This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Meanwhile CIA is promoting Signal. USA should sort itself out.
FBI is actually promoting Signal and WhatsApp as well. Which should make people raise eyebrows and question if they don't already have access to both of those.
There's nothing to access from signal, the keys are local to each chat. WhatsApp another thing.
then they are questioning the other security properties of the app. safery of used encryption algorithm or its implementation, healthyness of having proprietary google code built into the app, etc
So their consistent position is consistently internally inconsistent.
Wonderful.
I saw another article claiming they said not to use VPNs either. Do they just hate security now?
FBI Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said, “The FBI has been really, really consistent about our stance on lawful access encryption. We're actually big, big supporters of it, but it has to be reasonably responsibly managed so that we can get what we need on the other side.”
So they want to keep the backdoors but have the Chinese government stop naughtily using them when they're only for American use. Good plan! A quick call to Xi Jinping should sort the whole thing out.
I'm no encryption expert, but wouldn't a backdoor of any kind be inevitably exploited by a malicious actor?
On the first day it was released to the public.
The encryption specialists at universities knew about the eliptic curve backdoor before it was implemented, and kept recommending that it not be.
Remember that if the police can read your stuff, so can foreign interests, industrial spies, organized crime and militants of large scale political movements.
Besides which here in the States, law enforcement is notorious for abusing their access to technology to bypass protections of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.
And usually the judges don't mind.
Can you cite me some specific examples? I would love to do aome further reading
Go onto Techdirt ( here ) and check Tim Cushing's blog. His beat is the abuse and corruption of our justice system. The latest issue I recall was using drones to peek into fenced backyards, into windows and deep across property lines, all without a warrant or probable cause.
During the 2010s IMSI spoofers were being used but the Stingray corporation required precincts sign an NDE so parallel reconstruction (creating an alternative plausible path of investigation to lead to the same discovery of evidence) was the norm. Eventually defense lawyers learned to press the issue, as even FBI would drop cases before admitting they used IMSI catchers to spy on where a suspect's phone was.
One of my bigger beefs is the misuse of detection dogs, which have up to a ~90% false positive rate, called Probable Cause on Four Legs it's known that most departments prefer trick-pony dogs who just signal a lot, in contrast to dogs who can actually detect stuff.
Interestingly, there is a subset of the K9 sector who train and handle detection dogs (which are still legitimately used, say to detect explosives in long lines of luggage at airports), and thanks to the common use of dogs to force a search, the public has been losing confidence in them, and courts who believe dog searches are for real.
often relying on getting a warrant post hoc or lying to establish probable cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Here's a whole ass Wikipedia article on the very subject, because it's been so widespread for so long it has a fucking name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemisphere_Project
Here's a Wikipedia article on the mass surveillance by the DEA, which is where the data used for parallel construction was sourced.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805/
Here's a good example from the first Wikipedia article about how the Feds pass signals intelligence to local law enforcement so they can start cases and claim they found the initial evidence some other way than illegal mass surveillance.
For more history about attempts to install backdoors, see:
That's a wicked response. Thanks big!!
There’s just so many examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Also, Greece had a national scandal where their phone system had legal backdoors added for wiretap orders, and someone broke in and published the confidential phone calls of politicians using the same system. The US is now dealing with a similar attack.
That's so fuckered up, what's wrong with people these days?
Yes, but politicians and police keep fantasizing about a magical crypto-backdoor that only they can use, no matter how many times people explain this to them or how many times they get burned.
Frankly a person with such persistence trying to get a tool they never justly need should get punched in the face until they get smarter.
I mean, there already are laws about what should be surrendered to them in legal proceedings and how. That's not impeded by any encryption. That everybody has right to remain silent is already a rule, encryption just reaffirms it with math.
What they are trying to create is a tool for illegally violating people without being detected, thus not causing outrage and not having to justify it.
It's literally an unprecedented penetration of government structures and agencies and political groups by criminals who want to use those organizations to spy after others. By thieves. They should all be found and put in jail.
u/floofloof is speaking sarcastically above, I believe.
