
Facebook Tells Barr It Won’t Open Up Encrypted Messages - i_am_not_elon
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/technology/whatsapp-barr-encryption.html
======
cronix
> Mr. Barr has said that Facebook’s moves toward end-to-end encryption, which
> shields the content of messages from everyone but the sender and recipient,
> makes it harder for law enforcement officers to track malicious behavior
> online.

It's kind of supposed to be hard, by design. Read the constitution on what it
takes to get a search warrant. You're not supposed to be "tracking malicious
behavior." You're supposed to be tracking individuals, once you have some sort
of actual tangible proof that a judge individually signs off on, that they are
doing something nefarious. It wasn't supposed to be a drag net fishing
expedition where you can key word search everything anybody has ever said via
a digital device at any point in history. No, they were pretty clear about
that when they wrote that pesky constitution thingy (and for good reason.)

~~~
tptacek
What is it that you think the Constitution says about getting warrants?

It's not my understanding that the Constitution was designed to make it
difficult to investigate crimes. As I understand it, the US largely inherits
the common law principle that the public is entitled to every person's
evidence. The backstory I understand behind the Fourth Amendment is that the
British used "general warrants" as a tool of harassment – where a general
warrant was essentially a slip of paper that deputized a group of soldiers to
toss houses and confiscate goods on a whim. The intent wasn't to make warrants
hard to get, or to gate all conceivable searches on warrants, but rather to
make sure that what warrants were issued were at least particularized with a
real, defensible purpose.

Another observation that bolsters my particular understanding is the variety
of conditions in which the Supreme Court, going all the way back into the era
of the founders, authorized warrantless searches. The border search exception,
for instance, dates back to the founders.

My feelings about law enforcement and encryption are complicated but hew
mostly to the HN party line. However, I feel sometimes like I arrive at my
conclusions in a very different way than people who invoke the Constitution
here.

~~~
elliekelly
But even in the event the government demonstrates probable cause the
constitution doesn’t require us to make it as easy as possible for the
government to search our homes, papers, and effects. If the police suspect you
of murder and get a warrant to dig up your basement you aren’t the one who’s
then required to dig.

Now imagine the government said no one should be allowed to pour cement in
their basement because it makes it difficult to investigate suspected
murderers. That’s what Barr is advocating.

~~~
tptacek
I don't believe the Constitution demands that we make it "easy" for law
enforcement to collect evidence, though I'll again note that the animating
common law principle comes close: the public is _entitled_ † to every person's
evidence.

I work closely with cryptography and think about cryptographic freedom mostly
the way other people on HN do. I asked a specific question about the
Constitution. The debate about whether we should be "allowed" to encrypt
things is incredibly boring, we almost certainly don't meaningfully disagree
about it, and I'm not interested in having it.

† _or "has a right to" or "has a claim on", depending on whose paraphrase
you're reading_

~~~
microcolonel
I think it's more that they have a right to seek it without interference after
the fact. You can not be compelled to disclose the evidence that would be used
against you, or any information required to obtain it (and thus constitute a
disclosure).

If Facebook/WhatsApp's system was built to put them in a position to
incriminate you after the fact, then probably the kind of criminal who would
use it is the kind you'd convict by other means.

That leaves you with the choice of whether or not to incriminate yourself.

~~~
zaphirplane
Assuming you are talking from a US point of view,
[https://www.newsweek.com/court-rules-defendant-must-
disclose...](https://www.newsweek.com/court-rules-defendant-must-disclose-
phone-password-police-prosecution-first-ruling-its-kind-1466112) suggests that
a person can be completed to provide passwords that unlock incriminating
evidence

If you are talking globally each country has its laws or no laws on the matter
(as you’d expect there are also contradictory court rulings within a country/
state )

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law)

------
zadkey
"It is simply impossible to create such a backdoor for one purpose and not
expect others to try and open it."

While I don't like or use Facebook. I can't agree more with this sentiment.

~~~
noelsusman
I hear this all the time but I don't understand why it's true. The security of
your encrypted messages already relies on the security of the company
providing the service. Facebook (and any other messaging app) can read all of
your messages in plain text. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to display them
to you. Allowing the government to get a warrant to retrieve those messages
changes nothing about the overall security of the messaging platform.

