back to article Five Eyes nations stare menacingly at tech biz and its encryption

Officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will discuss next month plans to force tech companies to break encryption on their products. The so-called Five Eyes nations have a long-standing agreement to gather and share intelligence from across the globe. They will meet in Canada …

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  1. kmac499

    Digital 2nd Ammendment ?

    To paraphrase

    "A well regulated Internet, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear encryption, shall not be infringed."

    Silly maybe, as I'm in the UK and our fluid constitution is scribbled on dead goats. But the logical alternative to a right to digital privacy will be to treat encryption as a weapon and regulate it in the same way as firearms are in the UK. The big difference being firearms have one very simple use, to go bang and hit targets,

    Encryption however; well I don't think we need to relist encryptions uses yet again. A deliberately broken encryption system potentially puts a very large gun in a very large public rock and then

    "Whomsoever can pull this gun from the stone... "

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The privacy of a terrorist

    once we (maybe) find him / her amongst the private data of the plebs, that is, but never mind this, WE! NEED! FULL! ACCESS! NOW! FOR! YOUR! GOOD!

    and don't you ask awkward questions, citizen, because WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE and what you do online. All those smutty kat videos violating oh, the multitude of laws...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Support privacy friendly apps and services

    Geez who put these cryptosauruses in power? Terrorists will just find another way to communicate. The rest of the world will suffer, they will have to give up their privacy aka freedom in order to fight terrorists that want to destroy our freedoms? Its clear to me who the real terrorists are.

    Get VPN (privatoria) ditch Google (Startpage.com) get a ad blocker (Ghostery) and a private messager (Signal).

    1. nijam Silver badge

      Re: Support privacy friendly apps and services

      > Terrorists will just find another way to communicate.

      They already have.

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Gimp

    This really has nothing to do with terrorists

    It really is about "Find me 6 lines from an honest man and I'll find something with which to hang him."

    This desire to know everything, about everyone. To store every aspect of peoples lives forever is a compulsive illness.

    It is grossly disproportionate to the real threat. It is an obsession with no rational basis in logic.

  5. Wolfclaw
    FAIL

    People wouldn't mind so much a secure back door, if there ever could be one, for intelligence agencies to monitor for crimes, is just we don't trust them, as they are have a bad habit of breaking the laws themselves and getting away with it !!

    1. DropBear

      Yes they would mind. I would mind. There's nothing to trust. Power corrupts, always, no exceptions. I don't want anyone with that kind of power over me - or you. ANYONE.

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "People wouldn't mind so much a secure back door, if there ever could be one,"

      That seems a pragmatic attitude, and hence apparently undeserving of the down votes.

      Except the evidence from other situations is that people will abuse available powers.

      Because they are people.

      Like "Global Thermonuclear War," the only winning move is not to play.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: "People wouldn't mind so much a secure back door, if there ever could be one,"

        "Like "Global Thermonuclear War," the only winning move is not to play."

        But what if your opponent views MAD as a winning scenario?

  6. nijam Silver badge

    A good case could be made that it's the Five Eyes gang who are the organised criminals and terrorists. Not that I would dream of doing so myself...

  7. handleoclast
    FAIL

    That makes perfect sense

    Some of them have realized that there is no way of inserting a backdoor into encryption that only the good guys will be able to use but the bad guys will not.

    So full marks to them for coming up with a much better alternative. Put a backdoor into the phone that only the good guys will be able to use but the bad guys will not.

    Perfect!

    What drugs are these people on that allow them to be so disconnected from reality? I want some.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: That makes perfect sense

      "What drugs are these people on that allow them to be so disconnected from reality? I want some."

      I.G.N.O.R.A.N.C.E.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How about this.

    Fuck no.

  9. Jeffrey Nonken

    I want magic bullets that only hurt bad guys.

