FBI failed to access data from almost 7,000 devices; director calls encryption a "huge...

midian182

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FBI director Christopher Wray looks set to reignite the security vs privacy debate after revealing that his agency failed to access “more than half” the devices it recently tried to unlock. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, agents couldn’t extract data from almost 7,000 mobile devices.

“To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem,” Wray told the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia. “It impacts investigations across the board—narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation.”

The encryption argument is one that often appears in the wake of terrorist attacks, and it reached new levels during the San Bernardino iPhone case last year. A judge had ordered Apple to help the FBI access the locked iPhone 5c that belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. The company fought the decision, arguing that creating such a backdoor would ultimately enable governments and hackers to breach people’s devices.

The FBI eventually turned to a third party for help unlocking Farook’s iPhone. While it’s widely suspected it paid $900,000 to Israeli firm Cellebrite for assistance, a federal court earlier this month ruled that the agency doesn’t have to reveal who helped it or how much it cost.

Wray said that there needs to be a balance between using encryption and allowing government agencies access to devices.

“I get it, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe,” he said.

Wray also mentioned the increasing threats faced by homegrown extremists and foreign terror organizations, which may have been his way of convincing people that backdoors are necessary. “The threats that we face keep accumulating, they are complex, they are varied,” the director added.

The US isn't the only country where authorities are battling encryption. Through the Investigatory Powers Bill, aka the Snooper’s Charter, the UK has one of the most extreme surveillance laws ever passed in a democracy and has long called for weakened encryption. In August, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that “real people” don’t care about such security features.

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This is a major issue that's not going away anytime soon. FBI Director Wray states “I get it, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe,”
All this shows is that he 'doesn't get it'. Encryption helps keep me (part of the public) safe. If encryption was adopted everywhere I would have much less worry about things like discussions where the material may be contentious (what isn't today), any commercial transaction like banking, purchases, sales (payment info goes across the net), or that a person's personal habits may be used against them (today, every single detail of your past can live forever, stored digitally).
Plus the 'elephant in the room' is that encryption also keeps me safe from my government. The government (stay in power at any cost) has a long record of abusing positions of privilege and power for personal benefit, and abusing the rights of their citizens. Proof? Look at the USA, current world proclaimer of being the home of the free. Guantanamo Bay and all such places, meddling in world affairs which has made them close friends with people such as the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia (watch Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States for the easy version), kills its own citizens without due access to the Courts or their accusers (I think drones dropping bombs on passport holding American citizens fits here) blah, so much more, blah.
Ask for extra privilege and you should be held to a higher standard, current government has a long way to go before they do this and I then trust them.
 
If these "powerful people" think they know so much, let them have their way. When their personal devices get hacked and the devices of their organizations get hacked, then they will finally "get it." Unfortunately, this seems like what it is going to have to happen in order for them to "get it." Experian and all the other high-profile data hacks were simply not enough for them. Only fools would argue for this back door and not see that having such a back door in all devices leaves even the devices of the "law and order" gang open to hacking.
 
These don't seem to understand the fundamentals of binary technology: it is either 'open or closed', 'on or off', 'encrypted or unencrypted'. There is no such thing as a 'backdoor', only an additional set of decryption keys that ultimately weaken the encryption (both mathematically and practically) just by existing. There is no 'balance' that can be struck. Just like your light switch at home, it is either on or off.

If these "powerful people" think they know so much, let them have their way. When their personal devices get hacked and the devices of their organizations get hacked, then they will finally "get it." Unfortunately, this seems like what it is going to have to happen in order for them to "get it." Experian and all the other high-profile data hacks were simply not enough for them. Only fools would argue for this back door and not see that having such a back door in all devices leaves even the devices of the "law and order" gang open to hacking.
Oh, no. They don't have a problem with their devices being encrypted. Quite the opposite really, they have an issue when they are unencrypted. It is everyone else's devices and communications that they don't want to be encrypted.
 
As bad as it sounds, I'm much more worried about the government accessing my private device vs a terrorist attack. Everyone in this country is entitled to a certain level of privacy.

If you want to hunt baddies, find another way. The number of extreme cases where this is a "real problem" does not warrant sacrificing my privacy, imo.

Just let us enjoy our weird porn, worry free.
 