What am I missing?

~~~
jakemal
Facebook can't read the content of your messages. They can serve you an
encrypted version of your messages that your device can decrypt. Look up end-
to-end encryption for how exactly that works.

~~~
noelsusman
They can't read them in transit, but if you use Facebook's app to decrypt the
message (which is the only option) then obviously Facebook can read your
messages if it wants to.

~~~
pfundstein
While this is true, the app is a client whose code and behaviour can be
analysed by end users to validate that it is not behaving nefariously. The
same cannot be said for FB's servers or the data in transit, which is solved
by E2EE.

------
stiray
This backdooring of communication is a joke. Everyone wanting to hide
something can pgp/gpg encrypt a message and paste it into whatever channel,
from fb to irc, from email to counterstrike chat. This whole thing about
protecting "children" (or whatever the latest excuse is) is the ultimate
nonsense. This wont stop terrorists with enough money to organize something
like 9/11, it will only enable spying on own and foreign normal cityzens who
dont encrypt what they say. Everyone else who really has "something to hide"
wont be affected.

~~~
ajross
> Everyone else who really has "something to hide" wont be affected.

A tiny handful of agents for cryotographically sophisticated organizations are
"just" using gpg and pastebin or whatever.

In the real world, the vast majority of bad actors are using the
simple/easy/obvious communication solutions delivered to them by their phones
and apps. And law enforcement (for both good and bad reasons) knows this and
wants access to that stuff, because they know it's possible to get it.

~~~
stiray
Yeah right. And they were living in a jungle with absolutely 0 news for last
10 years. This period is gone, even before "Eschelon" was known fact, after
Snowden you really must be ignorant to avoid this news. And if you are
targeting a Guatanamo bay or life long prison you are surely not. Or you are
long gone.

This whole sharade is targeting cityzens. I can only speculate why, one could
be stupidity and ignorance, profit maybe, or even protecting establishment,
mass control. I dont know. But surely it wont affect the "excuses" they are
using now.

~~~
javagram
The reality is that plenty of criminals and bad actors use insecure
communication channels like phone calls, SMS, and unencrypted app messengers.

Evidence recovered from these channels is constantly used by police and if
apps and services all actually switch to secure E2E encryption, a lot of
evidence will be beyond their view.

Turn your argument around- if everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock
knows how important e2e is, why are Facebook and SMS and MMS still so popular?

~~~
stiray
As ordinary people just dont care. They should, but they dont. There is
nothing at stake for them. But they are saying that are targeting bad actors
who DO care. And now you think that some drug lord (which has seen Hollywood
movie about himself using encrypted walkie talkies) with infinite amount of
money, smuggling drugs with mini sub (just happened in EU week or two back),
the terrorist who is risking air-to-land missile and with oil based money flow
is going to use sms/mms? No. The ordinary people will. Maybe potheads.

~~~
ivanhoe
There's a counter argument here that "ordinary people" represent a much more
realistic source of danger than some super-criminals/high-level terrorists.
Depressed dude who's read too much bullshit on some forum, so he goes out and
starts shooting people is statistically much more likely to happen than
another 9/11\. This type of lone-wolf lunatics and small groups of
ideologically indoctrinated people who operate completely on their own -
basically some guys sitting together one night and coming up with the idea
that "they should do something about it" \- are the future of terrorist threat
and significantly harder to spot than large organizations.

------
edge17
If anyone's interested in the history of this stuff and why government
agencies have these expectations, I suggesting checking out The Puzzle Palace
from James Bamford

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puzzle_Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puzzle_Palace)

[https://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-
Intelligence-O...](https://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-
Organization/dp/0140067485/)

