Good day all. If it’s a day ending in a “Y” then there will be another story of the Government working to ignore the Constitution. This time, Il Douche wanted his secret police to look into subverting the encryption on smartphones.
One of the major ways people protect the data on their phones these days is to encrypt the on board storage, including SD cards of the phones use them. Since the encryption used is very tough to crack, generally impossible, there have been complaints by various law enforcement and intelligence services along with demands to put in some sort of back doors.
Aside from being a generally bad idea, it’s also pretty obviously a violation of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. Here are the details one what they wanted to do from the Washington Post:
An Obama administration working group has explored four possible approaches tech companies might use that would allow law enforcement to unlock encrypted communications — access that some tech firms say their systems are not set up to provide.
The group concluded that the solutions were “technically feasible,” but all had drawbacks as well.
Drawbacks? I have an idea of one big drawback. Putting a backdoor in will be found by hackers and they will get into the systems, or has the OPM hack slipped what passes for their minds in Washington?
The approaches were analyzed as part of a months-long government discussion about how to deal with the growing use of encryption in which no one but the user can see the information. Law enforcement officials have argued that armed with a warrant they should be able to obtain communications, such as e-mails and text messages, from companies in terrorism and criminal cases.
How quaint. The police actually mentioned getting a warrant before searching a phone. Getting a warrant would be a new experience for most of the goons pretending to be law enforcement officials.
Senior officials do not intend to advance the solutions as “administration proposals” — or even want them shared outside the government, according to a draft memo obtained by The Washington Post.
Oh? Why not?
They fear blowback.
Gee, ya think? Morons.
“Any proposed solution almost certainly would quickly become a focal point for attacks,” said the unclassified memo, drafted this summer by officials from law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and economic agencies for eventual consideration by Cabinet members.
“Rather than sparking more discussion, government-proposed technical approaches would almost certainly be perceived as proposals to introduce ‘backdoors’ or vulnerabilities in technology products and services and increase tensions rather [than] build cooperation,” the memo said.
Why would people thank that? Probably because that is exactly what would happen. The whole point of encrypting data is to keep people who are not authorized to see it from, you know, SEEING IT!!
Indeed, National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh stated in an e-mail that “these proposals are not being pursued.” He said: “The United States government firmly supports the development and robust adoption of strong encryption, while acknowledging that use of encryption by terrorists and criminals to conceal and enable crimes and other malicious activity can pose serious challenges to public safety. The administration continues to welcome public discussion of this issue as we consider policy options.”
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbp_JQ7RxqM’]
Oh that’s hilarious! Pull the finger, it has a bell on it.
Instead of offering technical solutions, the working group drew up a set of principles to guide engagement with the private sector. They include: no bulk collection of information and no “golden keys” for the government to gain access to data.
Obviously, no one from the NSA, the various law enforcement agencies or the DNC was involved in that set of principles. So what are some of these “principles” these KGB wannabes came up with?
The first potential solution called for providers to add a physical, encrypted port to their devices. Companies would maintain a separate set of keys to unlock devices, using that port only if law enforcement had physical access to a device and obtained a court order to compel the company’s assistance.
There’s a few problems with that idea.
The necessary hardware changes could be costly for U.S. manufacturers, but the physical access required by this method could limit some of the cybersecurity risks, the memo said.
Yeah, right up until someone hacks it or steals the data used to make these keys. Don’t think that can happen? Ever hear of RSA SecurID?
The second approach would exploit companies’ automatic software updates. Under a court order, the company could insert spyware onto targeted customers’ phones or tablets — essentially hacking the device. However, the memo warned, this could “call into question the trustworthiness of established software update channels” and might lead some users to opt out of updates, which would eventually leave their devices less secure.
A third idea described splitting up encryption keys, a possibility floated by National Security Agency director Michael S. Rogers earlier this year. That would require companies to create a way to unlock encrypted content, but divide the key into several pieces — to be combined only under court order. Exactly how this would work remains unclear, but the memo warned that such a system would be “complex to implement and maintain.”
I’ve actually worked with someone to develop just this sort of protocol. We were looking at the use of PGP and looking at a way to be able to access corporate files that someone had encrypted. We came up with a plan that the keys would be broken up and that they would be held in safe deposit boxes in separate banks. There would be a list of people who could access these boxes, with no one person being able to access both of them. We never implemented this for one big reason. Costs.
The very fact that the government is even talking about forcing back doors into encrypted systems tells me that the government is out of control and has forgotten what the Constitution was written for. It was created with the idea of enforcing limits on the power of the government. Since at least the Roosevelt Administration, and some would say since the Lincoln Administration, that whole idea has been tossed into the trashcan of history.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, people are paying more attention to the abuses by the government then they ever have before. Today, the majority of people consider the federal government to be a threat to their rights, freedom and liberty. It’s crap like this that makes people want to break open the 4th Box of Liberty.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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