Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley – weaken your encryption Hillary Clinton has joined a growing number of politicians using the Paris attacks earlier this month to argue for a weaker encryption. Speaking at Council on Foreign Relations in Washington Thursday, the presidential candidate talked extensively about Islamic State, the recent attacks in Paris and what the US government could …
Explain to her that yes we can fit a government back door.
And that backdoor will also apply to the computer/email/cell phone you are using
And we will give that backdoor to the FBI,CIA, Police, Coastguard, OSHA, IRS and every foreign government that asks.
One of who will hand it over to ISIS - so you are asking us to give ISIS a backdoor into every government system ?
The Big Question is always whether or not we can trust our own governements, recently they have shown that we can't.
Hilary Clinton is a dangerous woman who appears to have only greed, desire for power and mischief as her primary goals.. I am sure that she must dine quite often with the Bushes.
She is a liar on all sorts of levels (recall the tall tale of disembarking under active fire in former Yugoslavia, the Whitewater affair, suicides associated with that, many more, the e-mail, the Libyan 'consulate', which turns out not to have been a consulate at all).
Hilary makes Bush the second almost look a model of probity.
Bush the first almost was.
Say it along with me 'm*ff m*nch*r' for prez!
No, she just has many of the same advisors as George II.
Trump is the most entertaining candidate, it is a little frightening in some ways, but he wrote The Art of the Deal, he keeps saying that he will be able to make deals with Russia and Iran, restore decent jobs to the USA, pays for his own campaign, sorry, I know he says stupid things at times, but from afar, he sure looks like the most interesting of a horrid bunch.
"Trump is the most entertaining candidate... but from afar, he sure looks like the most interesting of a horrid bunch."
Pick Trump from the following list:
Egg and bacon
Egg, sausage and bacon
Egg and Spam
Egg, bacon and Spam
Egg, bacon, sausage and Spam
Spam, bacon, sausage and Spam
Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam
Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam
Trump is a drooling maroon outside his little area of expertise. One of the banes of politics in the US - and possibly elsewhere - is business men who are confused about the nature of government and politics. One of the nightmares of the '90s was the emergence of the word "customer" in use for any member of the public dealing with a government agency. Customer "satisfaction" surveys even appeared. The same miasma of clueless greed has invaded many areas including healthcare here in the US. The unspoken watch word of many HMOs is "we want to give them less and make them feel happy about that." Unhappily many of my fellow USians seem to think that the bigger (wealthier) a company is the better its products must be (look at dominance of Microsoft if you doubt that - the only decent product they ever produced internally was a mouse).
One of the banes of politics in the US - and possibly elsewhere - is business men who are confused about the nature of government and politics.
The reality is that career politicians are confused about the nature of business, as their goals are in direct opposition.
In business you want to keep overhead down so you are rewarded for spending as little as possible, keeping headcount down, and making a profit.
Government is exactly the opposite. Since the purpose of government is to spend money, a politician is rewarded with power by spending as much as possible, and keeping headcount as high as possible. You are actually punished if you make a profit.
It's easy to just brush off a businessperson what wants to get involved in politics, but the truth of it is that Trump has a history of making money for state and local governments. You don't have to like him, and he can be an asshole at times, but you can't argue with his record.
This isn't surprising that Hillary is against encryption, as she has consistently supported the surveillance provisions of the PATRIOT act from 2001 up to this year.
Meanwhile, Trump is against backdoors, supports warrants, and wants to limit government surveillance. Have the Earth's magnetic poles flipped as well?
How does that song go?... "The party on the left / Is now the party on the right..."
No, Clinton you idiot corporate whore, we do not trust our own governments which is exactly why public courts, proof positive we do not trust government and demand they prove every thing they say or do.
We also require search warrants issued by a court because yet again, we neither trust nor believe you.
The Big Question is always whether or not we can trust our own governements, recently they have shown that we can't.
"recently"?
No government has ever been trustworthy. That's not an attribute that attaches to government. That's why we attempt to create and maintain systems of governments with checks and balances; but that maintenance requires constant vigilance, and the best anyone's ever achieved is a cyclic pattern of periodically reducing the power of the State to a relatively reasonable level.
"One of who will hand it over to ISIS - so you are asking us to give ISIS a backdoor into every government system ?"
Oh no, they won't ask, it'll be a third party that DOES has backdoor access, that also feeds ISIS because that's their policy - just like they're doing right now.
"We need to challenge our best minds in the private sector to work with our best minds in the public sector to develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy"
Perhaps when the "best minds" in the public sector start embracing AES-256 and basic security hygiene as standard practice we can all start talking sensibly (and securely). Some basic instruction in logic, science and mathematics wouldn't hurt either. The best minds in the private sector actually know what they are talking about, unlike your official data-hoover salespeople and colleagues.
Hillary, you really, really need to trust the math. RIght now, I wouldn't trust you and your cohorts with the answers to a crossword puzzle.
The best minds in the (US) public sector have required AES 256 for years where classified material is involved.
As for former Secretary Clinton's comments, it is worthwhile to consider the source: a major department head who took it on herself to do sensitive government business using an insecure and illegally operated private server.
Her email server seems to have been, in practice, far more secure than the official State email server which still has evil romping through it at every turn. Hell, our allies are the people we have to rely on to keep us informed when yet another breach has occurred. Funny when her own (probably correct) paranoid delusions serve security.
"Her email server seems to have been, in practice, far more secure than the official State email server...." That is not the point. The actual point is the legality of her actions, not whether they were secure. As a comparison, I could argue that I would be safer and less likely to be mugged if I walked down certain streets in London with a loaded pistol in my hand, telling all that approached that I would shoot them if they came within ten feet. As an anti-mugging tactic it would probably be quite successful. Of course, I would still be in breach of the law and subject to arrest and punishment.
It is also hard to ascertain exactly how secure Shrillary's email server (and third-party cloud backup) actually were when she was allowed to clean and tweak it over months before handing it over. And then that matters nought if she or her minions knowingly sent restricted material via that server to those unauthorised to see it, as the transmission of that restricted material is the criminal act.
Wrong, illegal AND insecure, very insecure. And full of unattributed classified material that the FBI is "investigating". No doubt no case will be found to prosecute, because "Hilary". Clinton's are not subject to the same laws that other people are. Justice in the US is highly politicized especially at this level, and never more so than now.
G. W. Bush looks like a model of probity and honesty compared to the sleazeball Hilary Clinton. One only has to look at how the Clinton's have used the Clinton Foundation, a nominal charitable foundation that takes in hundreds of millions a year and spends less than 10% on "charitable causes" while paying far larger sums for staff salaries, travel and expenses. It is nothing more than a Clinton political machine operation pretending to be a charitable organization, utterly shameless, and yet tolerated somehow.