After reading that book and getting a better sense of the scope of
intelligence operations over a wider swath of history, these types of requests
come from make a whole lot more sense (whether you agree or not, you get a
sense of the place they're coming from). Not making an argument in regard to
what's right or wrong, but it does provide a tangible dose of reality. Also,
given this was written in the 80's and much has come to be known since then, I
still think this book holds its own in terms of clarity because it discusses
historical topics without the messiness of the internet, social media, etc.
Bamford has several more recent books, but I have not read those.

~~~
K0SM0S
Interesting, thanks for the recommendation!

I recently read Permanent Record[1][2] by Edward Snowden and it'll be
interesting to contrast his account from Bamford's some 30-40 years ago.

I have to say, Snowden's autobiography was a fantastic read and a chilling
look inside the 3-letters agencies. Highly recommended, as the topic is
evidently pretty circumstancial to us right now and for the foreseeable
future. Also, if you grew up anywhere near the 1980-1990's, especially as a
computer geek / nerd, you'll probably love this book for nostalgic / human /
relatable reasons.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiograph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_\(autobiography\))

[2]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46223297-permanent-
recor...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46223297-permanent-record)

------
plicense
How I wish this article's title was "Facebook Tells Barr it Can't Open up
Encrypted Messages".

~~~
fareesh
If I login to Facebook.com from any random device+browser, I seem to be able
to read my "Facebook Messenger" history - maybe this is different if I use the
Messenger app, but it seems like there's no E2EE here since I get the
plaintext from anywhere.

On WhatsApp there seems to be E2EE enabled but I have no idea what the keys
are. A layperson definitely has no idea what the keys are.

Could Facebook build an "NSA mode" where the old keys (K1) are quietly
replaced with some known keys (K2) for a particular user at a particular
timestamp T?

This means that all messages before T are to be parsed by using K1 and all
messages after T are to be parsed by using K2.

As a WhatsApp user, would I even know if "NSA mode" has been enabled for my
account? This would enable courts to allow surveillance for all future
messages, but the old messages would still be E2EE.

What if you involve Apple+Google into the mix and have them silently deploy a
rogue update to a particular user's WhatsApp program - couldn't you just ask a
court to write some kind of surveillance warrant which orders the 3 companies
to work together to give the alphabet agency a way to remotely take the keys?

~~~
jaywalk
Facebook Messenger conversations are not E2EE by default. When you start one,
you have to choose "Secret" in order for E2EE to be applied. This is only
available from the Messenger app on mobile devices.

~~~
BelleOfTheBall
Is this advertised anywhere, like in clear wording? On the site, in the app,
etc. If it is, good on them. If not, kind of worrying.

Simply saying "We have E2EE so you can trust us now" and not actually
clarifying where E2EE is applicable in your apps is some very typical PR talk.

~~~
thatfunkymunki
WhatsApp is default E2E and is quite visibly indicated in the application. You
can probably make the call on how visible the E2E features in Messenger are
yourself if you take a look.

~~~
BelleOfTheBall
That would require to join Facebook and I'm not coming back there. I'm aware
of WhatsApp being E2E, yeah, everywhere except for backups. Another user
replied that Facebook plans to go E2E completely, that's surprising but good.

------
sehugg
This is the same William Barr that released an official DOJ statement
yesterday claiming abuse of the FISA courts, no?
[https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-
wi...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-william-p-
barr-inspector-generals-report-review-four-fisa)

~~~
davidw
Yes, this Bill Barr:

[https://gen.medium.com/is-william-barr-the-head-of-doj-or-
qa...](https://gen.medium.com/is-william-barr-the-head-of-doj-or-
qanon-58d68fc3a31)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/william-barr-is-the-most-
dange...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/william-barr-is-the-most-dangerous-
man-in-america)

------
BLKNSLVR
We've had innumerable discussions about the practical impossibility of what
various Governments are asking for in relation to encryption. Those who
know... know. There's no more debate needed, the mathematics speaks for
itself, the history of security breaches speaks for itself (and is only ever
gaining in its volume of evidence).

The technology industry needs a template reply referring to the obvious
examples of the two pillars, mathematics and history of security breaches, to
dismissively reply to any further such requests now and anytime in the future.
We shouldn't need to get caught up in any of their cleverly constructed
strawman arguments and appeals to emotion. Those who keep bringing these
topics up are essentially performing a DoS on the technology industry by tying
up resources having to argue established fundamental truths and logic over and
over.

So, why do we have to keep spinning our tyres on this?

1\. Control: The well established push towards surveillance and the police
state that protects the status quo. Technology has accelerated the enablement
of this.

2\. Power: The powers-that-be don't like being told by 'nerds and geeks' what
is and is not possible, despite the very same 'nerds and geeks' creating the
technology that has enabled the acceleration of Control. The technology
industry's continued non-compliance undermines their desired image of Power.

But, because this whole argument is so purely a power play it's not likely to
stop (without fundamental changes to the fabric of society at least). As such,
a template reply is needed to mitigate this DoS

~~~
nl
This comment is wrong on so many levels.