  10. Jonathan 27

    Pointless

    If legitimate companies have to put back doors in all their encryption schemes doesn't that just mean terrorists will buy their encryption from criminals or roll their own? All this is going to do is degrade the encryption used by regular law-abiding citizens.

    Not only that, I feel like it will backfire spectacularly, like the "Clipper Chip" fiasco. When technical issues are decided upon by people who do not understand them at all we always end up with a ridiculous and unworkable solution.

    1. DeKrow

      Re: Pointless

      If legitimate companies have to put back doors in all their encryption schemes doesn't that just mean terrorists will buy their encryption from criminals or roll their own?

      I actually see it going a different way. If legitimate companies have to put back doors in all their encryption schemes doesn't that just mean terrorists will target these back doors, and if (when) successful, will have the keys to all the kingdoms and thus be able to cause much larger scale terror than a few suicide bombs ever could.

      mumble groan law of unintended consequences grumble moan concentration of power creates a more likely target something something.

  11. captain_solo

    The U.S. Constitution spends a much larger portion of its content seeking to protect the citizens from their government than any external threats. The fact that in general 'mericans tend to distrust their government is a heritage that goes all the way back to the start.

    If i'm not mistaken the oath of office taken by government officials might actually mention defending the document in question and not just generally defending the United States as a nebulous patriotic idea? You wouldn't try to convince me that they don't actually intend to do that, would you? I mean those speeches in front of the flag are so sincere.

    Eliminating secure comms will only open a second front on the regular folks who will have to worry about being criminalized by the voluminous and out of control regulations of every area of life and the economy as well as the fact that at that point just using encryption could label you as a terrorist threat instead of only being at risk from terror/criminal elements. I hope at some point the nerds get through to their bosses that most of these ideas would actually hurt the ability of the government to keep their own secrets secret, but won't hold my breath. It will be private sector devs in both corporate and open source projects that make these kinds of political stupidities irrelevant.

    1. Charles 9

      There's only one problem. The law in the end is just ink on a page. Present enough power and you can simply ignore it.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "Present enough power and you can simply ignore it."

        History says that in the long run you lose.

        1. Charles 9

          History says that in the long run EVERYONE loses, usually because of the aforesaid display of enough power to say, "My rule!" The Americans got enough help to force the British out of the colonies, Texas won its independence by cornering the Mexican Army. The communist uprisings in Russia, China, and Cuba, and so on. Until recently, lots of transitions of power were...ugly, to say the least, especially if lineages petered out.

  12. JLV

    We need to communicate risks better

    Starting to talk about encryption math loses everyone. Most of us too, I assume. Let's make it simpler.

    You want to leave a key by your house, in case you lose your key. The stereotypical "key under the mat".

    There is no way to do that safely if you assume many smart bad guys will spend a lot of time trying to find that key. It's a weakness and it can be used to break in.

    People understand that intuitively and we need to force proponents of backdoors to explain how it's different, even as all the experts in that field say it really isn't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We need to communicate risks better

      "There is no way to do that safely if you assume many smart bad guys will spend a lot of time trying to find that key. It's a weakness and it can be used to break in."

      But what if the counter is, "But we MUST have it in case we're locked out! It's a bad neighborhood to be stranded out at night!"

      1. JLV

        Re: We need to communicate risks better

        But that has still shifted the debate from "trust us, it'll be safe, there's a way" to "you have to give up some security, not _just_ privacy, because we need it for public safety". Let them make an honest case for it if they can.

        A very different debate from "enough is enough, only bad guys benefit from strong encryption" which is where so many of our leaders are starting from.

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        "It's a bad neighborhood to be stranded out at night!""

        The answer is "Call a locksmith, " who you will have on speed dial, since you're clearly terrified of just about everything. You're not Jacqui Smith (the former UK Home Secretary) are you?

        And there is a security equivalent to a locksmith in all cases.

        But just like a locksmith you have to establish you really are the home owner, or rather you have "probable cause" to need to do this.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: "It's a bad neighborhood to be stranded out at night!""