I've a relative who handled (maintained) classified systems for the USDoS and the individual's opinions about the state of the system were very low. Worse, the hardware (and software) was typically years out of date and often with serious incompatibilities between "home rolled" systems provided by the military and OTS software and hardware acquired from vendors such as MS in a spirit of cost "reduction."
I thought to be called "news" it had to be new?
This just in: Politician blows hot air, doesn't understand mathematics. Dogs and cats continue to fight. Winter is cold.
"It seems obvious that, if there is a terrible attack in the United States, privacy advocates and tech companies instantly will lose this argument."
Because while she may not understand such complex things as math, she does seem to understand that all it takes is for a single "attack" to take place to make the public submit. Fear is a powerful tool, no?
Only in the dreams of certain Cheney haters. Dick's net worth is well below $100M according to Wkipedia.
"Cheney's net worth, estimated to be between $19 million and $86 million, is largely derived from his post at Halliburton."
So Cheney's money came from a private job. Contrast with Hillary, who got her billions by doing charity work.
Yeah, me: I like him a bunch. So too, millions like me. And I want him back.
Hillary is not a hawk, wouldn't understand diplomacy, economics, military needs or flat anything if you paid her. Even after you paid her.
Cheney is exactly what we need. But he is probably sick to death of US. I don't blame him. I wanted him as Prez from the beginning, but he'll be likely an advisor (if he wants) if the Repubs get back in power.
You Brits don't understand how much we Yanks need more of the Bush family advisors. They're the only reason why we aren't having another Dunkirk.
Don't forget the real estate dealings, Obama also made it from 'community activist' to multimillionaire off the back of illicit real-estate dealings. Interesting that the US press is long silent about both the Clinton's and the Obama's real-estate dealings.
Hilary's triumph as a younger lawyer in having a rapist acquitted, then admitting that she knew the girl had been raped, and boasting about how clever she had been to get the rapist acquitted, says a lot about her mentality.
Actually, if Clinton as a lawyer KNEW that her client had indeed raped the complainant, then is is ethically entirely improper for her to support a claim of not guilty except on technical grounds. Lawyers really don't want to know if you "did it", they only want to know your defense.
Then I doubt that Clinton even knows that ethics is a county in England, so far is she removed from even understanding that such a word or concept actually exists.
And as for Cheney & Haliburton, that's a damn sight more ethical than influence peddling via a fake charitable foundation that is really a political machine operation for Clintons Inc.
You said it's ethically improper for a lawyer to support a not guilty plea of a guilty client if the lawyer knows the client is guilty. Am I correct that that is what you are saying? If so, you are wrong. Lawyers have guilty clients all the time that plead not guilty.
And what does it matter what they know from the client? It's privileged communication, and the lawyer is safe.
You said it's ethically improper for a lawyer to support a not guilty plea of a guilty client if the lawyer knows the client is guilty. Am I correct that that is what you are saying? If so, you are wrong
He's not. It's ethically incorrect deliberately to seek the wrong outcome. Lawyers are Officers of the Court, with a duty to see fair play.
Lawyers have guilty clients all the time that plead not guilty.
Indeed they do - but if the lawyer knows that the plea is a sham, he has a duty to inform the court.
From the American Bar Association's Rules of Profession Conduct Rule 3.3(b):
A lawyer who represents a client in an adjudicative proceeding and who knows that a person intends to engage, is engaging or has engaged in criminal or fraudulent conduct related to the proceeding shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal.
Note that rule 3.3(c) backs this up:
The duties stated in paragraphs (a) and (b) continue to the conclusion of the proceeding, and apply even if compliance requires disclosure of information otherwise protected by Rule 1.6.
So, in the event that a suspect pleads not guilty and the lawyer knows that plea to be false, he has a professional duty to disclose that knowledge to the court - even if he only finds out about it mid-way through the trial.
Of course, we're talking about lawyers. A significant proportion of them - not all, but way too many - don't actually care about ethics; all they want is results, at any cost.But the preamble to above Rules has the following to say:
[19] Failure to comply with an obligation or prohibition imposed by a Rule is a basis for invoking the disciplinary process
It is quite clear that a lawyer knowingly supporting a false "not guilty" plea is subject to the Disciplinary Process. That this does not happen regularly speaks volumes...
And what does it matter what they know from the client? It's privileged communication, and the lawyer is safe.
Not so; see the above quote. Rule 1.6 is the rule relating to confidentiality - rules 3.3(b) and 3.3(c) clearly state that such confidentiality should be breached if the lawyer knows that the suspect is guilty.
Vic.
"So Cheney's money came from a private job.:
At a company that took $138 BILLION in no-bid government contracts for the last war.
So yes, a private job that paid with tax payers money.
Yes, I know he was VP during the war. Where did he go after his term? That's right, back to his old company, Haliburton.
Coincidence, I'm sure. /sarcasm
I'm not sure we can publicly determine how much those people are worth. And it's possible they "control" large things we'll never see. But I doubt Hillary has billions (US 10^9 ones), and Cheney has the most invisible fortune of anyone. Officially, he didn't make anything off the Iraq war.
"....the Democrats' own Dick Cheney may well end up in the seat...." Firstly, Shrillary is only ranting on about security and smacking ISIS because she wants to put clear water between herself and Bernie Saunders, and blow a smokescreen over her failings dealing with Islamists in Benghazi. Secondly, whilst it may give her a better chance of beating Saunders, she will lose BIG TIME if she tries to go up against just about any of the Republican candidates on a security ticket, plus alienate too many of the wierdos on the Left she needs to turn out and vote in the Presidential elections. So expect her to switch back to "tax the rich, spend, spend, spend on special interest groups that vote Democrat" as soon as the Democratic nomination is sown up.
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Hildabeast fails to grasp one important aspect of grand strategy; a passive defense is ultimately no defense. By conceding the initiative to ISIS et. al. they will find the defense's weaknesses and exploit them. Ask the French about the Maginot Line or Hitler about the Atlantic Wall. Both were defensive failures because they were passive defenses.
The Maginot Line (a series of supporting fortifications delivering defence in depth) and the Atlantic Wall (a comprehensive plan to turn the north French coast into a killzone) both failed if due to a single cause because they were incomplete (did not cover Belgian border) and unfinished respectively.
"It seems obvious that, if there is a terrible attack in the United States, privacy advocates and tech companies instantly will lose this argument."
Because while she may not understand such complex things as math, she does seem to understand that all it takes is for a single "attack" to take place to make the public submit.
While I sympathize with your argument, note that the passage you quoted was from the Washington Post's fear-mongering editorial, not from Clinton. Birds of a feather, and all that, but she didn't actually say that particular bit.
"A Post-Paris “Clash of Civilizations”? It’s the Islamic State’s Dream and Marco Rubio Agrees"
Alien because he must be saying "Let's blow the whole site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure"
...who presumably have to vote for one of these idiots next year.
