Tag Archives: encryption

Op-Eds

Farook’s Phone: The FBI versus Apple (and Everyone Else)

8 Comments

RGBStock Binary Background

The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to know what’s on Syed Farook’s Apple iPhone. As the old saying goes, people in hell want icewater too.

The San Bernardino killer’s phone is encrypted. More than ten attempts to guess the correct six-digit pass code (out of a million possibilities) will result in destruction of all data on the phone. They’re stuck. At least they say they are (I’m skeptical). They want Apple to help.

Forcing Apple to do so would be a simple matter of issuing a subpoena if the company had the information in question, but it doesn’t. So the FBI wants Apple to create an entirely new version of its operating system that allows them to bypass the ten-try limit. And  a federal judge, citing an 18th century law called the All Writs Act, has ordered Apple to just that.

As I write this, Apple has, quite reasonably, refused the demand. Presumably there’s a court battle in the offing.

Apple should win in the courts, and in any event what the FBI is demanding should be impossible. If what the FBI is demanding isn’t impossible on this generation of iPhones, Apple should be working overtime on a system update that MAKES it impossible , just in case the courts side with the FBI.

This is not about Syed Farook, nor is it the equivalent of a demand to hand over the key to an apartment because the cops have a search warrant. This is about you, and it’s the equivalent of a demand to hand over the keys to 700 million apartments just in case the cops ever take a notion to rummage around in your closet.

Am I worried? No, and yes.

No, because if Apple folds and does the FBI’s will, people who value their privacy will simply switch to devices and/or third party encryption software that neither the FBI nor Apple can compromise in that particular way.

Yes, because this is a red line in terms of precedent. The US government has been at war on the rights and the privacy of every phone and computer user in the world for decades, but this is an open declaration of that war, the moment when the gloves come off.

The state doesn’t own your phone. The state doesn’t own your data. The state doesn’t own YOU. Time to put the tyrants on notice: We’re all out of icewater, fellas.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Prosecutors, Police Get Medieval on Privacy and Progress

2 Comments

RGBStock Binary Background

Ashley Carman of The Verge reports on the opening of a new front in American politicians’ war on personal privacy and technological progress: Legislators in California and New York have introduced bills  requiring the makers of smart phones sold in their states to intentionally compromise those phones with “back doors” for law enforcement.

Those two states are the test markets for a national — even global — effort backed by the National District Attorneys Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The ultimate goal of that effort is a repeal of the last 600 years of human history, at least where personal privacy and technological progress are concerned.

There are so many things wrong with the proposal that I simply can’t cover them in detail here. The short version:

First, “back doors” in high-tech products cannot be created in a way that only allow law enforcement to access information on the basis of lawful warrants citing probable cause. Any device so compromised is inherently vulnerable not just to state actors (who can’t be trusted to act lawfully) but to run of the mill criminals — hackers, identity thieves and so on.

Secondly, the strong encryption genie is out of the bottle and has been for decades. If Californians and New Yorkers can’t buy uncompromised phones in California and New York, they’ll buy those phones elsewhere. If such phones aren’t legally available  anywhere, those of us who value our privacy will simply procure add-on software or hardware that encrypts our data before it ever enters the compromised systems.

Finally, and most importantly, understand that the backers of this outrageous legislation are NOT your friends. Their goal is not to protect your life, liberty or property. Their goal is to maintain and expand their power over you. And this makes them and their ideas very, very dangerous.

The only way to stop the use of encryption on computers and cell phones is to stop the use of computers and cell phones. If you don’t think these megalomaniacs are willing to do that, you aren’t paying attention. They’ve done it before, not just in openly authoritarian polities like Egypt, but right here in the US, albeit temporarily and in a very localized manner. That’s a matter of scale, not of principle.

As I wrote five years years ago when then US Senator Joe Lieberman proposed an “Internet kill switch” for “national security” purposes, “if the price of keeping Joe Lieberman in power is you staring over a plow at the a** end of a mule all day and lighting your home with candles or kerosene at night before collapsing on a bed of filthy straw, that’s a price Joe Lieberman is more than willing to have you pay.”

Some of the faces have changed, but the stakes haven’t. You can have your freedom, your privacy and the benefits of modern technology, or those who would rule you can have their “back doors.” But it’s one or the other. The two sets of values cannot co-exist.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Canute’s Courtiers Condemn Consumer Crypto

1 Comment

RGBStock Binary Background

In 1818, Jeremiah Chubb collected a reward of £100 (a fairly princely sum back then — depending on how the inflation is calculated, perhaps upward of half a million US dollars today) from the British government. After a major dockyard burglary, the government ran a competition to produce a lock which could only be opened with its own key. Chubb’s “detector lock” took the prize.

Were they alive today, Chubb and his brother Charles (they also invented the modern safe) might find themselves doing quite well in a similar business: Encrypting data to keep it away from prying eyes. But instead of reaping rich rewards from the US government for that kind of work, they’d likely have US Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Richard Burr (R-NC), not to mention FBI director James Comey, calling for their heads.

Comey visited Capitol Hill on December 9, delivering his latest tantrum over encryption to the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee. He wants America’s tech industry to produce the equivalent of pre-picked locks: Encryption that the government can compromise at will with a court order.

At that same hearing, Feinstein announced that she and Burr intend to introduce a bill requiring Silicon Valley to implement Comey’s demand.

Fortunately for all of us, Feinstein, Burr and Comey are a modern trio of King Canute’s courtiers, operating on a false belief that the state can, by decree, halt the tide of progress. The strong encryption genie has been out of the bottle for 20 years, it’s not going back in, and it recognizes no borders. If this law passes, Americans who care about keeping their data private will just use existing encryption applications or get new ones from abroad.

That said, the Feinstein/Burr/Comey proposal is dangerous in at least two ways.

One is that unsophisticated consumers, users who don’t educate and protect themselves and just use handicapped Feinstein/Burr/Comey applications without strong encryption built in, will suffer from the equivalent of broken locks on their data “doors.” Terrorists, drug dealers, child pornographers and regular people who take extra precautions to secure their data won’t be affected. Aunt Sally’s diary and banking information will be.

The second danger is precedent. You wouldn’t remove the deadbolt on your front door, just in case these tyrants wanted to wander into  your house and check your bedroom closet for dead bodies whenever they felt like it, would you? This is the same principle. If we give them an inch they will undoubtedly ignore all stop signs as they take mile after mile, forever (or at least until they run out of gas).

Your privacy and your information are either yours or theirs. There’s no in-between. And there is no room for compromise.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY