The Politicians' Encryption Backdoor Fantasies Continue -- and Legislating Pi
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001147.html
"I Got You Babe."
I've written about law enforcement, politicians, and their hopeless
fantasies of "safe" encryption backdoors so many times -- and have
become so disgusted at the endlessly repeating nature of the
situation -- that I really do feel like I'm hearing that old
Sonny and Cher song in much the way Bill Murray did in his 1993
classic film "Groundhog Day" -- again, and again ... and yet again.
But the crypto backdoor "hits" just keep on comin' -- and today is no
exception.
Now comes word that a bipartisan pair of lawmakers is introducing
federal legislation to establish a national commission to figure out
"how police can get at encrypted data of honest citizens without
endangering those citizen's privacy at the same time."
The usual slogans are being bandied about: "What we're trying to do is
get that collaboration started," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who
joined [Republican] McCaul on the call and will sponsor the upper
chamber bill. "Let's get the experts in the room."
We keep hearing stuff like this from the usual suspects. Just get those
brainiacs together! Get "Bill Gates" working on it! Lock all those
liberal LGBT-lovin' software engineers in a basement somewhere and
they'll solve the problem. Or they'll never eat pizza again!
OK, that's more of the GOP line. The Democrats also pushing crypto
backdoors are wording it a bit differently.
Though some crypto backdoor proponents have laudable motives, the end
result must be the same.
Perhaps "Scotty" from the original "Star Trek" said it best, when he
noted that the laws of physics were immutable ("I can't change the laws
of physics") -- or, I might add, of mathematics.
Not that politicians haven't tried to break these laws before. As far
back as 1897, the Indiana legislature came very close to passing
legislation that would have had the effect of setting the transcendental
("never ending") value of the constant "Pi" to an incorrect and
fixed 3.2.
So the fact that politicians and law enforcement continue to try bend
physics, math, and computer science to their wills -- irrespective of
the realities -- should come as no surprise.
Any attempt to backdoor strong encryption systems will by definition
make them immensely vulnerable not only to abuse by authorities, but
also to outside hacking -- including by sophisticated terrorist
groups! -- that would put all honest users at immense risk as ever more
of our financial and other aspects of our personal lives are online.
It doesn't matter if you break up the backdoor key into a thousand
pieces and distribute them to Boy and Girl Scouts sworn to only use them
in a national emergency.
The mere act of creating any backdoor to these systems weakens them
enormously and catastrophically. Even Einstein wouldn't be able to
change that. And he'd be far too intelligent to ever try.
Yet, most of the law enforcement officials and politicians pushing for
these "meetings of the experts" on backdoored encryption aren't actually
stupid either.
So what's really going on?
In my view, most of them already realize that they would have to
fundamentally weaken crypto to get backdoors, and that the industry
overall quite rightly will never voluntarily go along with doing that.
Google, Facebook, Apple, and the others will be polite -- as they should
be -- but will not willingly betray the security and privacy of their
users with encryption backdoors.
So the odds are that what's actually going on currently with the
"voluntary" backdoor crypto push is essentially a smokescreen.
It's an attempt to provide political cover for the next step, when
proponents begin the "well, we tried to get cooperation first!" push for
legislation that would mandate backdoors in these USA crypto systems,
whether the firms want to do it or not, and irrespective of the risks to
honest users.
Nor will the fact that strong encryption systems from firms outside the
U.S., and from independent third parties, will continue to be available
and will be the encryption systems of choice for terrorists and other
criminals, who won't willingly make use of backdoored crypto once the
word gets around.
This suggests that ultimately it's mostly a game of political cover, of
politicians being willing to massively weaken the security and privacy
of us all to ensure themselves an excuse to spout at the press when bad
things happen.
That sort of attitude is sad. And depressing. And so very, very wrong.
And about as realistic as declaring Pi to be 3.2.
I think I'm going back to bed ... ... ... ... ...
"Then put your little hand in mine.
There ain't no hill or mountain,
We can't climb.
Babe.
I got you babe.
I got you babe ..."
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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