They are deadly serious about crypto backdoors by Robert Graham.
From the post:
Julian Sanchez (@normative) has an article questioning whether the FBI is serious about pushing crypto backdoors, or whether this is all a ploy pressuring companies like Apple to give them access. I think they are serious — deadly serious.
The reason they are only half-heartedly pushing backdoors at the moment is that they believe we, the opposition, aren’t serious about the issue. After all, the 4rth Amendment says that a “warrant of probable cause” gives law enforcement unlimited power to invade our privacy. Since the constitution is on their side, only irrelevant hippies could ever disagree. There is no serious opposition to the proposition. It’ll all work itself out in the FBI’s favor eventually. Among the fascist class of politicians, like the Dianne Feinsteins and Lindsay Grahams of the world, belief in this principle is rock solid. They have absolutely no doubt.
But the opposition is deadly serious. By “deadly” I mean this is an issue we are willing to take up arms over. If congress were to pass a law outlawing strong crypto, I’d move to a non-extradition country, declare the revolution, and start working to bring down the government. You think the “Anonymous” hackers were bad, but you’ve seen nothing compared to what the tech community would do if encryption were outlawed.
On most policy questions, there are two sides to the debate, where reasonable people disagree. Crypto backdoors isn’t that type of policy question. It’s equivalent to techies what trying to ban guns would be to the NRA.
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What he says.
Crypto backdoors are a choice between a policy that benefits government at the expense of everyone (crypto backdoors) versus a policy that benefits everyone at the expense of the government (no crypto backdoors). It’s really that simple.
When I say crypto backdoors benefit the government, I mean that quite literally. Collecting data via crypto backdoors and otherwise, enables government functionaries to pretend to be engaged in meaningful responses to serious issues.
Collecting and shoveling data from desk to desk is about as useless an activity as can be imagined.
Basis for that claim? Glad you asked!
If you haven’t read: Chinese Underwear and Presidential Briefs: What the CIA Told JFK and LBJ About Mao by Steve Usdin, do so.
Steve covers the development of the “presidential brief” and its long failure to provide useful information about China and Mao in particular. The CIA long opposed declassification of historical presidential briefs based on the need to protect “sources and methods.”
The presidential briefs for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations have been released and here is what Steve concludes:
In any case, at least when it comes to Mao and China, the PDBs released to date suggest that the CIA may have fought hard to keep the these documents secret not to protect “sources and methods,” but rather to conceal its inability to recruit sources and failure to provide sophisticated analyses.
Past habits of the intelligence community explain rather well why they have no, repeat no examples of how strong encryption as interfered with national security. There are none.
The paranoia about “crypto backdoors” is another way to engage in “known to be useless” action. It puts butts in seats and inflates agency budgets.
Unlike Robert, should Congress ban strong cryptography, I won’t be moving to a non-extradition country. Some of us need to be here when local police come to their senses and defect.