It is absolutely technically possible to provided communications with the
ability for a government to read them. No one debates that.

Many claim that the security and privacy trade off in doing that is not
worthwhile.

 _The technology industry needs a template reply referring to the obvious
examples of the two pillars, mathematics and history of security breaches, to
dismissively reply to any further such requests now and anytime in the future.
We shouldn 't need to get caught up in any of their cleverly constructed
strawman arguments and appeals to emotion._

This is absolutely the wrong response. This is a political argument, and the
correct response is in the field of politics, not a glib template argument
that appeals to technologists view on security trade-offs.

~~~
Nasrudith
Political arguements is a fool's game as they are experienced manipulators
after power. Sociopaths in other words. Not playing the expert's games is the
only way to win against them.

Force them to insist upon what every expert says is impossible. The only
"answer" they can have to that are more spin spun bullshit or making it their
own. A "don't use me ever" form of encryption if they actually succeeded (any
other option is better) or they create a tower of babel standing on a vertical
gnat's hair - an inevitable collapse on any foolish enough to use it that only
damages the arrogant fool who made it further.

~~~
nl
_Force them to insist upon what every expert says is impossible._

What does "impossible" mean here?

It is certainly possible to build an encrypted messaging system that doesn't
use end-to-end encryption and that allows someone within the company that runs
that system to read the messages.

There are plenty of existing messaging systems that work this way, even today
(eg, FB Messenger in non-private mode, Slack, plenty of video products).

Plenty of them have a long history of operating without having unauthorised
information leaked.

So again - what is impossible?

I agree entirely that E2E encryption is much better, but we are fooling
ourselves to say anything else is impossible.

 _Political arguements is a fool 's game as they are experienced manipulators
after power. Sociopaths in other words. Not playing the expert's games is the
only way to win against them._

I'm not entirely convinced by this argument. I think that banning E2E is
primarily pushed by security agencies, and I think politicians don't
particularly care about this topic at all.

------
scotty79
I think the best way to think about this is that such backdoor is like giving
policemen ability to travel back in time to any time and anywhere any
conversation between any citizens happened (no matter about what and how
private) and invisibly eavsdrop to gather any information that will be used in
the court of law against people involved in the conversation. It will be used
to prove something but also to discredit a person. It may also be used as a
blackmail tool in the process of plea bargaining. All against possibly
innocent people whose innocence is not so blatantly obvious that law
enforcement can't imagine a way to attach some guilt to them.

First of you can't give police such universal time machine because it doesn't
exist and some coversations will be beyond their reach (because end to end
encryption will not cease to exist if facebook and apple stop using it).

Secondly this analogy should show to anyone, even senator, that this is not a
good idea. Especially in USA.

------
_Understated_
I never thought I'd say this but well done Facebook.

That being said, a few things come to mind:

1\. Can they hold out against the inevitable pressure that's gonna be applied
now that they have actively come out against the government and said "No".

2\. Does this mean they can do it but just won't do it?

3\. Will we ever find out if the government secretly forces them to do it?

~~~
qzx_pierri
In response to your third inquiry: They haven’t created a warrant canary, so
we’ll never be able to tell. That’s the thing about Facebook: You never know
what the truth is. I’ll continue to treat Messenger as compromises by the
FBI/NSA.

------
unnouinceput
Let's say FB does such a move. And let's say that it's such a wonderful tech
that only FBI has access to those messages. You know what will happen next?
Criminals and those child molesters that Barr uses as Boogeyman will simply
create an app that will have E2E encryption without any backdoor.
Unfortunately for Barr technology is here and it's easy to use it.

~~~
sjy
Why would a child sign up for an E2E app where it’s easier for paedophiles to
anonymously groom them? Sophisticated organised criminals don’t use Facebook
Messenger, but this article isn’t about them.

~~~
jMyles
One reason that a minor might seek out E2EE is that they have been prosecuted
in that past for sharing photos of themselves with other minors.

------
ashleyn
This debate has been raging since the Clipper chip controversy 25 years ago. I
worry that encryption will only continue to weaken. It already occurred in
Austrailia.

