Re: [cryptography] Lavabit's and Snowden's Solos

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

On 2016-03-05, at 5:17 AM, John Young  wrote:

> Lavabit's brief for Apple has the gutsiest skin in the game, going solo,
> no joining a pack.

It is indeed the LavaBit case that terrifies me. And while I and other
people who work of AgileBits made personal statements, there was no
company response. In contrast, we did send out one Tweet about
Apple/FBI. https://twitter.com/1Password/status/700059313599983616

(I wasn’t available to help with the wording of that, so yeah, I know
that it actually isn’t about encryption.

For what it is worth, that tweet went out well before the ...

> […] the fattest of strutting corporate cats […]

started defending Apple.

Again, I wasn’t available for that decision making, but I wouldn’t
be surprised if we were more “courageous" here than with LavaBit
exactly because there is safety in standing with a big popular
influential corporate giant than in making a strong public
declaration about LavaBit.

So as much as you might wish to condemn our selectiveness here, you
should also look at this more positively. There was a lot of unexpressed
horror about LavaBit that is now being expressed as the more convenient
opportunity as come along.

I also think that it is because of LavaBit that we have all been watching
out for the next case. We lost one round, we certainly weren’t go let the
next one go down without a fight.

I think the Feds made a tactical error in picking on Apple at this time.
They should have done more LavaBit-esque things against smaller entities
to establish more cases. On the other hand, the “perfect” terrorism case
fell in their laps, so they jumped on that one.

Cheers,

-j

–- 
Jeffrey Goldberg
Chief Defender Against the Dark Arts @ AgileBits


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[cryptography] The rewards of frenzied comsec-shopping should be a pardon for Snowden

[John Young]

NY Times surmises NSA does not want to reveal its crypto
cracking capabilities, that the FBI hopes unskilled users will
make exploitable mistakes implementing, that DoD hopes
to exploit holes, doubt and errors rather than see them
corrected, that hackers and corporations expect to continue
to sell 0-days for high prices, that Obama staff has mixed
views of weak and strong comsec, that the US hacks both
friends and foes, engages in cyber defense and offense,
all this feeding opportunistic and obliging media fanning flames
with anonymous sources, secret briefings, revolving door
job offers of op-eds, essays, speeches, testimonies and
spy-approved tattle-tales. Essential to crypto fire-storm is
fueling a fire-sale Snowden 0-day attribution. The rewards
of this frenzied comsec-shopping should be a pardon for
Snowden, along with a life-time free travel in search of
anywhere crypto is not needed, just his word comms
are good to go naked.


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