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Raid Encryption: This Should Be The New Normal

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“When government agents raid Uber’s offices,” Business Insider reports, “the company springs into action with an immediate response: it shuts everything down and encrypts all its computers.” That claim comes from documents filed by former Uber forensic investigator Samuel Ward Spangenberg, who’s suing the company for age discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and defamation.

Merits of the lawsuit aside, the details of Uber’s raid response protocol are fascinating. They should be standard practice for every company which electronically stores and transmits sensitive information — in other words, pretty much every company on Earth.

Spangenberg’s declaration describes a raid on Uber’s Montreal office by Revenu Quebec, the Canadian province’s tax agency. As soon as he was informed of the raid, Spangenberg says, he remotely encrypted the company’s computers at the office and cut the office’s network connectivity.

Business Insider describes Spangenberg’s account as an “allegation,” as if this is a bad thing. But it isn’t. In fact, it’s a great idea. In response to an inquiry from the publication, Uber explains why:

“It’s no secret that Uber has trip coordinates and other personally identifiable information about riders and drivers, and it’s our obligation to protect that. We cooperate with authorities when they come to us with subpoenas.”

In the digital age, law enforcement worldwide is increasingly nosy. Its leaders and advocates bemoan any technological development or practice which might in any way impede their ability to find out anything they might happen to want to know for any reason. They want our lives to be open books, and for us to just trust them to not abuse their power. History says we should begrudge them that trust.

Searches — including searches of digital logs and archives — should be difficult, not easy. They should be narrow in scope, not fishing expeditions where everything gets caught in the net and examined.

Law enforcement should be required to specify up front exactly what they want and expect to find, based on probable cause to believe a particular crime has been committed and that the search will uncover evidence relating to that crime. That was the supposed American standard back before everything was stored electronically, and it should be the global standard now.

But even in the good old days, we could seldom trust judges to rein in law enforcement’s interest in knowing as much about us as possible. This is something we, and the companies we do business with, need to take into our own hands.

Encryption isn’t nearly the handicap the surveillance state’s supporters pretend it is. There are lots of ways to figure out who’s doing what and why without seizing and reading a hard drive, from direct physical surveillance to analysis of the target’s “social graph” (his network of personal relations).

Law enforcement does not want for information if it’s willing to work for that information. Thorough, ubiquitous (or quick on-demand) encryption is at best just a bare minimum tool for preserving SOME privacy. If that makes law enforcement’s job a little harder, too bad.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

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Servergate/Hackergate: The Case of the Investigatory Double Standard

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Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On December 9, US president Barack Obama ordered a “review” of — an investigation into — alleged Russian hacking aimed at influencing the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.

Supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lauded Obama’s order, which seems aimed at, well, influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

On December 19, the electors chosen by voters on November 8 will meet in their respective state capitals to choose the next president of the United States. Under the existing system, those electors are required to vote for the candidate who carried their state’s popular vote. Many Clinton supporters want the electors to instead install Clinton (or a “compromise candidate”) in a coup d’etat. They’ve added Obama’s “review” order to their arguments in favor of overthrowing the US government.

When is it proper to investigate alleged wrongdoing by, or on behalf of, powerful politicians? Apparently it depends.

In the months leading up to the popular vote, Clinton and her supporters first praised, then condemned, FBI direct James Comey.

In July, Comey announced that he would recommend against prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her criminally negligent storage of classified information on an illegal private server as Secretary of State.

Then, 11 days before the election, Comey informed Congress of possible new evidence in the matter. That evidence apparently came to naught, but the Clinton campaign blew its stack. Clinton’s supporters are still calling for Comey’s head. He’s one of their scapegoats not just for Clinton’s crimes, but for her mediocre campaign and losing performance (the other scapegoat is, of course, !THEM RUSSIANS!).

Throughout the “Servergate” controversy, Clinton’s supporters routinely complained that all inquiries into her actions constituted illicit attempts to affect the outcome of the election, and that law enforcement should back away from politically sensitive investigations near election time.

Apparently that complaint only applies when the investigation might hurt Hillary Clinton. When Donald Trump might be damaged, the week before the final vote strikes them as perfect timing for an investigation.

The publicly disclosed evidence against Clinton was overwhelming. Comey’s argument against prosecuting her came down to “well, after all, she’s Hillary Clinton.”

The publicly disclosed evidence that Vladimir Putin’s regime attempted to influence the election of the outcome other than through propaganda? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The only thing we’ve seen so far are vague assertions about “methods consistent with” state-backed hacking. So far, the argument for an investigation that might hurt Donald Trump is “well, after all, he’s Donald Trump.”

I’m perfectly willing to believe that both Clinton and Trump are bad actors, so crooked that they require staff trained to screw their pants on for them in the morning. But when it comes to investigation timing, how about one set of rules for everyone?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

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Trump on Military Spending: An Encouraging Sign

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The X-35 Joint Strike Fighter demontrator perf...
The X-35 Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator performs flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base, California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As on most issues, president-elect Donald Trump has been all over the map on military issues throughout his campaign and post-campaign pronouncements. One day he muses about disbanding NATO, the next day he promises to “rebuild” the US military, which is already by far not just the most well-funded war machine, but the most well-funded enterprise of any kind on Planet Earth (the 2017  US military budget exceeds Wal-Mart’s 2015 gross revenues by about $100 billion). He’s hard to pin down.

Still, Trump’s December 12 tweet on Lockheed’s F-35 contract is encouraging to those who’d like to see real US “defense” spending cuts.  “The F-35 program and cost is out of control,” he wrote. “Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.”

If the F-35 — called the Joint Strike Fighter because it’s supposed to be used by all US armed forces and several allies, replacing various other aircraft — ever actually rolls out ready for combat, its life cycle cost will come to more than a trillion dollars and the prices of various models will run in the range of $100 million per aircraft. For the sake of comparison, that’s more than three times the price of the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, the current US Navy and Marine Corps fighter/attack workhorse.

The F-35 is indeed one of the more insane wastes of taxpayer money in recent history. If Trump could find a way to kill the whole project, both taxpayers and the armed forces would be better off for its demise.

But even if Trump is serious, he’s in for a fight with 75 years of history. Since World War II, the primary function of the US government has been to transfer wealth from the pockets of American workers to the bank accounts of “defense” contractors like Lockheed Martin.

Even as long ago as 1960, when president Dwight Eisenhower warned America about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell speech, his warning was too little, too late. American politicians already were, and still are, addicted to military spending (and to the campaign contributions it calls forth and the make-work jobs it brings to their states and districts).

Breaking that bad habit is a daunting job. Like they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step is admitting you have a problem. The only problem American politicians seem to see with spending half a trillion dollars a year on the pretense of “defending” the US is that they don’t get to spend more.

Instead of singling out particular boondoggles like the F-35, Trump might have more success imposing fiscal discipline across the board. That is, demand spending cuts to the US Department of Defense’s top budget line and let DoD figure out the details of how to make do with less.

A 75% cut, phased in over ten years, sounds about right. The US government would still be the single biggest military spender on the planet, but only by about 2 1/2 times, instead of 10 times, as much as its closest competitor (China).

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

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