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Cook calls for White House to defend use of strong encryption
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Jan 13, 2016, 08:31 AM
 
The White House has reportedly come under fire from Apple CEO Tim Cook, accusing it of failing to provide leadership in the ongoing debate over device security and encryption. Speaking to Obama administration officials who talked to leaders in the tech industry in San Jose last week, Cook is said to have asked for the administration to issue a statement that defends the use of strong or unbreakable encryption to protect user data.

The Intercept reports Cook wants the White House to say "no backdoors," effectively denying continued requests by security agency officials to make it easier to access encrypted data. Officials such as FBI director James Comey have asked for major tech companies to include backdoors in their products, though the response notes that weakened encryption makes all the data insecure as criminals could take advantage of the exact same access methods.

Apple CEO Tim Cook


In response, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Cook of the "balance" needed between privacy and national security, and that the administration continues to debate the matter internally.

A briefing document acquired by the report notes the White House asked if there were any "high level principles" tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and others could agree upon over dealing terrorist usage of encryption. The briefing also queried if there are "technologies" that could "make it harder for terrorists to use the Internet to mobilize, facilitate, and operationalize," how the government could better use unencrypted metadata, and if there is a way to "preserve critical data" that could be easily handed to law enforcement rapidly.

Cook's comments are a continuation of earlier statements regarding consumer privacy and law enforcement access, such as in December's interview with CBS show 60 Minutes. The CEO and Apple's stance on encryption has been criticized in the past, with Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) previously complaining about tech companies designing their systems to "avoid lawful court-ordered searches."
     
Inkling
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Jan 13, 2016, 09:37 AM
 
Cook's clearly not thought very deeply about this, at least from a what's right, what's wrong perspective. What's right is allowing law enforcement access to encrypted data on the phones of criminals. Think of terrorists and child pornographers. The evidence to convict them and prevent further crimes is often on their iPhones. What's wrong is the government mass monitoring of citizens. Cook wants the first and evil-enabling secrecy with impossible to break encrypted iPhones. But he, Apple, and the entire high-tech industry has shown no interest in giving us what they could implement in a few months: easy-to-use, effective encrypted email. That would bring the illicit and extensive monitoring of all our lives by the NSA to a speedy halt. Cook, Apple and much of Silicon Valley have it all wrong.
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burger
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Jan 13, 2016, 09:52 AM
 
Inkling- There's a pretty good chance that the gray area surrounding the term "criminal" could be used to access anyone's data, at any time. The laws are to protect us, not to expose us under an abused system.

Be careful what you ask for in the face of fear, or under the guise of justice. I'm all for stopping murderers and pedophiles, but opening up everyone's personal data to find them is a McCarthyism.
     
Charles Martin
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Jan 13, 2016, 01:26 PM
 
How "lawful" are searches order in secret via secret courts, with no right of rebuttal or appeal? How "lawful" is making everyone's data available to the government on a whim when the same country apparently feels that at least one gun massacre a day -- often including child victims -- is an acceptable price to pay for the preservation of "gun freedom." Who's to say that the occasional terrorist attack shouldn't be the price we pay for locked-down, unbreakable encryption of our personal data? I can tell you which of the two I'd adjust in a heartbeat ...

To put this another way: the right of Americans to own mass-destruction firearms for personal use is not really explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, but the right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure in their persons and papers -- and "papers" here clearly includes personal computerized data -- is. It would be a little amusing to watch Libertarians and Constitutionalists abandon their principles due to cowardice if it wasn't so sad.

We are not talking here about evidence from after the fact -- authorities can break encrypted devices they are in physical possession of relatively easily, it just takes a little while. We are talking about pre-emptive government monitoring of everyone and everything, because of possible terrorism. I've never heard such a fundamentally anti-American idea in all my life.

The purpose of the Constitution is not to make law enforcement's job easier -- quite the opposite, in fact, since everything in there comes from the fundamental concept that citizens are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law (ie, after the crime). How did we ever solve crimes prior to having unfettered access to everyone's data? Yet somehow we did, and still do every single day. There are other, better, and demonstrably more effective ways to fight and prevent terrible crimes, but when a country says they need to protect themselves against foreign threats while ignoring actual everyday massacres and government and police overreach, you have to ask yourself if the authoritarians in leadership positions here (and their Wormtongue-like supporters) aren't being just a little bit two-faced.