To be honest, the tech giants *ought* to be supporting weaker encryption. By "weaker", we presumably mean something that you can crack with a government's IT budget but that is resistant to the budget of common criminals. Provide that and you have basically *obliged* your (willing) government to spend a freaking fortune on new hardware. If you are a tech giant, what's not to like?
More seriously, someone should tell Hillary that the tech giants are not the *providers* of strong encryption. Anyone with a computer can download encryption code for free, set the key length to whatever length they need/like, and chat away in private. So what she is really asking for is that the average intelligence of US citizens should be lowered to such an appalling degree that there's no-one left who can do that. (What could possibly go wrong?)
To be honest, the tech giants *ought* to be supporting weaker encryption. By "weaker", we presumably mean something that you can crack with a government's IT budget but that is resistant to the budget of common criminals.
Fuck that.
There is exactly 0 acceptable reason to allow the government into anyone's private data. Not for any reason, at all, ever.
Hildabeast is most likely the Democratic nominee and she is the best of that sorry lot. The Republican front runner is current Trump who is sucking the air out of the other campaigns. Hildabeast with Rapist in Chief in tow versus Donald, I think I need be a on drunk for next administration.
So what they want is for all law abiding citizens to use compromised encryption, while the terrorists etc. will still presumably use strong encryption, just fairly undetectably.
Really, on the wire, how do you spot the difference? How can you quickly tell that an encrypted stream of bits is encrypted using, for example, DES or AES128? Presumably they both look similar in their apparent randomness until you try to crack them.
Surely it just muddies the waters? The security services get a warm cozy feeling knowing they can decrypt 99.999% (most of it will be spam or adverts) of encrypted comms easily, and they pass that on to their political "overseers" who in turn repeat the reassurances to a worried population. But all the while the 0.001% the security forces should be keeping an eye on is inaccessible to them. And this is only discovered when they try to crack the messages they want. At which point they realise they have damaged everyone's security except for those they should have been targeting.
Meanwhile, following the principles of "unintended consequences" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely", other uses are discovered for the weak encryption on the bulk of the population's private conversations with one another.
Terrorists could easily adopt spam tactics and spread their message that way. It would be ignored by 99.999% of people who will think its just spam and don't know that "V1argra" is an intentional misspelling that carries coded information. It would mean that if, and that's a big if, the government ever caught on they would need something that breaks the code and would then have to monitor every piece of spam which is an amazingly large haystack.
I think an interesting voting system would be that allocates a number of points to each voter, who then can assign any number of points in favour of or against any of the candidates. So, with a 10 point quotum as an example, one might vote
Candidate Not Just No But Hell No: -5
Candidate Fairly Sensible: 1
Candidate Monster Raving Loony: 4
And with it, proportional representation, not first-past-the-post
> "Perhaps if the US (and other governments) would stop pursuing policies that encourage the rise of terrorism in the first place..."
So the blood-soaked cult of Islam bears no responsibility? It's all our fault? Sure.
Besides, most of the real encouragement has come in just the last 7 years under B. Hussein.
Quoted from his book Audacity of Hope:
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
@Big John
It absolutely is all your fault. By "you" I am indicating here the cohort of people who are ultraconservative bigots, but disregarding race, gender, religion ethnicity or country of origin.
Terrorism has no religion. But the most conservative individuals of all religions consistently seem to do the most damage to society. ISIS, Al Queda and so forth are the crazy-town class conservatives of their region. Their inhumanity towards others has caused the biggest migration of refugees since World War II.
Should you and others like you (Westboro Baptist Church would be an example of others I feel share roughly your capability for compassion and empathy) really be pushing for increased bigotry at home as well? Do we really need that sort of shit on our continent?
I will repeat this one more time: terrorism has no religion. An as you so ably prove, neither does the rampant bigotry that fuels it.
You are right, there is no one religion for terrorists, there are two of them.
At present most of the world's terrorists quote passages from the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira to justify their actions. There is a rich gold mine there for passages to quote. If you find a quote to the contrary, it most probably is being partially quoted, or quoted out of context, or has been abrogated by a later harsher quote.
Before that the terrorists justified their actions by quotations from the leading lights of International Socialism, which to a rational outsider has a grip on its adherents similar to that of a fundamentalist religion and for the sake of the present discussion I will consider it to be so. This applies to the IRA, the Bader Meinhof gang, the Red Army Faction, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, Uncle Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao Tse-tung and plenty of others.
In all cases terrorists are faithful to a violent ideology that cares only for its own advancement to the detriment of wider society. Whether they promote themselves as a religion or hide their religiosity is immaterial. They are in fact behaving as a religion.
You are right, there is no one religion for terrorists, there are two of them.
I think this is way too simplistic. Terrorism is a strategy which has been adopted by all sorts of groups - left wing, right wing, national independence, religious, even ones with simple financial or criminal goals (like the Mafia sending a clear message by murdering people) - and the only thing they have in common is a willingness to murder people to influence public opinion.
Which particular category would you pigeonhole Anders Behring Breivik, Norwegian right-wing extremist and convicted murderer of 77 people. Is he a commie or a Muslim?
These days terrorism has mainly been adopted by Islamic fundamentalists, according to the US National Counterterrorism Center.
That report (from year 2011) states:
"In 2011, Sunni Muslims accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third year in a row. Over 5,700 incidents were committed by Sunni Muslims, responsible for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of 12,533 fatalities."
So in that year 70% of all deaths at the hands of terrorists were carried out by just the Sunni branch of Islam, about 1.5 billion out of 7 billion total people.
That's a lot of killing by a smallish world minority. So let's not hear any more guff about "everyone does it." By and large, it's Muslims who do it to themselves and the rest of us.
"By and large, it's Muslims who do it to themselves and the rest of us." -- Big John
True but only valid as pedantry.
Those who didn't grow past the fallacy of "affirming the consequent" (e.g. All the terrorists in the world are fat, bald, middle-aged men from the West Midlands THEREFORE all fat, bald, middle-aged men from the West Midlands are terrorists) before adulthood should stick to the Daily Mail and Guardian forums where, as apparently in all popular politics, coherent phrasing is almost universally mistaken for coherent thinking.
"Those who didn't grow past the fallacy of "affirming the consequent""
I see you've had some kind of lessons in this "logic" subject. Very good!
Posit: I cannot be suggesting all Muslims are terrorists. Didn't I say they do it to themselves, first? How can there be so many Muslim victims of Muslim terrorists unless most are not terrorists?
Um, is that pedantic enough for you, sir, or have I made another crucial flaw in my simple-minded, single-level reasoning?
"I see you've had some kind of lessons in this "logic" subject. Very good!" -- Big John
You said: "That's a lot of killing by a smallish world minority. So let's not hear any more guff about "everyone does it." By and large, it's Muslims who do it to themselves and the rest of us."
