
FBI Announces Post-Election Attack on Encryption - elishagh1
http://thedashtimes.com/2016/09/06/fbi-announces-post-election-attack-encryption/
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tptacek
This appears to be an extraordinarily misleading reframing of a story AP ran
last week:

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf160/comey-
fbi-wants-adult-conversation-device-encryption)

In particular: Comey was _lamenting_ (albeit weakly) that the conversation had
"dipped below public consciousness", and his plans where to return it there.

Heavily editorialized pieces can be fine when they do their own reporting. But
"The Dash Times" doesn't seem to have done that; rather, they seem to be
refocusing other pieces --- and not entirely honestly --- in order to generate
rageviews.

(I am, of course, foursquare against key escrow).

~~~
mattmaroon
That article seemed so suspect that I came and checked the comments.

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cheap1
There should be an app to blacklist people with misleading headlines.

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fatdog
Any bets that the FBI has traded some discretion on the Clinton email scandal
now for total support on surveillance and crypto when she gets in? Even if
they haven't, if Clinton does get it they have a huge lever to hold over her
if she is elected, and will likely become the FBI President. The republican
nominee doesn't seem like much a civil liberties guy either.

The big winner of the U.S. presidential election will be police.

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graycat
"Back doors to encryption"? IIRC, Zimmerman and his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
based on Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key encryption is open source
without back doors.

And the RSA paper is no doubt still on the shelves of the libraries. And it is
in various books, e.g., IIRC one by B. Schneier. IIRC, the main number theory
is just Fermat's little theorem in even elementary books on number theory.

IIRC, breaking RSA is equivalent to being able to factor a large integer into
a product of prime numbers. As soon as some mathematician finds how to do that
quickly enough to be practical, likely we will hear about it via an Abel Prize
of just the front page of the NYT. I haven't heard yet.

Comey: Good luck on getting your _back doors_ in DIY, roll your own, open
source PGP RSA encryption! The open source part? That is much of why Zimmerman
did his work.

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duncan_bayne
> Comey: Good luck on getting your back doors in DIY, roll your own, open
> source PGP RSA encryption!

He doesn't have to. He just has to compromise the main commercial systems,
which 99.99% of the world population uses.

At that point, the very fact that you're one of 0.01% of the population using
decent crypto makes you a target.

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theandrewbailey
> The wait to address encryption until 2017 comes because “next year we can
> have an adult conversation in this country” about it.

Which means: we won't have a conversation about it, and simply start issuing
warrants and orders to companies demanding they comply anyway. If you want to
challenge it, here's a Kafkaesque process for you.

