FBI vs. Apple: A New Crypto Commission to Be Ignored?
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001156.html
As new revelations dribble forth regarding the FBI vs. Apple iPhone
case, calls are rising in various quarters (both in tech and government)
for the creation of Yet Another Commission of Experts to presumably take
a more comprehensive look at the encryption sphere in terms of
government desires vs. users' security and privacy.
I'm not opposed to serious commissions on serious matters. I am opposed
to commissions whose membership is not representative of all
stakeholders, or whose findings are used to disingenuously rubber-stamp
existing policies -- or whose findings are simply ignored.
We saw an example of how commissions go wrong with the recent, rushed,
FAA "drone registration" panel, which made a number of common sense
recommendations that would have served both FAA needs and the privacy
and other concerns of honest citizens -- recommendations that were
largely ignored by the FAA in what appeared to be a preordained fashion.
A new crypto commission that was similarly castrated would not serve the
public interest.
Based on information currently available, we can see that the government
effectively locked themselves out of the iPhone in question -- I prefer
to charitably assume through error and/or incompetence, rather than the
darker possibility of a purposeful plan to force the crypto backdoor
controversies more directly into the spotlight of politics during a
contentious election year.
Passwords were changed under FBI orders that should not have been. San
Bernardino officials did not avail themselves of common device
management software that could have prevented this entire problem --
software of a sort that most responsible corporations and other
organizations already use with company-owned smartphones in employee
hands.
Add to these facts the reality that virtually every expert in the
encryption field agrees that backdoor access to these devices' crypto
systems puts all honest users' personal data at risk from black-hat
hacking -- including from terrorists and other criminals -- and the
possibility that any new crypto commission would quickly find itself at
loggerheads seems very high indeed.
That all said, a truly representative crypto commission including a wide
variety of participants -- not necessarily only the usual folks who seem
to always turn up on government-sponsored commissions -- could still (at
least in theory) serve a useful purpose in helping the community at
large better understand these highly technical and complex issues that
do not have simple solutions.
Whether such a commission actually should, could, or will be formulated,
and not later be twisted into a mouthpiece for what the government
wanted all along, remains to be seen.
--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.
_______________________________________________
pfir mailing list
http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
