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Feds want to intercept and decrypt internet traffic

/dev/null

By /dev/null
in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

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/dev/null Hall of Famer

/dev/null

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Right...good luck with that (technically that is).

 

Snooping on unencrypted traffic is easy enough conner could figure it out.

 

The encrypted traffic is the tricky part. I suspect the push here is really to set the precedent for the Feds to get access to private keys and to require session keys be stored for later playback.

Gene Frenkle Veteran

Gene Frenkle

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Snooping on unencrypted traffic is easy enough conner could figure it out.

 

The encrypted traffic is the tricky part. I suspect the push here is really to set the precedent for the Feds to get access to private keys and to require session keys be stored for later playback.

The smart criminals will use encryption that the Feds can't crack, so what's the point?

GG Hall of Famer

GG

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Why should internet communication be treated any differently than telephone communication, or any other kind of travel? If it's legal for law enforcement to enter your home with a warrant, and it's legal to wiretap your phone with a warrant, why should internet be excluded?

DC Tom Hall of Famer

DC Tom

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Why should internet communication be treated any differently than telephone communication, or any other kind of travel? If it's legal for law enforcement to enter your home with a warrant, and it's legal to wiretap your phone with a warrant, why should internet be excluded?

 

Actually, the article spefically says it would only happen with a warrant. It's mostly about putting back doors in internet security so the feds can effectively capture encrypted data when a warrant is provided.

/dev/null Hall of Famer

/dev/null

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The smart criminals will use encryption that the Feds can't crack, so what's the point?

 

If you criminalize guns then only criminals will have guns.

 

I suspect this isn't about snooping on "the bad guys" as much as it's getting their hands on the keys to legitimate communications services which "the bad guys" may or may not use

GG Hall of Famer

GG

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Actually, the article spefically says it would only happen with a warrant. It's mostly about putting back doors in internet security so the feds can effectively capture encrypted data when a warrant is provided.

 

That's why I asked the question Dexter.

OCinBuffalo All Pro

OCinBuffalo

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http://www.startribune.com/nation/103836983.html

 

So it was bad when Bush wanted to tap phone lines. Is it still bad now that Obama wants to do the same on the internet?

 

the answer is yes: Bush = Obama = Bad

 

 

:ph34r:

Of course not. Phony moral superior outrage is only acceptable if your guy isn't in the white house. As evidenced by:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Ben Franklin

Instead of getting a deluge of links and babbling on for 5 paragraphs about how awful the President is....

....we get some timid quote. :rolleyes:

 

Obama is victimizing you just like Bush did...where is your outrage? Oh, that's right, you are a f'ing phony...I forgot. :rolleyes:

Right...good luck with that (technically that is).

You are right, sort of. The real B word is the potential mandate that all of us may have to endure. We may have to create a whole bunch of performance killing bloatware that adds no value to our bundles which affects our QoS every day...because the government might someday ask us to show them our data. :wallbash:

Snooping on unencrypted traffic is easy enough conner could figure it out.

 

The encrypted traffic is the tricky part. I suspect the push here is really to set the precedent for the Feds to get access to private keys and to require session keys be stored for later playback.

Which means they just exponentially increased our data storage requirements. I don't want to be paying for otherwise useless terabytes of session data, because somebody might want it someday. Anybody who does a lot of transactions is looking at a serious amount of wasted money and time.

Why should internet communication be treated any differently than telephone communication, or any other kind of travel? If it's legal for law enforcement to enter your home with a warrant, and it's legal to wiretap your phone with a warrant, why should internet be excluded?

Because that logic is inherently flawed, assumes dissimilar things are the same, and is not applicable to the Internet.

 

Consider:

1. Your home is yours. Your front door is used by you, and those you let in, but in all cases, you control it. Each home has it's own front door, with its own keys. IF you are doing something stupid in your house, your neighbor shouldn't be affected, and the warrant doesn't allow the FBI to "accidentally" search his home also.

 

2. Facebook is like everybody living in the same house, with one door, and right now that's ok, because Facebook controls the only door, and if they screw up it's on them. The market will punish them accordingly. And, their "door" is unique to their system. Breaking into Facebook only means you got into Facebook.

 

3. The government wants to create a back door. But, this back door is going to be standardized. Who punishes the government if this back door is compromised? Can we sue them? Can we sue to have the back door removed? No and no. :wallbash:

 

4. A standard back door means that once you figure out how to attack it, not only can you get into Facebook, but Myspace, and even into sensitive ares like this.

 

5. "Security by obscurity" is not the way to secure a system, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have lots of different ways to create that back door, instead of a standard, government issued one.