This is all just smoke, another pony show to placate the masses. Apple's tech is a direct Langley push from top to bottom, going back to their inception in the 1970s. For the FBI to say that the CIA wouldn't let them into a fake mass-murderer's phone is just laughable. That's like when Facebook says it cares about your privacy - the CIA's own social network cares about PRIVACY? Sure, sure.

This is both further evidence San Bernardino was a fraud and that Apple is a spook creation. Microsoft and Google are no better. The Goog is just a long way of saying "NSA" to begin with, and MS has always been in their pockets as well.
 
I'm puzzled. Is lowering the bar (I.e., building little back doors) really the right idea from a capabilities viewpoint? Surely Russian and Chinese little back doors will NOT be open to the CIA or the FBI. Or even Canadian or Australian ones??!!And why should they?

The idea we should invest in a reopening of Bletchley Park sounds pretty smart to me.
 
They're not gonna get hacked if they control the backdoor.
no one can control a backdoor. If the US couldn't keep how to make the atomic bomb secret, or the NSA's dirty deeds any backdoor will be leaked, sold, traded for assets/secrets, discovered, or whatever.
 
This is a major issue that's not going away anytime soon. FBI Director Wray states “I get it, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe,”
All this shows is that he 'doesn't get it'. Encryption helps keep me (part of the public) safe. If encryption was adopted everywhere I would have much less worry about things like discussions where the material may be contentious (what isn't today), any commercial transaction like banking, purchases, sales (payment info goes across the net), or that a person's personal habits may be used against them (today, every single detail of your past can live forever, stored digitally).
Plus the 'elephant in the room' is that encryption also keeps me safe from my government. The government (stay in power at any cost) has a long record of abusing positions of privilege and power for personal benefit, and abusing the rights of their citizens. Proof? Look at the USA, current world proclaimer of being the home of the free. Guantanamo Bay and all such places, meddling in world affairs which has made them close friends with people such as the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia (watch Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States for the easy version), kills its own citizens without due access to the Courts or their accusers (I think drones dropping bombs on passport holding American citizens fits here) blah, so much more, blah.
Ask for extra privilege and you should be held to a higher standard, current government has a long way to go before they do this and I then trust them.

When you believe the govt is the bad guy and people wanting to hide from the govt are the ones we should protect, it means you live so far up in your ivory tower that you can't see reality down on the ground anymore.

The fact that the FBI can get a warrant to search your house, place of work, car, and any safe or locked box, but can't read your texts is complete BS.

And don't believe anything Oliver Stone puts out. His JFK movie was completely about a 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll, a theory without evidence. I wouldn't believe anything he makes.
 
This is a major issue that's not going away anytime soon. FBI Director Wray states “I get it, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe,”
All this shows is that he 'doesn't get it'. Encryption helps keep me (part of the public) safe. If encryption was adopted everywhere I would have much less worry about things like discussions where the material may be contentious (what isn't today), any commercial transaction like banking, purchases, sales (payment info goes across the net), or that a person's personal habits may be used against them (today, every single detail of your past can live forever, stored digitally).
Plus the 'elephant in the room' is that encryption also keeps me safe from my government. The government (stay in power at any cost) has a long record of abusing positions of privilege and power for personal benefit, and abusing the rights of their citizens. Proof? Look at the USA, current world proclaimer of being the home of the free. Guantanamo Bay and all such places, meddling in world affairs which has made them close friends with people such as the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia (watch Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States for the easy version), kills its own citizens without due access to the Courts or their accusers (I think drones dropping bombs on passport holding American citizens fits here) blah, so much more, blah.
Ask for extra privilege and you should be held to a higher standard, current government has a long way to go before they do this and I then trust them.

When you believe the govt is the bad guy and people wanting to hide from the govt are the ones we should protect, it means you live so far up in your ivory tower that you can't see reality down on the ground anymore.

The fact that the FBI can get a warrant to search your house, place of work, car, and any safe or locked box, but can't read your texts is complete BS.

And don't believe anything Oliver Stone puts out. His JFK movie was completely about a 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll, a theory without evidence. I wouldn't believe anything he makes.
The fact you seem to be perfectly OK with government breaking encryption for the purposes of spying makes you far less believable.

