IEEE joins the ranks of non-backdoored strong cryptography defenders

“forensic analysis of suspected computers, and compelling suspects to reveal keys or passwords.”

My worry about any laws requiring people to reveal passwords are that there could be genuine situations where they cannot reveal the password because they don't know what it is. If your going to jail people for not providing passwords you could end up with people using encrypted files for revenge. EG. You found out your partner has been cheating, so you create an encrypted file on their phone/PC and then report that you suspect they have been looking at terrorist content. Plod come and take away their devices and come back asking you to provide the password to the jihadi.zip file found on your device.

“Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack”

Sweet. The end of Google & much of Facebook.

Don't hold your breath, though.

Passwords

“forensic analysis of suspected computers, and compelling suspects to reveal keys or passwords.”

In the US, SCOTUS ruled over a century ago that forcing people to reveal lock combinations is a violation of their 5th Amendment rights. Subsequent court rulings extended that to passwords.

I would think that the situation is simple

You can pass whatever laws you want about encryption in your country, other countries won't see things the same way and all you need is one competent programmer capable of creating a proper, robust encryption scheme and posting it on the Net and your laws are rendered obsolete.

I do think the most effective argument that the IEEE listed is the one saying that backdoored encryption would render companies less competitive.

We're already seeing that kind of result with the Cloud. Thanks to the NSA's shenanigans and the very public cases of judges ruling that data in another country should be made available to the US courts, we now see companies scrambling to make local centers for countries that are passing laws demanding it.

I cannot imagine that encryption will be different.

less worrying "compelling suspects to reveal keys or passwords" ???

One must be living under a totalitarian regime to consider it "less worrying" when the lack of human rights in a country allows laws to be passed that can be used to force suspects to testify against themselves -- i.e. having to actively help the prosecution to fish for evidence against them.

Encryption will become ubiquitous

I am currently looking into encrypting all my disks with separate (long) passwords. My plan is that the system will be set up with the passwords for the current set of disks but I will not record them anywhere else. I certainly won't be able to remember them!

This is because I currently have a pile of old disks (some working, some not) which I can't send to the dump because they have private and personal data on them. My plan is that in future when I stop using a disk I can throw it away (or sell it on eBay) without worrying because no one (including me) can access the data any more.

Once I have that all set up I plan to look into extending it to removable media (memory cards). My drawer of USB sticks will then be full of encrypted drives which I don't know the password to. When I need one I will reformat it with a new password, use it for however long I need it and then throw away the password and put the stick back in the drawer.

If I can do this, how long will it be before it becomes ubiquitous on every device? In particular for memory cards. At which point no one will know whether the memory card they have confiscated from the terrorist suspect at the border is "empty" (no one knows the password) or contains the plans for their latest atrocity. It is unlikely anyone can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the terrorist knows the password. Particularly if they are carrying several.