‘backdoor’ is an image gone too far.
I assum there is already a backdoor of sorts.
= = =
Waterboarding?
My encryption is all in my head.
But they can’t stand it.
This will not accomplish what the sadly misinformed AG wishes it to. People use encryption because they trust it. They trust it because they or some trusted agent by proxy can examine the code and determine it trustworthy. He or she can do that because the code is available for examination.
Somebody proposing code with a backdoor cannot make it available for examination. Otherwise the backdoor can be examined and perhaps circumvented. So no code. No code no trust. No trust and people will either surreptitiously use known trustworthy code or stop using encryption; or a bit both.
Can’t trust Amazon security? Don’t buy from Amazon. Worried about iPhone apps with backdoors? Don’t use them, try the more open Android distributions instead. Want a VPN solution for browsing and posting? Use an open source product with endpoints overseas. Email? No Google. Go overseas with your VPN.
Yep.
Hmm. Will the NSA release a new version of AES that includes a back door?
I have taken steps to implement several strategies to keep my data safe(r). Best paper map reader this side of the Mississippi.
Ya gotta believe that Fake Book, Evil Google, Tweetering and Apple are busy backdooring you every day, everyway.
There are still some Orienteering Clubs about.
I tried to join an orienteering club once, but I couldn’t find where they were meeting.
Comey and McCabe would have loved this.
They want more tools to go after the Bad Guys.
And yet they know all about how bad Hillary, Obama, Brennan and Comey are. And they don’t go after them
And also they knew about every single mass terrorist attack and did nothing. Breaking encryption codes would not have changed a thing.
9/11, Boston Bomber......
Encryption is binary. It is either secure, i.e. no backdoors to be compromised by theft, blackmail, bribery, threats, or hacking, or it isn’t.
Just the knowledge that a backdoor exist at all guarantees it WILL be found by the black hat bad guys by whatever means required.
This is not at all unexpected.
It is completely normal for persons in power to want more and more power. It is actually normal.
The framers of the Constitution understood this and that is exactly why the Constitution restricted government.
Whenever you hear a lib quote some police chief stating that we need more gun laws, more gun control...more whatever, just remember he is the very guy for which the Constitution was written.
The don’t have the word “enforcement” in the title “Law Enforcement” for nothing.
There can be no backdoor to 256 bit Advanced Encryption Standard. Without the one, single correct decryption key, the only way to crack 256 bit AES encoded data is brute force trial and error of every possible key. If you don’t know even the length of the key, it is a daunting task, even with a supercomputer.
From a technical standpoint, the cat is already out of the bag. Putting back doors in social media encryption is a fool's errand. First, terrorist cells would be communicating point to point. They can encrypt and decrypt outside social media, only using the internet for transport. An analogy might be: it doesn't matter if you force the post office to only carry transparent envelops, if the sender and receiver are going to encrypt the letter before it is mailed.
Intentionally weakening data privacy - and back doors are a weakness - is inviting more criminal behavior. Once hackers know it is possible to crack the encryption, access a "back door" - they will make every effort (and their resources are not to be dismissed) to discover it and exploit it.
This is why I use Proton Mail.
Servers are located overseas and even Proton Mail hasn’t access to the passwords.
Uses RSA encryption.
Anything based on AES256 isn’t reliable anymore.
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