PrivateSky came up on libtech two and a half years ago: https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2011-June/001925.html
At the time, it was already clear Certivox had a root key that issued customer keys: https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2011-June/001926.html They claim that it would have been "almost impossible" to recover messages. You should interpret "almost impossible" as "possible". On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Yosem Companys <compa...@stanford.edu> wrote: > Certivox Asked That We Share Their Side of the Story on the PrivateSky > Takedown. > > YC > > > > http://www.certivox.com/blog/bid/359788/The-real-story-on-the-PrivateSky-takedown > > The real story on the PrivateSky takedown. > > Posted by Brian Spector on Thu, Dec 12, 2013 > > With the story about our PrivateSky takedown now public, I want to > take the opportunity to clarify a few points in various articles that > have appeared since yesterday covering the story. > > Some headlines strongly infer our friends at GCHQ "forced" us to take > PrivateSky down. That's not the case. > > Secondly, a very important point wasn't printed. GCHQ couldn't, by > law, request a blanket back door on the system. There are a very rigid > set of controls that mean only specific individuals can come under > surveillance. The legal request for such surveillance has a due > process that must be stridently followed. At no time did I or anyone > at CertiVox talk about CertiVox in relation to any RIPA warrant, only > the generic process by which these warrants are served. > > By saying "our friends at GCHQ", there is no facetiousness intended. > The team at CertiVox have the upmost respect for the folks we > interacted with at GCHQ. They took the due process I outlined in the > previous point very seriously. We found that as an organisation, and > every individual involved there, were as worried about a breach of > public trust as much as we are. > > Finally, I believe very strongly the following should be a larger part > of the public discourse of these subjects. What everyone needs to > understand is that every developed democracy in the world, even where > privacy rights are enshrined to the maximum efficacy by statute, has > laws on the books that mandate that Internet Service Providers have > facilities to work with law enforcement for the purposes of legal > intercept, to enforce public safety and security. > > Being L.I. capable is a very important set features and functions that > must be in place for any credible, commercial service on the Internet. > In endeavouring to make PrivateSky as secure as possible, we > overlooked this critical requirement when we built PrivateSky. > > When CertiVox positioned PrivateSky as the easiest to use and most > secure encrypted messaging service, we really had two significant > points of differentiation. First, even though we held the root > encryption keys to the system, it was architected in such as way that > it would have been all but impossible for our internal staff to snoop > on our customer's communications, or for the service to leak any of > our customer¹s data. Secondly, our possession of the root keys, and > our use of identity based encryption, made the system incredibly easy > to use. For the user, there were no private or public keys to manage, > every workflow was handled for the user in an easy to grasp pure HTML5 > interface, no hardware or software required, just an HTML5 browser. > > We boxed ourselves into a feature set and market position that when > called upon to comply with legal statues, we simply had no alternative > but to shut the service down. We built it, but we couldn't host it. > > Why? Because as you can probably surmise, there is an inherent > impedance mismatch between being able to host a commercial > communications service that gives the upmost in privacy to its users, > against any breach, whilst at the same time being able to operate > safely within the confines of the law as it is on the books in most > countries on the planet. > > In summary, it's the abuse of the communications interception in the > Snowden revelations that has everyone up in arms, as so it should. But > that¹s not what happened with PrivateSky. > > What is our next move? > > Watch this space. > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of > list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, > change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > compa...@stanford.edu. -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
