One Article Review
| Source |  Errata Security |
|---|---|
| Identifiant | 1229625 |
| Date de publication | 2019-07-28 15:21:32 (vue: 2019-07-28 22:00:48) |
| Titre | Why we fight for crypto |
| Texte | This last week, the Attorney General William Barr called for crypto backdoors. His speech is a fair summary of law-enforcement's side of the argument. In this post, I'm going to address many of his arguments.The tl;dr version of this blog post is this:Their claims of mounting crime are unsubstantiated, based on emotional anecdotes rather than statistics. We live in a Golden Age of Surveillance where, if any balancing is to be done in the privacy vs. security tradeoff, it should be in favor of more privacy.But we aren't talking about tradeoff with privacy, but other rights. In particular, it's every much as important to protect the rights of political dissidents to keep some communications private (encryption) as it is to allow them to make other communications public (free speech). In addition, there is no solution to their "going dark" problem that doesn't restrict the freedom to run arbitrary software of the user's choice on their computers/phones.Thirdly, there is the problem of technical feasibility. We don't know how to make backdoors available for law enforcement access that doesn't enormously reduce security for users.BalanceThe crux of his argument is balancing civil rights vs. safety, also described as privacy vs. security. This balance is expressed in the constitution by the Fourth Amendment. The 4rth doesn't express an absolute right to privacy, but allows for police to invade your privacy if they can show an independent judge that they have "probable cause". By making communications "warrant proof", encryption is creating a "law free zone" enabling crime to be conducted without the ability of the police to investigate.It's a reasonable argument. If your child gets kidnapped by sex traffickers, you'll be demanding the police do something, anything to get your child back safe. If a phone is found at the scene, you'll definitely want them to have the ability to decrypt the phone, as long as a judge gives them a search warrant to balance civil liberty concerns.However, this argument is wrong, as I'll discuss below.Law free zonesBarr claims encryption creates a new "law free zone ... giving criminals the means to operate free of lawful scrutiny". He pretends that such zones never existed before.Of course they've existed before. Attorney-client privilege is one example, which is definitely abused to further crime. Barr's own boss has committed obstruction of justice, hiding behind the law-free zone of Article II of the constitution. We are surrounded by legal loopholes that criminals exploit in order to commit crimes, where the cost of closing the loophole is greater than the benefit.The biggest "law free zone" that exists is just the fact that we don't live in a universal surveillance state. I think impure thoughts without the police being able to read my mind. I can whisper quietly in your ear at a bar without the government overhearing. I can invite you over to my house to plot nefarious deeds in my living room.Technology didn't create these zones. However, technological advances are allowing police to defeat them.Business's have security cameras everywhere. Neighborhood associations are installing license plate readers. We are putting Echo/OkGoogle/Cortana/Siri devices in our homes listening to us. Our phones and computers have microphones and cameras. Our TV's increasingly have cameras and mics, too, in case we want to use them for video conferencing, or give them voice commands.Every argument Barr makes about crypto backdoors applies to backdoor access to microphones, every arguments applies to forcing TVs to have a backdoor allowing police armed with a warrant to turn on the camera in your living room. These |
| Envoyé | Oui |
| Condensat | ability about abuse any are aren at&t backdoor balance balancing barr become between big but choose citizens communications compromises concern consumer convincingly corporations crypto cryptographers cryptography danger devices difference dissidents doesn encryption enforcement even every facebook favor fight free from government governments grade hands has have important install instead involve issues law like military much not obvious other ourselves outlawing own political power privacy private problems products/services protect provide public purely put regulating rely removing repress right safety scenarios security separate similarly software solution speech such talking technical tell themselves there thing thirdly though tokn upon wholly why |
| Tags | Guideline |
| Stories | |
| Notes | |
| Move | 
|
L'article ne semble pas avoir été repris aprés sa publication.
L'article ne semble pas avoir été repris sur un précédent.