You either (a) intended people to form a conclusion from this or (b) you didn't.
In the latter case (b) it is a correction of previous statements. I have nothing against pedantry --- I am probably one of its foremost proponents! Perhaps it is harsh to call such a correction pedantry, but that is a subjective assessment I made concerning the relative import of the statement to the current argument.
In the former case (a) there is a problem. Given that there are 1.5e9 Muslims in the world, the numbers of both victims and perpetrators of terrorism are proportionally so small that no conclusions can be made from this statement without affirming the consequent.
If you were encouraging the simple-minded to form a conclusion by affirming the consequent, despite your own knowledge of it being a logical fallacy, that would make you worse than simple minded -- it would make you a person using your superior intellect, or at least logical ability, to exploit those with less impressive capabilities.
So, I'm going to apologise for calling you a pedant and thank you for supplying the information, whilst considering the same to not advance us materially in the matter of dealing with terrorism.
Absolute and complete CRAP Trevor, you bigoted piece of shit. More damage is done by so called progressives by orders of magnitude. Eugenics ? Progressives, mass murders (Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot.....) progressives or at least those that progressives worship; Terrorism, mostly practiced and supported by progressives of all stripes.
Westboro "Baptist" church is your best example, how very CLEVER of you, and for bigotry, you do a pretty good number yourself. But then, progressives of your type are big on hatred, it's all you really have, hatred for others.
Terrorism is a technique, not a thing in itself; and the first aim of terrorism is to terrorise, for political and almost always for "progressive" political purposes. In this case, ISIL/ISIS/Daesh are ALL about religion, and one religion in particular.
Your stupidity in denying that link is just that, utter stupidity, and all because you want to blame "conservatives". You are the bigot, and a nasty one at that.
But not the way Ms. Clinton thinks.
The problem is the other way around: Governments think that the tech companies CAN perform the kind of "secure but still tappable" encryption that they want, but that the companies don't WANT to do it. The realities of mathematics and encryption will not permit the kind of security the governments want--they simply will not believe it.
Perhaps a genius will emerge who can, in fact, determine a way to make everyone happy, but I'm not holding my breath.
"Perhaps a genius will emerge who can, in fact, determine a way to make everyone happy, but I'm not holding my breath."
Such a genius would have to find a way to execute every politician traitor currently exploiting terrorism to demand weaker encryption and greater surveillance. The despots themselves wouldn't be happy, but they'd be dead, so that wouldn't matter, and then everyone else would be happy.
Perhaps a genius will emerge who can, in fact, determine a way to make everyone happy, but I'm not holding my breath.
Such a genius has emerged and helped create the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator. It probably looked like a workable solution to said genius until everybody caught on, a few years later.
ISIS are using Telegram which is Russian designed and Russian run (albeit out of Europe).
So anything Hilary and Co ask gets a short and succinct answer "Пошла на хуй". No, I am not going to translate it - look it up yourself.
Further to this, while I do not know how the things stand with _THIS_ particular platform (Telegram), at least some of the "bombproof" stuff designed and run by Russian exiles has had specific guidance and funding from 3 letter agencies so it can be used for an adversarial role in our continuous strife to put a "democracy in Russia".
So the people who complain about Daesh having bombproof communications should stop bitching as _THEY_ helped to design them in the first place (albeit for a different use case). Disingenuous at best.
They quite clearly don't have bomb proof communications as the Russians have demonstrated most effectively. They also until recently have not needed bomb proof communications because they have had the support of Turkey, Israel, Saudi, Australia and the good ol boys and girls in the USA. There is nothing particularly secret about IS and their methods given the number of Western actors involved. The French had been warned about the Paris attacks, the alleged perpetrators were known to the French authorities and had been tracked for a number of years, there was an exercise for the very events running that day - nothing was unknown. All that was required was for the authorities to turn a blind eye in pursuit of some greater agenda like increased state powers or a mechanism for the US to regain the initiative / credibility in the Middle East by waving the pretence of legality. All that is needed now is greater state powers and weaker encryption to ensure the chain of accountability is not compromised and that anyone foolish enough to whistle blow can be quickly identified and silenced. As a bonus the French can minimise the opportunity for protest outside the taxing fresh air talks.
They still don't need bomb-proof communications: at least some (and I would suspect all, albeit with no evidence) of the Paris attackers' communications were in plain.
I think that the principal worry here is that we are governed by stupid people with very bad educations.
"They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack."
1) "may will prevent"
2) "impenetrable encryption whispering" would do exactly the same thing
You can't stop people talking. You can't listen to everything everyone says. You can't stop terrorists. Stop trying. Accept that in a free society, we take risks to be in that society. I am willing to take the risk that stepping out of my house requires, I am willing to take the bus, and I am willing to accept that 'my government' cannot protect me.
I don't want protection, I want you to fix the fucking roads, pay the NHS junior doctors decent salaries, and shut the fuck up. That is pretty much it.
(Yes I'm in the UK - but Camoron and Mother Theresa are the same)
These asshats brought it on themselves by far overreaching their authority (and continuing to do so), using secret courts and secret orders, and lying to everyone from the highest levels when they got caught.
Any attack now on US soil will produce legislation (already written) that will make the Patriot Act look like a children's primer on privacy rights abuse. And they will jam it so far down our throats so fast, there won't be a moment to debate the outcome.
Where has this insane idea come about that we need to live in a risk-free world at any cost?
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The government is not the sole source, nor maybe even the primary one, for the notion that we should accept no risk. In the US, at least, as much blame accrues to the plaintiff attorneys who seek out and sue on behalf of clients who damaged themselves in various compensable ways by their own stupidity and lack of foresight. Examples include the the lady who placed a cup of 180+ degree coffee between her legs, spilled it, and cooked her privates with it. Many medical malpractice claims, although certainly not all, are brought based on adverse outcomes that, while uncommon, are normal. Then there is the granddaddy of all, claims against tobacco companies based on the absurd proposition that despite well publicized untainted reports that smoking cigarettes is harmful, and strong warnings to that effect on every carton and pack, it nonetheless was sensible to believe statements of safety made by those who made a living selling the product.
Another major source of mischief can be found in the do-gooders who highlight design or implementation errors and demand regulation, or note that some people engage in behaviors that harm them, and demand that something be done about it. Such frauds have brought us prohibition, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and good government in the form of ineffective and unresponsive legislators combined with effective but unresponsive civil servants. Most recently we have the New York attorney general saving some of us from gambling away our paychecks on fantasy football.
Governments in democratic regimes thrive on this, but in the end they do it because their constituents demand it of them. It appears to be much less an issue in places like Russia, China, and others (Zimbabwe also comes to mind) where elections are unlikely to interfere with continued incumbency.