~~~
big_chungus
It will happen eventually, I believe. There is simply to much potential power
to be wielded for politicians to ignore it long-term. Government only ever
takes more power, and the common man does not care enough about this issue to
stop it.

~~~
unnouinceput
I strongly disagree. It will lead to criminals having their own app to
communicate while rest of normal commercial communications will be broken with
potential of criminals stealing stuff left and right. All it will take is for
some big politician to lose all their money in a heist for these useless
attempts to forever disappear.

I actually root for this to happen as fast as possible so all these attempts
to go away forever already so that law enforcing agencies go do their actual
job.

~~~
nemo44x
The fix for that will be to make using those levels of encryption illegal and
to put you under suspicion for criminal activity (suspicion of terrorism, for
instance) in addition to the criminal activity of using that type of
encryption in the first place.

Yes, routing mechanisms, etc exist to make it harder to find out who is using
the encryption but the law enforcement power could then also be extended to
take down anyone participating in such a network as well as setting up
honeypots that somehow get around entrapment laws.

~~~
nitwit005
Criminals, almost by definition, are good at doing things without law
enforcement catching on. It's possible to try to crack down on this stuff, but
like anything else they'll only catch the less competent people.

~~~
sjy
Catching the less competent people isn’t a bad thing, though. Someone who is
competent enough to commit crimes and get away with it is also competent
enough to get a well-paid job and choose to live a pro-social life, without
the risk of one slip-up sending them to prison.

------
satysin
Sorry but I can't and won't trust _anything_ that has anything to do with
Zuckerberg. This year I have fully deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts
and WhatsApp is going by the end of the year when I visit family for Christmas
and can help them switch over.

Sadly they won't be ditching WhatsApp themselves but if I can get them using
something else to communicate with me and my wife hopefully over time they
will see there is a world without WhatsApp. Small steps and all that.

As for what we are switching to that is where I am still undecided. Signal
seems the obvious choice but I want to look at all the viable options so I am
open to any and all recommendations. Must haves are E2E encryption out of the
box, group chat, voice and video (person to person, groups calls not needed).

------
yashksagar
Assuming that the systems are truly encrypted end-to-end, how do we know for
sure that noone can actually decrypt it? I mean, apart from the Eng team that
directly works on that part, are we basically trusting them at face value that
it works? Or does this code need to live in an open-sourced environment so as
to make it more trustworthy?

To be clear, I don't mean trusting the encryption algorithm, that part is easy
because math. I mean trusting that that algorithm is actually what's being
used under the hood and actually noone can decrypt it for any reason.

~~~
brokenmachine
There has to be some level of trust at some point, unless you are going to
create your own phone and all the apps on it from scratch.

------
prirun
Criminals will always be able to easily encrypt messages, unless math is
banned. Is the government going to ban every language that has simple
encryption libraries? You can easily create your own private keys and encrypt
your own messages with a few lines of Python code, and no one can break it. I
don't think this is about child porn or terrorists at all. They're only the
usual justification for wanting to snoop on _everyone_.

------
12xo
I dont trust Facebook and frankly, dont care about end-to-end encryption as
there are a myriad of ways to communicate if necessary. But I definitely do
not trust Barr or the Justice Department or any AG in any way shape or form as
they have proven to act immoral,criminal and are clearly beholden to their
political puppet-masters and campaign donors. So in the end, its better to
have both side incapable of deciphering the data than either capable.

------
SpikeDad
Lets examine the character and truthfulness of both Facebook and William
Barr.. There's not a grade low enough to characterize the lying and deceit of
both of them.

I have no trouble believing that Facebook is lying an Barr is supporting this
lie. We'll have to see how fast someone is convicted based on encrypted
Facebook Messages and what excuse Barr and the DOJ use to rationalize it.

It's a sad day in America.

------
SN76477
If you do not know what you are looking for you should not be looking.

Serve a warrant and do it the proper way if you want to read private messages.

------
ProfHewitt
The real issue is "Highly-Secure Backdoors: Internet of Traitorous Things
(IoTT)" as follows:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957)

------
rock_hard
Mirror without paywall: [https://montrealtimes.news/facebook-tells-barr-it-
wont-open-...](https://montrealtimes.news/facebook-tells-barr-it-wont-open-up-
encrypted-messages/)

------
_mr47
Here's that marketing scheme again. Apple did it first a while back, so I
assume now we can be assured we are safe.

------
wheelerwj
no body believes anything Facebook says

------
xyzzyz
> No, they were pretty clear about that when they wrote that pesky
> constitution thingy (and for good reason.)

They were clear about many other things, but the idea of interpreting
constitution as it was meant by the founders has long been dead, with the coup
de grace having been delivered by Helvering v. Davis. The constitution is
dead, and its skin is worn by 9 people in Supreme Court who get to decide what
they want it to mean basically any way they please.

