Irreal

The Washington Post has an interesting take on the on-going encryption wars. Daniel Weitzner, a former White House deputy chief technology officer for Internet policy, has an op-ed in which he lays out the usual arguments against backdoors in encryption applications. The interesting part, though, is that he says that even if it were possible to safely add such backdoors, it wouldn’t solve the problem.

The problem, he says, is that the government has lost the trust of its citizens. Through abuse and overreach they have forfeited any reasonable expectation that the government can

1. be trusted to conduct surveillance in a nonintrusive way, restricting their activities to matters of national security
2. safely manage the keys to the hypothetical backdoor

Their failure, so far, on both of these items are manifest and obvious to anyone bothering to look. What reason do we have to expect that things would improve if crypto-Tinker Bell suddenly delivered the government’s yearned for backdoor?

As things stand now, not much reason on either of the two items. Weitzner says that to address item 1, the government much embrace transparency and oversight. Even if that were to happen, it still leaves the second problem. Can we trust the government to safeguard the exceptional access they are asking for? The seemingly never ending stream of embarrassing breakins to government systems doesn’t give us much reason for confidence.

The answer remains what it has been. We must resist every government effort to bull their way into our private affairs. If they think a crime has been committed let them get a warrant and demand the user unlock the communication. Anything else is just an open season fishing license.

Yesterday I wrote about Clare Foges’ ludicrously dishonest op-ed in the Telegraph. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a more sober article that describes how the terrorists really operated. Here’s a nice summary by Mike Rundle

Paris attackers used real names, real IDs, and unencrypted, simple messaging to make plans. https://t.co/0ioaOMaQy2

— Mike Rundle (@flyosity) November 27, 2015

No super-secret encryption transmitted on Play Stations just a bunch of people going about their business using their own names and documents. Most were European citizens traveling legally with their own passports. They rented the vehicles used in the attacks, again legally, using legitimate driver’s licenses.

Most disturbingly, many of the terrorists were already on watch lists but were nevertheless able to operate openly without detection. Yet, somehow, this is all Snowden’s and Apple’s fault. Or maybe it’s just that our governments are lying to us. Again.

The UK’s Telegraph has published what is certainly the year’s most ignorant and dishonest op-ed. Clare Foges, until recently PM David Cameron’s chief speechwriter, weighs in on the encryption wars and calls out Apple and Google for putting profit before public safety.

The dishonesty of the article starts with the Telegraph’s failure to mention that fact that Foges is Cameron’s ex-speechwriter. That fact, ipso facto, doesn’t affect the validity of her arguments but honest articles always mention such connections so that readers can evaluate the writer’s preconceptions and vested interests.

The ignorance lays over the entire piece smothering it with a thick coat of fail. The worst bit of ignorance is her insistence that Apple and the others could, if they wanted, provide a safe “back door” but don’t do so because they’re more interested in profit. Left unsaid, is the fact that every knowledgeable cryptographer agrees that it can’t be done. That includes cryptographers who are independent of the commercial sector and can’t be said to have a profit motive.

To me, the most infuriating part of the op-ed is Foges’ failure to see government’s culpability in what she sees as a crisis. Before Snowden—yes, really, it’s all his fault—the government could get a warrant and the bad guys were caught. Even accepting that fairy tale, that’s not what was going on. Instead, government abused terms, used secret courts, and questionable interpretations of laws to snoop on everyone’s communications. They did that because they wouldn’t have been able to get legitimate warrants.

Trust us, Foges says, but the government has repeatedly lied and abused the powers we gave it. Why in the world would we trust it? Now, when people fight back and demand to be left alone in the absence of reasonable evidence of wrong doing, the government whines that we want Isis to win and that Apple, Google, and other tech companies care only about filthy lucre and are willing to sell out the public’s safety to get it.

The op-ed, as I said, is full of errors. Rather than list them here, I’ll point you to this righteous takedown from Techdirt. It’s a thorough fisking of an article that is almost too dumb to merit the effort.

UPDATE: be → we