I think US tech companies are resistant to interference from .Gov for 1 reason, Dollars. They don't give a blind fig if the US government can read our miles or chats or anything, what they do care about is that if they give the US government full access, Johnny Foreigner will quit buying US products as they would want the best security, not the US security.
I can see the adverts now "Still using Windows or OSX? The US government has built in backdoors! Buy British, where our government is so inept they actually accepted it when we built a physical back door, in the building, and sent them the keys!"
Yet another reason I will not be voting for Hilary. Ever.
Supported the TPP until the public caught wind of how bad it was then she flip-floped.
Voted to authorize invasion of Iraq.
Voted for extending the PATRIOT act.
Voted for CISA.
voted for the bail out the banks (most of her biggest contributors are financial institutions).
and the list just goes on.
If I had to choose between Trump and Hillary, and only those two Yes, I would vote for Trump. Yes he is an insane narcissistic egomaniac who doesn't have a clue about foreign policy but he is not Hilary. The level of hatred that would be focused at him by both side of the isle would render him effectively powerless for the four years he would hold office effectively containing any the damage he can do.
Hilary on the other hand would have the support of at least the Democratic party and would be able to negotiate with the individual members of the Republican party to pass whatever legislation she choose to push. She is far more dangerous and potentially damaging to the USA than Trump could be in even the worst possible scenario.
Fortunately I do not have to choose between Hilary or Trump.
I will be voting for Sanders, even if I have to write him in.
And every vote that is counted that does not go to the winner lessens the "Mandate of the People" that the winners like to claim when they have 52% of the cast votes but only received slightly over 1/6 of the total possible votes when measured against those who COULD have voted but chose not to.
Some final things to think about;
How it would look if Hilary had more votes than Trump but only 16% of all the votes. Sure she would be the winner but it would be a clear message to her that the majority wanted anyone BUT her or Trump.
and lastly;
The only time someone "throws their vote away" is when they DON'T use it. So to all the other people in the USA I say this : I DON"T CARE IF YOU WRITE IN YOUR PET HAMSTER FOR PRESIDENT. GET YOUR ASSES OUT THERE AND VOTE!!
Interestingly, Sanders and Trump seem to stand well above the rest of the crowd in knowing who they are and what they think. Although I disagree with him on many things, Sanders seems actually to have thought enough about public policy to articulate his positions fairly well; Trump seems pretty much to shoot from the hip, although he also seems more genuine than the dwindling crowd of others. Neither of them seems to care a lot (yet?) about poll results, and that probably is a good thing.
I doubt either of them could be an effective president with any conceivable legislative composition, but that, too, might be a good thing.
".... the dwindling crowd of others...." Amusingly, the initial members of that crowd expose the reason both why Bernie is willing to run and also why he stands zero chance of being elected. The Democrats have two issues - the majority expect Shrillary to win the nomination, they have for years, and then expect her to lose the election. Hence the lack of Democrat candidates willing to waste their backers' money and look like losers when they get defeated. Being labelled a nomination loser is not good for an electoral career (see Mike Huckerbee for proof). That's the only reason Bernie is standing - any other year he would have been ignored in a broad array of Democrat candidates, but now the only real option to Shrillary for Democrats that hate her is Bernie. Exactly the same foolishness lead to Jeremy Corbyn getting control of the Labour Party in the UK.
On the Republican side it is the opposite - there really was no anointed and undisputed leader in-waiting (even though Jeb Bush thought he was), but two terms of Obambi, the loss of Democrat control of the Senate, and the spectre of Shrillary, all meant the electorate were more likely to vote Republican. Hence the large number of Republicans willing to throw their hat in the ring. Trump does not waste his own money lightly, so the fact he stood as a Republican and not a Democrat shows he thinks the Republicans have a better chance. His bombastic vote-seeking pronouncements show he also thinks he can alienate large numbers of the electorate and still defeat Shrillary - maybe he is wrong, or maybe he will switch to a more centrist message if he wins the Republican nomination, but it doesn't look good for hardcore Democrats either way.
So what are we going to do?
Well I'll tell you, on days where it may get so draughty that PEOPLES HOMES may be damaged, we will make it illegal for it to be VERY WINDY.
Punishable my much? hell yeh. 1,000 in years in solitary for EVERY GUST.
Also anyone supporting or encouraging (even the slightest grimace) of a bit of a draft will be 'disappeared' to our latest hi-tech, 'black' interrogation centre, that is SO SECRET, even El Pres (either/both countries) cannae know anything about it at all.
Meanwhile, BACK IN THE REAL WORLD...
/sighs
The simple issue is that if the government mandates a backdoor then at some point a criminal will obtain it - and then have access to everything. Just knowing that it possibly exists will concentrate the minds of many people wonderfully.
Despite all the efforts, the secrets of building nuclear and thermonuclear bombs could not be contained, as a result of which we have Israel, Pakistan and India with enough nukes to wipe out the Northern Hemisphere (The Russians might have been able to develop them independently as soon as they knew they were possible, but the help must have saved a lot of time). Snowden was a comparative amateur; imagine a Philby in the NSA. Even the nicest, most democratic government in the best of all possible worlds is not safe with backdoors because they can be stolen. Clinton obviously doesn't get this point because, like most people in Washington and London, she cannot imagine people other than the carefully curated set of people that she meets.
Governments have proved that time and again that they become increasingly incompetent, especially as they grow larger. We know that they have caused events like this to occur to allow Shock Doctrine usurpation of yet moar power, aka False Flags, which they are even less competent to use, including for WW1, WW2, Vietnam and the Middle East! Why aren't these liars strung up already?!
Ancient Rome degraded from a rich city to a plundering bankrupt empire in the same way as the USA effectively is now, because of corrupt politicians. The Roman empire doesn't exist any more, even Byzantium eventually fell, I think there is a lesson there.
It is rather ironic that we had to rely on the Moslems to find and preserve ancient knowledge (for military advantage), during the Dark Ages because Roman Catholic Christian zombies tried to destroy it all, then have it seep back from the Moslems and trigger the Renaissance before the Moslem empire too collapsed from it's own corruption, plunder and incompetence.
Nazi Germany is a more recent example. Hitler usurped absolute power and plundered Germany, and it was only plunder from other countries which made Germany seem rich again. Of course when the external plunder supply became inadequate, the stolen wealth quickly dissipated and Germany was defeated. German then needed USA help to raise the country back from poverty and starvation. You would have thought that the USA should have seen this as a warning too.
No one mentions it but you know that's going to be next. After all: one of the reasons why you cannot fully regulate encryption is also because there are plenty of geeky programmers out there who value their privacy just as much as I do. Who stand with innocent until proven guilty.
