
A Golden Key Encryption Law - evo_9
https://mondaynote.com/a-dare-to-congress-go-ahead-vote-a-golden-key-encryption-law-9bd8634ae5d
======
wfo
Nice discussion, but the central call to action -- challenging technically
ignorant authoritarian extremists in the legislature like McConnell and
Feinstein to do something horrible, trusting that they truly won't do it at
the end of the day because uhhh their "desire to do the right thing?" \-- this
is naive tech ideology at work. Realistically, the golden key law is totally
feasible, politically viable, and should scare all of us. It would not be used
to ban all encryption (which is impossible) but rather to target undesirables
selectively and to ensure that either every person's every communication is
recorded forever by the government so that they can be prosecuted for their
speech later at will, or that they are put on a list of criminals for using
banned encryption, so that they can be prosecuted later at will.

No tech person should ever breathe a word of support for this, especially not
to play a psychotic game of chicken with people who would permanently disable
their brakes in an instant if it would fire up their base for a news cycle.

~~~
tuxxy
Even if this was law, it would be trivial to bypass. This type of law isn't
just tyrannical, it's impossible to enforce. So, you're 100% absolutely right
in saying it would be selectively enforced.

Every tech founder needs to standup to these attempts of control.

~~~
ebiester
Make the hypothetical law: "Use of encryption without a golden key is an
automatic assumption of guilt."

All it takes is a complicit supreme court.

~~~
AstralStorm
And a change of constitution.

Specifically, unreadable speech is still protected by 2nd Ammendment.

Just make your cipher output speech (gibberish words, form of steganography)
and you're set.

As a reminder, this is how Zimmerman's PGP was exported. Printed in a book.

~~~
schoen
Maybe you mean the first amendment?

[http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/yu-
encrypt.html](http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/yu-encrypt.html)

------
ctdonath
Never forget the great TSA Master Key fiasco.

To facilitate airline baggage security while easing bag searches, the TSA
approved locks which could be opened with a master key (well, one from a small
set of keys). These keys, like the "golden key" in the indicated article, were
carefully guarded. Anyone using a luggage lock that either wasn't TSA-master-
key-compliant, or not already open, was of course considered with great
suspicion.

Then someone wrote an article about it. And talked a TSA security agent into
posing with the keys displayed. [http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/CM8Naj...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/CM8Naj7UwAAN6co.jpg) was published, and within hours
people were 3D-printing copies.

Never forget the great DVD CSS fiasco.

To ward off unauthorized copying, DVDs were encrypted. Authorized playback
devices were given the secret decryption key. Controlled properly, this key
would never be actually revealed.

Then someone didn't control it properly, storing it unsecured in a playback
product. The key was found, copied, disseminated, and DeCSS software
proliferated. It was even printed on t-shirts:
[https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3451/3228250152_cf84bbd87d_b.j...](https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3451/3228250152_cf84bbd87d_b.jpg)

No, it's not "going to be different this time". Universal back-door keys get
compromised/copied/disseminated eventually.

~~~
Nursie
DeCSS was more about the CSS scheme being trivial to break, wasn't it?

We went through it in Coursera's crypto-1 course, as soon as you can see how
it works you can see how to break it pretty trivially and recover the key.

~~~
ctdonath
In retrospect, yes it's easy to break. Getting to that understanding, however,
was greatly facilitated by the aforementioned key leak. I recall the great
excitement when it happened, and the subsequent proposals of making that
number "illegal" (discouraging dissemination).

Upshot, regardless of technical details: we've been over the "golden key law"
concept many times thru several decades, with numerous dramatic examples of
why it's a really really bad idea. We can continue arguing about what exactly
went wrong then, and why "it will be different this time", but if we've
learned anything it's "no, it won't be different this time."

------
dingo_bat
> In a December 2015 Monday Note titled Let’s Outlaw Math, I mocked our
> government officials and Law and Order public servants for their obdurate
> disregard for a fundamental mathematical property that makes well-designed
> encryption unbreakable

This is a wrong way to think about it. You can say similar things about
building a bomb. The steps to manufacture explosives from common materials are
simple if you are good at chemistry. Likewise, this mathematical explanation
makes encryption sound like a high-school can do it using an abacus. But it's
not. It's simple for a person to understand. But coding these algorithms is no
joke.

Now if you want the government to not impose restrictions on crypto software,
that is the equivalent of wanting to lift controls off explosive substances.
Yes these are fundamental truths about the world (mix a and b and get an
explosion, multiply prime numbers and you can't factorize), but that does not
mean the government cannot try to control them. Just like they control the
sale of explosives, for public security, they can also require Microsoft,
Apple and Google to put in a master-key. And I don't see a problem with that.

~~~
mikeash
There's a huge difference between bomb making and crypto. To make a bomb, you
need to gather materials and then carry out some difficult, dangerous steps to
turn them into explosives and assemble a bomb. Then if you want another bomb,
you have to do it _again_. If you want a bigger bomb, you need more materials.
Consider that any random person can easily buy some ammonium nitrate, but if
you try to buy enough to blow up a building without a legitimate reason,
you'll run into major obstacles with the law.

Crypto is different. Once you set up crypto, you have it forever. Crypto that
can encrypt 1kB can also encrypt 1TB. Crypto that works for one person can
easily be made to work for a million people. Computers handle all the hard
parts, and there's no obstacle to scale.

It's true that the government could require big companies to put in a master
key. The problem is that criminals would _trivially_ bypass such a
requirement. There's no computer equivalent to requiring all ammonium nitrate
sellers to report sales. And in the other direction, there's no physical
equivalent to the havoc that would occur if the master key ever leaked. The
risks and benefits are completely topsy turvy for a master key scheme.

Note that the government doesn't really try to restrict bomb making
_instructions_ , just bomb making _materials_. With crypto, the instructions
are the only thing there is. There's no such thing as crypto materials, unless
you propose to regulate CPUs in general.