 

6. Why would the government be so foolish as to demand a standard back door? Answer: because they have to regulate it, and there's no way they will want to deal with trying to figure out each company's approach and whether it is acceptable, and to keep checking forever, as updates are rolled out. That is, unless they want to create legions of government jobs. :rolleyes:

------------------------

7. Giving one warrant to one FBI agent to search one home is fine. But, you can't do that here. Once the door is open, the FBI can search wherever they want to. They are ultimately going to be searching for records, but not knowing exactly what they are looking for, and that means inevitably retrieving records that aren't covered by their warrant.

 

8. We can write SQL privileges and roles until we are blue in the face, but we can't only give them rights to exactly what they need and nothing more, because we can't know what they will ultimately need. Short of creating an individual role for every single user of Facebook, which defeats the purpose of privileges and roles, kills performance and functionality, and wastes lots of time and $$$, it ain't happening. Besides, even with that level of stupidity there's still no guarantees that the wrong records won't get accessed.

 

9. As a start up guy, these potential restrictions would have made my business plan cost prohibitive. So, the very real possibility is that we won't see any more innovation if this allowed to proceed in its current form. Honestly: when was the last time you saw new, excellent software from IBM? The 80's? Killing innovation is simply not worth allowing some government employee to maybe, someday, use the back door, and potentially grab a bunch of records he has no right to be looking at.

 

10. How do we know this won't end up being used as a political tool, by either side? Look they are going after people's message board posts in political campaigns now. The nice thing about the internet is we get to say what we think/tell the truth without having to worry about being excoriated in our personal lives. It is the last bastion of truly free speech.

 

11. We can argue that OUR government won't f this up. And let's say, for reasons passing understanding, that this somehow is true. Am I supposed to trust China's government not to exploit the data they get from these back doors?. Russia's? In fact, I basically don't trust anybody but maybe us and some NATO countries not to pull crap with this. Are we supposed to be OK with some guy being killed for what he said, because his government used our government's mandated back door? This is the Internet, which means everybody, and that's something many people still struggle with.

 

Taking 1-11 into consideration, along with the fact that government has clearly screwed up everything else it has touched for the last 50 years, I simply see no reason to trust them with this. They WILL f it up.

  • 2 weeks later...
Adam All Pro

Adam

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Posted (edited)

Taking 1-11 into consideration, along with the fact that government has clearly screwed up everything else it has touched for the last 50 years, I simply see no reason to trust them with this. They WILL f it up.

I can't disagree with you- but the final fault is on the american people, themselves. We made our government the convoluted mess that it has become over the last 100 or so years. Liberals and neocons alike.....

Edited by Adam
GG Hall of Famer

GG

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Because that logic is inherently flawed, assumes dissimilar things are the same, and is not applicable to the Internet.

 

Ok, how is obtaining information from an IP router different than obtaining similar information from a telephone switch? If you're ok with the government's right to snoop on telephone conversations & telephone traffic data that are obtained at the central office, how will you carry over that right when the telephone traffic is commingled with the general IP traffic?

LeviF Hall of Famer

LeviF

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Posted (edited)

What is it about the dude's column that you take issue with?

I only read a little bit of it, but it seems to me that he thinks an e-mail is somehow different from a phone conversation (OC makes some good points on this above, but I still think they're remarkably similar). I don't like wiretapping, period. If you're going to dislike something, at least be consistent.

 

Hey, maybe they'll even get warrants before intercepting e-mails! <_<

Edited by LeviF91
Rob's House All Pro

Rob's House

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I only read a little bit of it, but it seems to me that he thinks an e-mail is somehow different from a phone conversation (OC makes some good points on this above, but I still think they're remarkably similar). I don't like wiretapping, period. If you're going to dislike something, at least be consistent.

 

Hey, maybe they'll even get warrants before intercepting e-mails! <_<

Care to cite the passage that gave you that impression?

LeviF Hall of Famer

LeviF

Posted
Posted

Care to cite the passage that gave you that impression?

Let me put it this way: I read up to the last line in this section

 

If Obama's lockstep Democrats are still in control next year, Glenn Greenwald continues, "Internet services could legally exist only insofar as there would be no such thing as truly private communications; all must contain a 'back door' to enable government officials to eavesdrop."

 

Would this still be America?

I assume he's defining "America" as the state in which telephone conversations have been listened in on (and have had the capabilities to be listened in on) for years. That being the case, the implication in this section is that "tapping" internet conversations is fundamentally different from "tapping" telephone conversations.

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