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Beyond James Comey, there are still a few law enforcement officials beating the anti-encryption drum. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance is one of those. He's been joined in this fight by some like-minded district attorneys from the other coast, seeing as New York and California both have anti-encryption bills currently working their way through local legislatures. Vance, along with Los Angeles County DA Jackie Lacey and San Diego County DA Bonnie Dumanis, penned an op-ed against encryption for the LA Times. In it, they argue that tech companies have set them up as "gatekeepers" of communications and data, which they believe...

FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday said the U.S. government will continue to wage legal war with tech companies to gain access to encrypted devices, intimating that such measures are weakening terror organizations like ISIL. At an FBI briefing, Comey said gaining privileged access to passcode locked — or otherwise protected — devices is an important national security concern as encryption is now "essential tradecraft" of terror groups, reports Reuters....

It is becoming increasingly clear that Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr, co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, don’t have the slightest clue about how encryption works. Good thing they’re currently pushing disastrous legislation that would force tech companies to decrypt things for law enforcement! Today Feinstein and Burr co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Encryption Without Tears,” and wow, it is bad. They have yet again demonstrated a failure to grasp even the most basic principles of technology.... Feinstein and Burr’s bill is not based in any technical reality. Companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google would...

"From our standpoint, it’s not a good thing," Clapper said of accelerated advancements in encryption technology. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden, by leaking classified data two years ago, contributed to the acceleration of sophisticated encryption methods that militants are using to hide their communications, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Monday. The rapid advancement of commercially available encryption software is proving to be a difficult obstacle in detecting potential threats, he said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "From our standpoint, it's not a good thing," he said of the rapidly advancing encryption, adding that the software has had...

Sens. Richard Burr (R) of North Carolina and Dianne Feinstein (D) of California should be stripped of their positions for introducing a bill that would endanger American digital security and privacy. The Burr-Feinstein antiencryption bill isn't just bad, it's evidence of a dangerous incompetence in congressional leadership that is undermining America’s security. In fact, the draft bill, leaked two weeks ago and now officially released, is compelling evidence that Senate leadership should strip – or at least not reappoint – Senators Burr and Feinstein of their positions on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.... To say this most recent Burr-Feinstein...

Coalitions representing major tech companies warn of 'unintended consequences' in letter to US senators Four coalitions representing Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and other major tech companies have published an open letter expressing their concerns over a controversial US bill that would require smartphone makers to decrypt data on demand. The letter, published this week, is addressed to the bill's sponsors, Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and signed by four industry groups: Reform Government Surveillance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, and the Entertainment Software Association. In addition to Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon,...

SAN FRANCISCO – In the latest clash over privacy rights in the digital age, Microsoft is suing the U.S. government over a federal law that allows authorities to examine customer emails or online files without the individual’s knowledge. The lawsuit comes as the tech industry is increasingly butting heads with U.S. officials over the right to view a wide range of information – including emails, photos and financial records – that customers are storing on smartphones and in so-called “cloud” computing centers. Microsoft says the U.S. Justice Department is abusing a decades-old law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, to obtain...

El Reg takes latest Burr-Feinstein legislation apart Not feeling Feinstein—Senators propose crappy legislation Analysis In the wake of the FBI's failed fight against Apple, Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced a draft bill that would effectively ban strong crypto.The bill would require tech and communications companies to allow law enforcement with a court order to decrypt their customers' data. Last week a draft copy of the bill, dubbed the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, was leaked, but the new version is even worse than the discussion draft. The bill would apply to "device manufacturers,...

Two U.S. senators on Wednesday issued a formal draft of a controversial bill that would give courts the power to order technology companies like Apple to help authorities break into encrypted devices or communications for law enforcement or intelligence purposes. The proposal arrives just days after an earlier draft leaked online and drew fire from security researchers and civil liberties advocates who warned it would undermine Internet security and expose personal data to hackers. Those same groups on Wednesday said the new draft is little different from the leaked version. The bill comes as the U.S. Justice Department has redoubled...

