As encryption spreads, U.S. grapples with clash between privacy, security by Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman.
From the post:
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Recently, the head of the National Security Agency provided a rare hint of what some U.S. officials think might be a technical solution. Why not, suggested Adm. Michael S. Rogers, require technology companies to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device to obtain text messages or photos, but divide the key into pieces so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it?“I don’t want a back door,” Rogers, the director of the nation’s top electronic spy agency, said during a speech at Princeton University, using a tech industry term for covert measures to bypass device security. “I want a front door. And I want the front door to have multiple locks. Big locks.”
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I wanted to point you to the full report by Nakashima and Gellman as opposed to some of the tech news summaries because they provide good background on the history of the encryption issue. Worth a very close read.
What truly puzzles me is why Adm. Rogers would think anyone would trust any key, multi-part or not, to which the government has access?
That’s really the relevant question in a nutshell isn’t it? Setting aside the obvious technical issue of making such a key, trusting all the non-government parties with parts of the key, etc., why would anyone trust the government?
There wasn’t any reason to trust government prior to Edward Snowden but post-Snowden, no sane person should urge trust of the United States government.
Any “front door,” “back door,” whatever access through encryption should be rejected on the basis there being no reason to trust any government use of such access. It really is that simple.
The imagined cases where access through encryption might be useful are just that, imagined cases. Whereas the cases where law enforcement/intelligence have proven untrustworthy are legion.