          "The answer is "Call a locksmith, " who you will have on speed dial, since you're clearly terrified of just about everything. You're not Jacqui Smith (the former UK Home Secretary) are you?"

          Nope. Locksmith doesn't operate at night, and he won't come to my neighborhood anyway, especially at night.

  13. earl grey
    Flame

    Privacy = virginity

    Once it's gone; it's gone forever. It doesn't matter when, how, who, or what kind of story you have about it; it's gone.

  14. John Savard

    Phrased Correctly

    Why, it is true that the privacy of a terrorist is of no importance when set against public safety.

    Now, if they could find a way to take away the privacy of terrorists without taking it away from everyone else, there would be no problem.

    Having police who can be trusted tapping phone lines does not seem to me like a terrible problem in itself. Generally speaking, in democratic nations, the police have had a good record of not using the ability to do insider trading, steal credit card numbers, engage in blackmail or voyeurism, and so on; they really have been just using bugs and taps to find real criminals.

    The problem with encryption restrictions, though, is that to enforce them one limits what people can do with their own computers - and they make people more vulnerable to criminals doing eavesdropping. The thing to do is find other ways to address terrorism.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Phrased Correctly

      The problem behind the problem, though, is that most of the problems are nigh-intractable in nature, usually because they're reinforced by centuries if not millennia of resentment/grudges, mainly of a "because you exist" nature, or are part of a greater sovereign struggle. If there were a better solution, we'd have used it already, but the bad news is that there's no magic bullet. ANY solution you try is going to be costly and unpopular, and elected governments have the hardest time trying to deal with necessary but unpopular things.

  15. JJKing
    Black Helicopters

    The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:"

    Generally speaking, in democratic nations, the police have had a good record of not using the ability to do insider trading, steal credit card numbers, engage in blackmail or voyeurism, and so on; they really have been just using bugs and taps to find real criminals.

    Oh yes and didn't that work so well for the bastion of integrity when it was run under the auspices of J Edgar Hoover.

    So what happens when the 9th Wonder of the World, Quantum Computers, become a viable reality? If they work as per the writing on the box, encryption will be a thing of the past (or so I am led to believe). Will that not far cup the TLAs, terry wrists and our secret messages?

    If politicians really do become a massive menace to our privacy and the freedom of Apple, Google, Facebook and other such company's CEOs, what is to stop them throwing a few Beeellion dollars of loose change at an election and choose their own "friendly" candidates. A couple of Billion $$ and they could practically buy the US Presidency. Now if they only had access to some social media.......

    1. Charles 9

      Re: The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:"

      "So what happens when the 9th Wonder of the World, Quantum Computers, become a viable reality? If they work as per the writing on the box, encryption will be a thing of the past (or so I am led to believe). Will that not far cup the TLAs, terry wrists and our secret messages?"

      What makes you think a working quantum computer doesn't already exist (it probably resides in Utah concealed and fueled by the data center there)? Isn't that why post-quantum encryption is being developed and why quantum cryptography (put the same weapon to your use) is being worked on as well?

  16. Cyril

    This is already covered under established case law in the US

    One of the established principals in US case law is "Chilling effect". A practice that interferes with 1st Amendment protection by causing a person to change their speech out of fear of authority is illegal under the Constitution.

    Forcing backdoors into all communication will result in a chilling effect on communications. Thus it is illegal under the Constitution. So they can make all the laws they want to force holes into encryption. But it will not survive a legal challenge. Any company making money from providing secure communications or storage will benefit financially from getting this law overturned, thus they are required by law to challenge this law in court to provide the best return for their stockholders.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: This is already covered under established case law in the US

      They'll just IGNORE the Constitution. It's just ink on a page if you have the power. What will you do then? Stand alone against nukes? Remember, no government can stand for long against an opposition of sufficient power. That's why coups can still work.

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