A Sacramento woman uses her phone on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2014. Hector Amezcua hamezcua@sacbee.com A national debate over smartphone encryption arrived in Sacramento on Tuesday as legislators defeated a bill penalizing companies that don’t work with courts to break into phones, siding with technology industry representatives who called the bill a dangerous affront to privacy. The bill did not receive a vote, with members of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection worrying the measure would undermine data security and impose a logistically untenable requirement on California companies. Disagreement over the balance between privacy and public safety exploded into...

Analysis In the wake of the FBI's failed fight against Apple, Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced a draft bill that would effectively ban strong crypto. The bill would require tech and communications companies to allow law enforcement with a court order to decrypt their customers' data. Last week a draft copy of the bill, dubbed the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, was leaked, but the new version is even worse than the discussion draft.... The senators want to have their cake--by requiring tech companies to protect their customers' data--and eat it too--by insisting...

A cross-platform messaging app owned by Facebook leapfrogs iMessage; Apple should step up and join it. credit: WhatsApp Apple’s security and encryption strategies have received a lot of attention lately, from the way in which iOS devices’ data are locked down to how Apple doesn’t have the encryption keys the iMessage and FaceTime systems employ to secure its users’ communications to how Secure Enclave keeps our secrets secret. But WhatsApp, an app-based text, video, and voice service with a billion users, took the spotlight Tuesday with the news that its users have end-to-end encryption as well. WhatsApp has a couple...

It's no secret that law enforcement agencies and governments at large want to have access to our personal data whether we like it or not. Hot on the heels of the FBI managing to bypass security measures that should have protected the data on a terrorist's iPhone 5c, we see that the case is definitely not closed. As many had suspected, now that the floodgates are open, agencies like the FBI are not content to let this one win be the last. This week, draft legislation leaked out of the U.S. Senate that to some highlights the government's ignorance about encryption. Within...

FBI spills the beans on how it hacked the iPhone to US senators The US Justice Department is looking to file a court order to force Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone that was obtained as part of a New York drug dealing case, it has been reported on 9 April. The move follows a recent attempt in March to force the tech giant to crack an iPhone used by a terrorist in the December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino, California. The San Bernardino order was reportedly dropped the US government said the FBI had unlocked the phone...

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that the government had purchased "a tool" from a private party in order to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. "Litigation between the government and Apple over the San Bernardino phone has ended, because the government has purchased, from a private party, a way to get into that phone, 5C, running iOS 9," Comey said. Law enforcement officials revealed in late March that they had finally cracked the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of two shooters in the December 2015 attack that left 14 people dead. But they...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is slamming messaging platform WhatsApp for turning on end-to-end encryption for all of its users.... WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and is particularly popular outside the United States, said on Tuesday that it would start offering encryption for its users as the default setting. That will apply to the different types of messages on the service, which include video and voice. "Every day we see stories about sensitive records being improperly accessed or stolen," WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton said in a post announcing the change. "And if nothing is done, more of...

"all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer" So the only thing preventing a more general purpose quantum computer is money and enough engineers... Hmm... (POLL-AT-LINK) Via: PC World: Much of the encryption world today depends on the challenge of factoring large numbers, but scientists now say they've created the first five-atom quantum computer with the potential to crack the security of traditional encryption schemes. In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or...

Apple has quickly released a patch for a flaw in its encryption capability for the iOS mobile and OS X desktop operating systems which could allow attackers to unscramble protected iMessage photos and videos. First reported by the Washington Post, a group of researchers led by cryptographer Matthew Green at John Hopkins University discovered they could intercept iMessage content stored in Apple's iCloud by brute-force guessing the encryption key. With the encryption key at hand, attackers could retrieve files from iCloud accounts without users knowing. Attackers would need to be able to bypass Apple’s TLS certificate pinning, which associates the...

A pair of House committees is forming a bipartisan working group of eight lawmakers to prepare for possible legislation addressing how the widespread use of encryption affects law enforcement investigations. "The bipartisan encryption working group will examine the issues surrounding this ongoing national debate," House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton. R-Mich., said Monday. As chairman of the two committees that have jurisdiction over encryption issues, Goodlatte and Upton are ex officio chairs of the working group. They released that statement jointly along with Michigan Rep. John Conyers and New Jersey Rep. Steve...

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week. Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region.