~~~
jasonjayr
> There's no computer equivalent to requiring all ammonium nitrate sellers to
> report sales.

Say, perhaps, every processor had a 2nd processor attached, that would run
code not modifiable by the owner? With little public information about it's
full capabilities? That had full unfettered access to the primary processor,
it's memory, and I/O Ports? And insist that it's mandatory to the function of
the primary processor?

Sounds a lot like Intel'S ME?

~~~
rtkwe
How does the ME determine if I’m running an encryption algorithm using a legal
compromised key vs running illegal encryption with a non compromised key? And
more importantly how does this ME turned spy actually determine what is
encryption and what isn’t? It’d have to determine on the fly if all the
operations on your computer were encryption-like because otherwise just
tweaking the code so the outputs are identical but the instructions and memory
access are vastly different would completely bypass the ME-snitch.

------
criddell
I've tried to think of something that hardware manufacturers could do to grant
access to law enforcement and minimize abuse potential.

The best I could come up with would be to make decryption possible iff law
enforcement had physical possession of the phone and if the act of decryption
would make the phone unusable after (e.g. hardware access requires blowing
some fusible links) and if the acquired data was still encrypted with a key
that only the device manufacturer can provide.

I'd prefer to see no concessions made, but if decryption is going to be
required, it should be expensive, require possession of the device and the
cooperation of multiple parties.

~~~
strictnein
This type of thing needs to be considered, because I think people are really
fooling themselves if they think Apple, et al won't be required to do this
within the next 5-10 years.

There will be an incident that turns public opinion on this to such a degree
that it will be inevitable.

~~~
cortesoft
How would it even work? How would some random hardware feature stop me from
using PGP in user space?

~~~
bo1024
For example, by logging all of your keystrokes / input actions and storing
them. (edit: this is why people are so concerned about things like Intel ME)

~~~
cortesoft
Logging them where? Intel ME doesn't have some huge storage location or
anything.

~~~
bo1024
Well, sending them over the network in real time is one option, or if we are
talking custom hardware as in this discussion, then it could be made with
local storage (and wouldn't need to be all that big...).

~~~
cortesoft
Sending them over the network would be trivial to detect and block, since you
could just look at the outgoing packets on the switch the computer is
connected to.

------
rdtsc
> the FBI backed off, probably fearful of the PR consequences.

There was also a PR battle involved and Apple won.

Defending encryption is hard, because it is primarily a PR battle and the
enemy always has the high ground. Notice how all these cases hinge on some
terrible crime - terrorism, human trafficking, etc. Because the govt then gets
to say "Aha, so who wants to stand up and defend terrorists!? Nobody> That's
what we thought, so let's pass this new law then".

But what Apple did (and kudos to their PR team) is turn it around said it
wasn't just a 1st Amendment issue, but also a practical personal safety risk
issue. Not having encryption means being exposed to identity theft and fraud.
It is not just something abstract but a specific and real danger that everyone
either experienced or knows someone who it happened to.

Read it here: [https://www.apple.com/customer-
letter/](https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/)

It is really a great example of good PR and a good punch back in the
encryption battle. It helps sometimes when a tech giant throws their weight
behind this.

------
mrguyorama
I think this writer dreadfully underestimates just how little legislators know
about complex subjects, and how unwilling to learn they are.

~~~
kabdib
... and overestimates legislators' attachment to principles.

------
kabdib
They already tried, with the Clipper chip. It was clearly a very bad idea, and
flawed, but that won't stop more attempts (and with software, the costs are
much more hidden, and the flaws are probably more hidden as well).

It's quite possible for legislation involving key escrow/recovery, import
controls and mandatory sentencing for using noncompliant crypto and so forth
to pass the current senate and house, regardless of the technical shortcomings
of the solution.

My belief is that the LEAs are waiting for a sufficiently egregious event
involving crypto so they can push through legislation rather than attempt
shaky arguments in court with the current laws. Guessing that the phone
involved in the recent shooting was unlockable, at least initially, and didn't
contain anything sufficiently interesting to make political hay out of.

------
pdpi
I've long wondered whether this is a fight where the NRA would be an unlikely
ally.

It shouldn't be that hard to cast strong encryption as a 2nd amendment issue,
in emotional if not constitutional terms.

~~~
bjt2n3904
I've been making that argument for some time now. The similarity between
"responsible encryption laws" and "responsible gun laws" is stunning.

~~~
cvwright
Just wait until all the dirty tricks from the gun control debate start getting
used against encryption. Lots of cognitive dissonance incoming for many in our
community...

------
tempodox
From the article:

> Once they get close enough to the precipice, they’ll experience a salutary
> fear of consequences.

No, they won't. Look at how Trump got elected or Brexit was decided. Excessive
stupidity of a project won't stop people from pursuing it.

~~~
heisenbit
The voting record of the house is clear: The fact that something does not
exist like a coherent plan for Obamacare repeal is not a reason not to vote
for it. The evidence indicates that some members believe voting is like
"liking" on Facebook. Consequences are entirely virtual. Until they are not
anymore.

It is worth noting that Congress members may be worried about keeping some
private things private. That may act as a real check.

------
foobarbazetc
Daring the current kakitocracy to do something this stupid seems like a bad
idea.

