Oz MP flies crypto-kite, wants backdoors without backdoors Federal MP Anthony Byrne wants to re-start the encryption debate in Australia. Speaking in parliament yesterday, the member of Australia's opposition Labor Party recalled last year's debate in the USA over a court's right to unlock iPhones during investigations into the 2015 San Bernardino attack. Now-dismissed FBI boss James …
(Sidenote: What on earth does "sheeted" mean?)
As I recall, the feds eventually cracked the phone's encryption without Apple's help. Which I think goes to prove what security experts have said all along: once the attacker has physical access to the device, cracking is only a matter of time.
Bozos like this only see one half of the picture. It's not hard to describe ways in which the present system is - unsatisfactory. What is hard is to propose an alternative that isn't worse. What makes politicians (in general) dangerous is that they always gloss over this second point - that's how we got Brexit.
The question that needs to be asked of these politicians/law-enforcement bods is:
"If it was shown to be impossible to provide law enforcement access to defeat encryption without also rendering it vulnerable to malicious actors, would you drop your proposal?"
If the answer is 'yes' then the follow-up question is:
"What evidence - what testimony - would you believe?"
In other words: what is the the criteria for proving you are wrong and changing your mind? Because that's the thing we need to get at with these people. If they can't tell us what information would convince them they are wrong then it's likely that they actually don't care and their position is immovable.
This is Australia, a yes answer would not matter.
National security is about building a counter insurgency capability against your own people while pretending it is a counter terrorism capability against foreigners. This is the same way it operates in most of the free West. Though the US will protect its own interests as will the UK to a lesser extent. Australia will carry on in the role of the the village idiot.
Of course you are correct.
But that is really my point - trying to prove they are wrong is impossible because they will ignore evidence or move the goal-posts or pretend that black is white and white is black.
That's why it's important to ask them, point-blank, what information would change their mind.
Of course, you'll probably get an evasion or an answer like: "we are open to all possibilities" or "well, I don't believe that is the case" and so on, but people (interviewers, etc...) really need to push the question: what testimony would convince you that the solution you are after doesn't exist?
In a way - not to start a war here - it's like those who say "where's the evidence" when it comes to man-made climate change. The problem is debating such folk is that they dismiss whatever evidence IS put forward, accepting only that which works for them. They, like these politicians, must be nailed down: tell us what would change your mind.
If the answer is 'nothing' then they should have the strength of their conviction and just bloody well say so.
most of the front bench are lawyers or have never had a real income creating job in their lives. Of course they believe in magical thinking. Making stuff is what the tech peasants do and they should do as they are told. {S} Bit like the recent robo-debt letters response with pollies saying just call the helldesk to fix it. Yeah, we all have 6 spare hours a day to sit around waiting for a human to answer. Since they have never had to deal with an understaffed, under trained powerless hell desk they do not have clue. About what you expect from tools of the oligopolies.
I wrote a blog post on this recently, entitled: "The Backdoor Fallacy - explaining it slowly for governments", with the tagline "… I literally don’t know a single person with modicum of technical understanding who thinks this is a good idea …". We really need to keep trying to explain this to people, we really do.
https://aliceevebob.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/the-backdoor-fallacy-explaining-it-slowly-for-governments/
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