I tell you it'll be a matter of time before the "law abiding tech companies" are favored above the "hippie mentality" of "open source software" because the first can be relatively easily controlled ("you know what: you add that backdoor to your security suite and you can expect a huge investment in a few weeks") whereas the latter is pretty much a free for all.
"Open source software is a movement which helps terrorists". Fun part? This can actually be true because the whole idea behind free software is providing it for anyone. So anyone can pick up and modify your code. Of course the "anyone" part will be left out when it comes to the government propaganda.
I know it's been said before ad nauseam, but please can we try and correct this..
Innocent unless proven guilty.
The 'until' bit implies that you are guilty, you just haven't been processed yet.
I know it sounds picky, but language is really important in matters of propaganda (and anti-propaganda).
The 'until' bit implies that you are guilty, you just haven't been processed yet.
Welcome to the United Kingdom.
Do you remember Wacky Jacqui's data retention plans? Where your data would be held for longer if you were found not guilty of a more serious crime?
Vic.
"And we got the same unhelpful response from Silicon Valley when we asked them to:
- make 1 equal to 0,
- give us the square root of -1,
- redefine Pi as 3.0, and
- create 37 new additional integers between the numbers 1 and 2.
They're just so mean!!!"
Hillary was then observed to stamp her foot petulantly, before demanding a pet unicorn and then moving on to criticize NASA for not inventing faster-than-light travel yet.
Politicians try but they really are completely out of their depth with technology. As we all know, encryption is an algorithm, an idea that is widely available. You can no more stop an encryption algorithm than stop the wind.
Its quite obvious, though, that they'll use any incident opportunistically to enhance their power. My response to them is if the government can't figure out what's going on with all the tools outlined in the Snowden revelations then they're either clueless (so giving them even more won't make a difference) or they're interested in something that isn't terrorism. (Anyway, the best way to combat things like ISIS is not to create the damn things in the first place.....yes, Hilary, you know exactly what I'm talking about.)
"Politicians try but they really are completely out of their depth with technology. "
Our "top" politicians tend to be Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) graduates or other "arts" types with a good sprinkling of lawyers. Few, if any do post-grad studies, none do Doctorates. Most seem to pass on the PP parts and have little grasp of economics. Politicians with anything sciencey or even vaguely STEM related never rise to the top. (Apart from Maggie Thatcher, but she's probably not the best example!) The tops dogs will trot out tame scientists and "business leaders" prepared to spout the party line as "proof" they are doing the right thing.
What's the usual cross section in the US?
Like paper? Sending letters back and forth is probably more secure than any sort of electronic communication because the spooks are lazy these days and would never go to all the trouble of manually opening and resealing your letters. Even if they did they'd have to have targeted you first, because there's sure as heck no way they'd open everyone's letters.
Maybe the terrorists just need to go low tech.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is here to stay.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
We The People no longer trust the surveillance zealots of #MyStupidGovernment. If they hadn't been so foolish as to destroy our Fourth Amendment rights for years-on-end, maybe we'd have sympathy. But trust is dead and gone. Solid, real, keep your damned government nose out of my private business ENCRYPTION is here to stay forever. Thank yourselves for that fact.
The '1984' scenario is the enemy. Enact it and the terrorists WIN.
Weakening encryption systems has nothing at all to do with the fourth amendment, which in any case does not apply to foreign actors, terrorist or not. Protests and misinformation notwithstanding, I do not think anyone has seriously proposed an arrangement whereby encrypted material in possession of US citizens and others legally in the US would be searched without a warrant based on probable cause. Courts have been reducing the government's freedom to in this area for a long time, most recently in connection with cell phone searches incident to an arrest. They are unlikely to change direction. In the US, the concern officials have expressed is that even when they have a valid warrant or other court order, they will not be able to execute it effectively against encrypted material in the way they can against material in locked containers.
These officials are misguided about the practicality of what they ask for, and to the extent they ask for the ability to decrypt arbitrary messages originating in places not under US law (or perhaps laws of the US and its firm allies) they are descending to absurdity. Companies surely could produce backdoored cryptosystems and might do so for money, but only those compelled by effective laws would use them, and criminals (or terrorists) would ignore them if they thought it beneficial. And, as others have observed, regular mail, although slow, is relatively secure and the content can be effectively coded or encrypted without great difficulty.
I suspect that any candidates for office who talk about this are simply trying to pander to those who know little about either cryptography or the magnitude of the terrorist risk.
@ a_yank_lurker.
Did you mean to say Traffic analysis does NOT require decryption? From the context that's what I infer.
(An aside. . . If so, just last week I made the identical ommision in something I sent to a colleague. I sent him a correction. He responded that he had read what I meant, with the missing NOT, without noticing that it wsas missing. Such is the nature of the medium.)
It's nice if you know the content of the messages, but knowing who sends what when is a good start. The British used it in WW2 already for Axis radio messages, with unusual message levels or message lengths being indicators for higher priority for deciphering.
The Da'esh know this, and therefore use a phone just a few times before dumping it, so well before any of the spook organisations would become aware of it being used for nefarious purposes. The fault there was not using plain text messaging, the fault was dumping it where it could be recovered and too close to where the attack took place. Recovering the phone led to checking when it was used and where the messages were sent from/to, which again led to the raid in Saint Denis.
In other news, it turns out that the US government is giving Silicon Valley the good example in weakening encryption standards:
Who's running dozens of top-secret unpatched databases? The Dept of Homeland Security
Government should stop treating Silicon Valley (and the rest of the tech world) as an adversary. Get them to explain the issues to you. Listen to them. If you can't understand what they say (which is quite likely) just accept that what they say is true. The hardest thing for you, as a politician, will be to break your normal habits and disregard the Yes Men because inevitably there will be a few trying to sell you snake oil. It might not be what you want to hear but it will be real and real is what you have to live with.
Actually this scenario seems to be more prevalent than ever these days, have you ever come across this situation..
You: <Explanation of something you know a lot about>
Other: <Failure to understand> & <Treating you like an idiot because they don't understand what you said>
You: ?! <sigh>
I've encountered this quite a few times in recent years, and it doesn't seem to be limited to the young - it's almost like some kind of mind-disease.
Is gullibility,ignorance and arrogance a mental health issue?
Absolutely spot on, Pizza. Governments are going balls to the wall to weaken the very measures that societies needs for legitimate security purposes. They are completely blind to the obvious--that in the process they increase the vulnerability of critical financial and infrastructure operations. Worse, their initiatives will do little or nothing to counter the measures that terrorists are far more likely to employ.
Nothing is more detrimental to security than the illusion of security.
If the terrorists' objective is to do what was recently done in Paris they do not need high tech cryptography. The planning can be done by word of mouth over cups of coffee. Once the plan is set, all that are needed for execution are street maps,a calendar, watches, and a willingness to die for the cause.
Engagement and human intel are the best, perhaps the only effectve, countermeasures for this kind of threat.