~~~
K0SM0S
Isn't it time to consider writing a new Constitution then?

Most countries have had "a few" (2, 3, 4...) since the inception of the
formalized idea. We now know how to draft "good enough" Constitutions by
common standards (relatively to history and other countries).

It's a famous US peculiarity in Constitutional Law studies: to have gone the
amendment path for so long. To have been so resilient to epochs, to change, to
greatness. And yet as of the 21st century, it shows elements of "unfairness"
and approximation that seem hard to sustain further, to "sell" to the masses
for much longer, or so it seems from a nerdy-law standpoint.

There's evident success but it may have been at the expense of a significant
degree of actual democracy — as you suggest for the judiciary branch: this
infringes on the legislative branch in this case, and outright fails the
accountability check absolutely required from lawmakers. By comparison, judges
are elected in the US system, which is accountability put in place to counter
or mitigate their ability to _make_ the law by way of setting precedents,
giving citizens an indirect say in the matter.

I don't know. I've always pondered on this question. I observe tension rising
in this direction over the last 20 years (since Bush Jr essentially). Maybe
it's just my personal bias speaking — no wonder a programmer sees the law as
inneficient code to be refactored asap! ;-)

~~~
jaywalk
We don't have a mechanism to replace the Constitution. Short of getting all 50
states to agree on it (good luck) it's never going to happen without a civil
war.

~~~
samatman
On the contrary, Article V clearly states that it would require legislation on
the part of two-thirds of the States, or passage by two-thirds of the House
and Senate, and subsequent ratification by three-quarters of the state
legislatures.

This would convene a Constitutional Convention, which in turn could rapidly
pass an Amendment rendering the existing Constitution null and void upon
ratification, after which they could turn their attention to creating and
ratifying a new Constitution.

Not only would this be perfectly legal, I consider it an excellent idea.

~~~
justin66
> Not only would this be perfectly legal, I consider it an excellent idea.

An excellent idea in the abstract sense of _hey, that 's a really clever way
to update the constitution,_ or an excellent idea in the sense of _the
politicians operating in America today can be trusted to update the
constitution properly so let 's do that?_ Only one of those isn't totally
crazy...

~~~
samatman
In neither sense, because a popular movement to replace the Constitution could
only succeed by replacing the existing legislature with one which is amenable
to such a course of action.

It's far-fetched, I readily concede that. But it has a lot to recommend it,
the very act of proposing and bringing to reality a Constitutional Convention
would be a powerful engine of change, with a better-than-even chance we'd end
up with a better system than we have now.

~~~
jeffdavis
"a Constitutional Convention would be a powerful engine of change, with a
better-than-even chance we'd end up with a better system than we have now"

What makes you think that? I would put the odds of a better system at
approximately zero.

We had a rare, special moment in history that created our Constitution. The
Bill of Rights is amazing and radical even today.

------
willis936
That seems tethical.

------
dehrmann
I don't see how the Trump administration is, on one hand, banning Chinese
telecom equipment because of alleged backdoors, then turning around and asking
US firms to put in backdoors. Sure, they're _your_ backdoors, but it hurts the
US's credibility.

~~~
colejohnson66
The government’s argument has always been along the lines of: “Don’t worry.
The US is better than China and our secret backdoor keys will never be leaked.
Trust us :)”

~~~
sjy
Have the secret backdoor keys that allow developers to remotely update the
software on every Windows, iOS or Android device ever been leaked?