Without that concept of personal privacy, the rights granted in the Constitution are meaningless and easily suspended, and we officially live in a police state. Freedom and liberty carry a penalty and responsibility, but used to be considered more valuable than the inevitable cost. I think Ben Franklin was the one who said something akin to "those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither."
( Last edited by Charles Martin; Jan 13, 2016 at 01:37 PM. )
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smacker
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Jan 14, 2016, 04:57 AM
 
@Charles Martin "authorities can break encrypted devices they are in physical possession of relatively easily, it just takes a little while" - Is that true? Didn't Tim Cook repeatedly mention with the current method, they couldn't give the key even if they were forced to? Because they simply don't have it? How is law enforcement supposed to break it easily?
     
Steve Wilkinson
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Jan 14, 2016, 01:55 PM
 
I think this is mostly a smoke-screen of semantics. The appropriate term for this 'balance' Lynch talks about is 'man-in-the-middle' attack. So, Cook is probably right about no 'backdoors.' But, is he really on our side? Who knows? We'll never know unless there is a leak of some kind, as these companies are now indemnified, being strongly 'encouraged' to participate, and there's even a ton-o-cash available if they do.

re: "same country apparently feels that at least one gun massacre a day -- often including child victims"

I think you need to lay off the media propaganda! I know Canadians have a knee-jerk reaction to 'the American gun-culture' but, come on. Gun violence is down, gun ownership up. The problem seems to be the very-recent escalation in 'mass shootings' (defined by 4 or more, including the perpetrators, with anything BB-gun or more). The question is, why the sudden increase? And, the FBI is working hard to egg incidents on (i.e.: supplying weapons and plans, pushing, coaxing, and such, to the radicalized or mentally ill). What do we expect? I'll not even get into side-effects of SSRIs, outcomes of social engineering experiments (like fatherless homes), or recent stirring up of race-relations, etc.

But, point taken. Both things are very important, I just see them both as one in the same... an attempt to erode freedoms through fear-mongering. (And, I do think the firearm thing is pretty spelled out in the Constitution... if, as a society, it gets decided that the military is now so powerful that the purpose for that clause is pointless, then maybe it's time to change the Constitution... but the reason it's in there isn't unclear at all!)

re: "We are talking about pre-emptive government monitoring of everyone and everything, because of possible terrorism. I've never heard such a fundamentally anti-American idea in all my life."

Bingo! And, I ultimately don't even think it's being done out of good intentions of protecting from terrorism... it's taking advantage of an opportunity to further entrench the power and corruption from being thwarted by the public. (To spell it out, they aren't looking for terrorists, they're looking for blackmail material.)

re: "but when a country says they need to protect themselves against foreign threats while ignoring actual everyday massacres and government and police overreach, you have to ask yourself if the authoritarians in leadership positions"

Exactly! A great example is the recent San Bernardino incident. There were red flags all over the place on that one... no backdoor or decryption needed. A basic screening of background for immigration would have called for some caution there (you know, like the kind I had to go through to live in Canada!).

Other than disagreement over the gun issue... very well said!
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Steve Wilkinson
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Jan 14, 2016, 02:03 PM
 
@ smacker -
I think it depends on the encryption technology and how it is implemented. For example, some aren't certain that there aren't backdoors already in certain encryption technologies... so assuming we're using a technology no one can easily get into, we're then talking about math and time.

Then, there is the matter of how it is encrypted with the given technology. For example, some methods use the password as the key. If I encrypt something with the password 'rpqt' and can run directly against that, it will be broken in some relatively short time.

But, if the password 'rpqt' is used by some interface which generates a larger key to actually do the encryption, and has built-in methods of not allowing for fast attack methods via the interface... then they are trying to decrypt something nearly impossibly via modern technology, at least probability wise. If there's no other hole, they are likely out of luck.

At least, that's my best current understanding of the situation. So, assuming Cook is being honest, not playing with terms, and actually not cooperating with them.... AND... the technology is soundly implemented, then I don't think they have access, even if they do have the physical device. That's a lot of 'IFs' though.
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Steve Wilkinson
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