Freedom exacts a price and carries risks that demand hard decisions. Decisions like, do we wish to remain a society that welcomes and helps those in need, knowing that some intend us harm? Or do we want to lock our borders and live in a police state? Or, hopefully, something in between where the benefis and risks are in reasonable balance.
These are not idle questions. These are questions we must each answer for ourselves, individually and as a society. They are NOT questions that those who govern can or should be allowed to make without our informed consent..
Gun manufacturers are helping the terrorists, too.
In addition - Every year more people get killed in gun related violance than terrorist attacks.
Why aren't you taking on the arms industry?
Restricting access to arms will have a direct postive impact.
It's also something that's achievable. If you "weaken" one encrypted service, people will just move on to the next one...
Exactly how stupid do you have to be to think that if someone starts shooting into the crowd in a darkened theatre, the obvious answer is for other people to start shooting as well?
It's a pity none of the interviewers in the US are willing to ask the likes of Trump and Carson exactly how their ideas would play out in practice; perhaps with a couple of real Army officers around to weigh in.
No, I think Scott Adams has it right.
Let people have all the guns they want because you won't stop macho posturing till the last Bindelite strangles the last man with the last bra-strap.
Ban the manufacture and supply of ammunition.*
I was in India many years ago and the guy I was working with, an engineer, remarked on how difficult it was to achieve reliable mass production in India. He said "If an Indian solider points a gun at you the safest place to stand is right in front of it, because that's the last place an Indian Army bullet is going to end up."
*This is not a serious suggestion.
Ban the manufacture and supply of ammunition
Chris Rock said something similar - NSFW, of course, because it's Chris Rock...
Vic.
Personally I am more scared about the prospect of a post antibiotic world than I am of a terrorist event.
It's odd how that 'little' piece of news has been left out of the mainstream news the last week or so.
Considering the rise of TB and other diseases in the UK, we all have a lot more to worry about than a few nutters with guns/bombs* if a resistant strain develops.
*I'm not trying to reduce the events in Paris or underestimate their impact to those involved, but in a like for like comparison the threat of drug resistant diseases is a FAR greater risk.
Silicon Valley is already in bed with the government. All Hillary is doing is leading you to believe that they're unable to read your communication, while it has been happening all along.
That's what I would do....
The chinese are already developping their own phone OS because they don't trust silicon valley....
Remember how the US accused Huawei of having backdoors in their networking gear... And then it turns out that the NSA had loaded bookdoors onto Cisco Routers :)
Btw - it's the NWSA now...
National Weakened Security Agency
Mrs. Clinton (and other politicians), you are profoundly and fundamentally wrong demanding a weaker encryptions from the Silicon Valley companies:
a. Weaker encryption would not make it easier to stop terrorist activities. There will be other methods of communication, the simplest being public unencrypted but coded messages. Person to person communication could also make it irrelevant the remote snooping on electronic communications.
b. A backdoor to electronic communications granted to a government is by far a much higher risk for human race in general compared with any terrorist group. Even if a government as a hole might not be evil, there will be evil people in ANY government of ANY country that WILL use that backdoor for their own or their party benefits and against the people they should protect.
c. Anybody thinking that granting communications backdoors to a particular government will remain with that government is delusional. The backdoors WILL be leaked to other parties and governments, in the end potentially helping more the exact entities that were supposed to be monitored by the backdoors availability. Mrs. Clinton, do not plan to make USA a North Korea, China or Russia in term of people surveillance.
d. You are deeply wrong to make a statement that “Silicon Valley is viewing the USA government as an adversary”. I would remind you that you are living in USA, a civilized democratic society where there are checks and balances on all government or non-governments activities. Your words that I would translate as “you are with us or against us” is more typical of ISIS ideology not of a USA political party ideology. Silicon Valley companies would like to have the USA and other governments as partners not adversaries. Your words show that is YOU seeing the Silicon Valley companies as adversaries, not the other way around.
e. By the way, what was your reason to use a personal email server while Secretary of State? It should be very clear for everybody that you did it to avoid other government agencies monitoring the content of your emails and have a plausible deniability on your knowledge of situations, actions, assessments and instructions you gave to other people.
by denying its members the technology and rights to secure it.
The only alternative (and what Ms. Clinton and others appear to be pushing for) is a gobal totalitarian state in which the government controls every aspect of security.
It must be global, because the technologies and the systems they siupport are global. It must be totalitarian, because it willl be necessary to criminalize the use of those technologies that cannot be controlled by any other means--for examples, 'one time pads' and steganography.
As to the motivation, one need only follow the money, and see who are benefiting from present government cybersecurity initiatives, particularly in the US, the UK and China.
Hey El Reg, could you please start using the more appropriate term for that little terrorist movement that's rolled over Iraq and Syria? Since it's neither a good example of Islam nor a proper state by any definition of the word the only proper thing you can call them is Daesh.
As an added bonus, the bastards hate it.
"The terror group prefers to be known as the Islamic State, and is averse to any acronyms, especially one politicians are now using more often...the Islamic State reportedly hates 'Daesh' so much that its brutes have threatened to cut out the tongue of anyone using it"
Would it help if we built them a shrubbery?
Actually, they adhere very faithfully to the Koran and to the behaviour of Mohammad. You are obviously ignorant of what is in the Koran and how abrogation works. There may be other interpretations, but by current Koranic scholarship, ISIL/ISIS/whatever are somewhat purist but doctrinally correct in their interpretation of the Koran. If you disagree you do need to point out where they are incorrect by Koranic standards in their interpretation, and you might find that difficult.
As an example of Islam they are at least as valid as any other and more valid than most. Don't like what they practice ? Blame the source.
"Hillary and the lovely Theresa May would probably get on like the proverbial house on fire."
If it can be arranged to have them placed inside a house along with a box of matches and a can of petrol I suspect we would find out if that were true pretty quickly. They clearly enjoy playing with fire.
I love reading and posting comments here. With a few exceptions, comments and postings are intelligent and well thought out. The exceptions, from a certain perspective, frequently look very much like inflammatory "out of left field" contributions from agitators who are deliberately attempting to derail the conversation.
I am reminded of some American slang, from the cold war era, derived from the Russian phrase "agitatsiya propaganda". The slang is: "Agitprop Pusher" one who seizes upon the emotional aspects of controversial issues, intending to arouse his/her audience to indignation and/or action.
My best regards to the El Reg Regulars. Keep up the good work.
Vote NO HILLARY on Election day. She's infected us long enough.
I can't say who to vote for, really. Am leaning toward Jeb Bush and John Kasich, both kinda moderate for Repubs, who have competent advisors (always vote largely based on the advisors). The others are hotheads or have other problems. We need professionals, not hotheads, as the bureacracy in DC is now infested with you know what. Only professionals know where to find them and get them out.