Are the Feds actually this smooth-brained? I mean, I know they have to maintain the appearance of control, so his words make sense from that perspective. But surely they have to be aware, the very backdoors they originally forced down our throats are EXACTLY WHAT'S CAUSING THIS PROBLEM NOW. These geniuses who purportedly protect American citizens, are either woefully inept, lacking basic understanding of how data security actually works, or LYING with malice. Which do you think it is?
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!
It's D) All of the above.
They’re not smooth brained at all. They know exactly what they are saying, but them gaining full control always takes priority over all other factors. Just because a foreign adversary did it to us, which they don’t like, doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to do it to us.
I don't care, it's not relevant what they think.
the end result is literally the same
Just say the words backdoor you fucking douchebag. What bullshit soft peddling political speech.
Their wet dream is to promote encryption toward widespread adoption and then force the major industrial players to give them back doors whilst giving people a false sense of security.
Open source standards are the only thing that can save us from these savages
Correct. When people don't have said false sense of security, they don't talk about important things.
Which is why things common in the olden days, like reading one's mail and wire tapping, wouldn't give results as good as bugging apartments or, even better, hotel rooms, restaurant tables.
I agree with you about their wet dreams, but I think it'll even out in the end to the same situation as before. Targeted attacks - as efficient as it gets. Attacks on everyone - hardly useful, because false sense of security is not something to last long, just like exclusive knowledge of a backdoor.
The fact that existing backdoors have been completely taken over by Salt Typhoon hackers means fuck all to them, I guess.
Elsewhere the FBI suggests using encrypted texts because of Salt Typhoon. Talking out of both sides of their mouth.
Shows where the real priorities lie. Our governments view their own citizens as the enemy.
Our governments view their own citizens as the enemy.
Their citizens generally don't consider them better people or some kind of aristocracy, with right to power over the rest. That is in conflict with what they themselves think. Some people I've met included.
When you treat people as your enemy, they may become your enemy. Self fulfilling prophecy.
The FBI can go fuck a duck. Use encryption or else. You are a fool.
Poor duck.
Read up on ducks. They were /screwed/ before the FBI showed up.
This is a basic security measure, it is mind-blowing that they are taking this stance.
This has been their stance since basically forever.
It makes things easier for them and they don’t pay the costs of security breaches, the people do.
Me watching Kash Patel and Donald Trump drive the FBI into the ditch:
With the FBI being gone, the republican controlled Congress now passes a law to grant law enforcement powers to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
🙃
I’m looking forward to our inevitable return to roman style firefighting. Can’t wait to haggle with them as the fire they started in my house grows
Fascists need enforcement, if they actually kill it, something much worse will replace it
Fascists are a movement from 1920s Italy. You'll see things clearer if you don't try to classify them by tired labels.
That said, even if you are wrong here, there'll be a lot of "worse", I think.
Ur-Fascism was published in 1995 partly to document the modern fascist and draw lines to the originals.
Yes the term was first used a century ago, but unfortunately it hasn't stayed in the past.
That text just lists a set of comorbid traits of similar movements.
It's vague from author's viewpoint, but also quite specific as compared to how the word "fascism" is being used today.
I can agree there are regimes that fit there, but they are small. Nothing mainstream in USA is fascism. Putin's Russia isn't fascism. Even Turkey and Azerbaijan are not fascism. They all have fragments and elements of fascism, but that doesn't mean anything.
I think everyone is focusing on that mechanism too much, equating it to despotism, tyranny, evil and death. All of these exist very well outside of fascism. That something isn't fascist doesn't mean it's better.
That essay is about totalitarian regimes with cult of personality, cult of sacrifice and irrational youthful power, hierarchical structure, deification of technology, all that. I also advise you to read his "Foucault's Pendulum", a wonderful read, except with my ADHD I haven't yet finished it. Its atmosphere is focused on literal fascism and its roots, but the atmosphere of Stalinism (which I know better) is not too different.