So let's weaken the Hillary encryption, and keep our own. Guns don't cause crimes, people do. Encryption won't cause crimes, people do. TARGET THE PEOPLE. Most of them don't use computer stuff, it's old-school Arab word of mouth mostly in the mosques, hiding behind women and children, putting bombs in schools, etc. Ever since 610 AD, we can predict the tactics.
"Am leaning toward Jeb Bush and John Kasich, both kinda moderate for Repubs"
I think Bush is too contaminated by his family links to the Saudi régime to be a safe President. His brother gave the Saudis what they wanted; it would have been cheaper just to give them a trillion dollars to stay in their own country and not stir it up elsewhere. The Bush family are great friends with the bin Ladens, and notice that Osama did not get killed while Bush was in power.
Kasich does sound a lot better, but the problem is that if he becomes President he's going to bring all the crazies with him.
Rule by Hollywood and the civilian bureaucracy or rule by the arms makers and the military bureaucracy? Neither is exactly an optimal choice.
It's already known that the attacks in Paris were initiated after communication over an unsecured channel: SMS. This is already monitored (don't believe for a second that there isn't some shadowy, secretive government agency storing all those messages).
They didn't act on this information because the amount of data they have is way, way too big to do anything meaningful with it. Yet, somehow, we must know all stop using secure communication so that those unreliable secret agencies can gather even more data they won't know what to do with.
As usual - she is a politician after all - she is talking out of her behind.
France already has the most intrusive data snooping laws in Europe, if not the world and they were unable to stop the attack. Why?
Because, according to reports in France, the murderers used an obscure Moroccan dialect and open channels. Just like the USA did in WWII with the "Code Talkers"!
Banning encryption won't necessarily achieve the results they're hoping for.
Few people need encryption and it's true that terrorists and digital crims use it. Eradicating all terrorists would go a long ways towards reducing world problems. Cyber crims should be the number two priority but still a very high priority. Hackers and crackers and malware spewers should spend the next 35 years in prison without any chance of an early parole. Pirates should get a minimum 2 yrs. and a high fine. This would remove a lot of scum from society and improve the world immensely while creating jobs building prisons and managing the scum in society.
Let me see. So you want to force US companies to build and use encryption systems with known publicly disclosed back-doors that ISIS could then use. Meanwhile the rest of the world will use encryption systems build in other countries without said back-doors meaning that the US will be able to spy on itself but no one else.
Question how do you build encryption software with back-doors when the only way to build encryption is to open source it. Then someone will see the bug and fix it or it would have to be publicly stated that this bug exists for spying and then no one will use it.
Typical idiot that thinks the world begins and ends with the US.
Also even if they introduce new encryption with back doors ISIS will just continue to use the old stuff or build it's own. Then again they may just revert to sending letters in the post as most spying looks to have moved on from interception physical mail. Heck even a simple formula could be devised to make it unreadable and extremely hard to crack
There is a consistent characteristic of people - that we often underestimate the capabilities of our opponents, particularly if we take pride in the particular endeavour.
Since there are many textbooks in several languages about modern Cryptography, the bad guys can quite easily develop their own and use that. No matter how much huffing and puffing we do, they will have strong crypto.
This battle was lost long long ago.
Dear Hillary Clinton: The industry is not being difficult with you. Strong encryption with a backdoor simply doesn't exist. Encryption with a backdoor tacked on, mathematical analysis will make the backdoor apparent and all too soon this will become useless encryption that anyone who wants to can crack.
I'm voting Libertarian.
--------
Recall the Clipper chip. Introduced 1994 and off the market by 1996. One device (an encrypting telephone) used it. By the time that device even shipped, 2 flaws had been found in the chip that would let the chip encrypt without a recoverable key; it also relied on the algorithm being secret (the chip was a black box with a few commands for setting your key and such, plaintext going in and encrypted data coming out, or encrypted data in and plaintext out.)
So, you would not be able to use some special crypto chip for this like planned in the 1990s, since it needs to run on the existing installed base of phones etc. If the chip design had to be kept confidential, it could not be integrated into the main SoC that the phone or tablet uses, and it seems unlikely phone and tablet makers would want to have to purchase (and find room and power budget for) a single-purpose crypto chip. The Clipper chip was made at a special secure fab facility; it seems likely a chip would not be made on the most modern process (since they won't send it out to a regular fab company.) On-CPU AES acceleration lets modern CPUs encrypt at about 1GB/second or more. It seems to me on the server-side, a) Google, Microsoft, etc. would be quite resistant to being expected to order and install thousands of crypto chips and b) At the scale of Google and Microsoft, they end up pushing the limits of even 10gigabit switches, these chips better be pretty quick to not turn into a big bottleneck.
Doing it in software, you can't keep the algorithm secret. For the usual crypto libraries to support this new algorithm, they'll need specifications to implement an open source implementation. Oh, you're going to ship .o for various CPUs? You forget about the existence of debuggers, these guys and gals that analyze viruses for a living will have no problem turning a .o back into a description of the algorithm.
Doing it in software, you can't keep the algorithm secret
If there's sufficient value in discovering the secrets, hardware isn't going to keep it secret either.
This is the trouble with all these "eggs in one basket" scenarios; they turn the crypto mechanism into a very tempting target for criminals. Once that target is worth enough, someone will put the cash into breaking into it...
Vic.
"We need to challenge our best minds"
Hillary you and your idiot friends just don't get it, creating a backdoor is the dumbest idea EVER, if there's a backdoor for government to use, you can bet someone outside of government will find a way through it.
How about you do something constructive and kick a few asses, especially over at DHS considering the audit report on their security and patching.
"Regardless, senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the US Senate Intelligence Committee, went on TV and said..."
Perhaps if they focused on Human Intelligence instead of worrying about SIGINT there would be one less reason to question the collective intelligence of their committees. Terrifyingly it is not only in Washington where they lack intelligence.
Hillary Clinton: " "So we need Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary."
Reuters article in May: "A U.S. spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans' phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday"
Maybe the tech sector will stop viewing the government as its adversary when it stops behaving like an adversary which customers need to be protected from criminal acts by
The trouble with trusting Hillary Clinton, is that she is a pathological liar, like most politicians, that hold ordinary people in contempt.
That Hillary Clinton and those around her set up a private server is now known. That Barak Obama lied to the American people about it when he said "whenever everyone else learned about it..." is also now known. What is missed is that these people had a need to lie, and, more importantly, they knew such a private server would necessary in concealing information from the citizens of the United States. Donna Brazille attempted to say that the emails were forgeries. She was found to be deceptive. The home server was not set up to be "convenient", but for the purpose of concealing information. This was approved, de facto by the White House, the State Department, and the Justice Department. The information within this private server was not intended for Congress, watchdogs, or the American people to see.
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