Your FBI quote is also seriously flawed. The FBI can get a warrant to search your house, yes. They cant just wander in and read anything they want, which is what you are advocating they be allowed to do with electronic devices. They want to read texts? Let them figure out how to break encryption on their own. Just like if they want in a safety box, they have to figure out how to get in without a key.

not once have they used their newer powers to stop attacks. Shooters are commonly found to have transmitted plans or damning evidence unencrypted, yet the govt cant seem to find them. Now they use it as an excuse to break encryption so they can spy while still ignoring actual criminals.

They dont use their current power properly, they dont deserve ore.
 
The fact you seem to be perfectly OK with government breaking encryption for the purposes of spying makes you far less believable.

Your FBI quote is also seriously flawed. The FBI can get a warrant to search your house, yes. They cant just wander in and read anything they want, which is what you are advocating they be allowed to do with electronic devices. They want to read texts? Let them figure out how to break encryption on their own. Just like if they want in a safety box, they have to figure out how to get in without a key.

not once have they used their newer powers to stop attacks. Shooters are commonly found to have transmitted plans or damning evidence unencrypted, yet the govt cant seem to find them. Now they use it as an excuse to break encryption so they can spy while still ignoring actual criminals.

They dont use their current power properly, they dont deserve ore.

Who said anything about spying - I specifically said 'if they have a warrant'

My FBI quote? I didn't quote the FBI. Of course I'm not advocating that they can just access anyone's device they want. And neither are they. The 4th Amendment specifically prohibits this, and no one is talking about getting rid of it. We're talking about people like Farook - the San Bernardino shooter. You think his phone should be protected AFTER he went on a shooting rampage and was killed!? The Las Vegas shooter had plans to kill a lot more people - and you think his devices should be protected - even if he's dead?

And they don't ignore criminals, and they DO stop attacks - they stopped a mass shooting right in my city because they had someone undercover. 60 minutes this week (10/22/17 episode) had a whole story about a guy who was undercover and stopped a train derailment.

They do not have to figure out how to get into a safe without a key - if they have a warrant you have to open it for them or they hold you in contempt of a court order and arrest you.
 
They're not gonna get hacked if they control the backdoor.
Until quantum computing comes along, and maybe not even then, I would not expect any system to be totally unhackable. The fact that there would be a back door there, even if they think that they control it, means that there is a basic vulnerability in the system that someone will find a way to hack. We all thought WPA2 was meaningful, and now we find that given the right circumstances, it is not as secure as we thought. These gov agencies are high value targets which means two things: they will spend a lot of time trying to secure them and they will also have a substantial number of hackers attempting to get through.
 
The fact you seem to be perfectly OK with government breaking encryption for the purposes of spying makes you far less believable.

Your FBI quote is also seriously flawed. The FBI can get a warrant to search your house, yes. They cant just wander in and read anything they want, which is what you are advocating they be allowed to do with electronic devices. They want to read texts? Let them figure out how to break encryption on their own. Just like if they want in a safety box, they have to figure out how to get in without a key.

not once have they used their newer powers to stop attacks. Shooters are commonly found to have transmitted plans or damning evidence unencrypted, yet the govt cant seem to find them. Now they use it as an excuse to break encryption so they can spy while still ignoring actual criminals.

They dont use their current power properly, they dont deserve ore.

Who said anything about spying - I specifically said 'if they have a warrant'

My FBI quote? I didn't quote the FBI. Of course I'm not advocating that they can just access anyone's device they want. And neither are they. The 4th Amendment specifically prohibits this, and no one is talking about getting rid of it. We're talking about people like Farook - the San Bernardino shooter. You think his phone should be protected AFTER he went on a shooting rampage and was killed!? The Las Vegas shooter had plans to kill a lot more people - and you think his devices should be protected - even if he's dead?

This comment would have had weight if not for the revelations of the FBI et. al. already having spied on folks without justification. Simple fact is that the constitution is ignored by these people on a routine basis. Moreover, you cannot guarantee the integrity of any agency into the future.

If they can't unlock phones because the encryption is solid, that's a good thing.

You want to stop terrorists?

Don't let them in the country to begin with. You'll note Japan hasn't had many problems dealing with jihadis on its home turf.
 
They're not gonna get hacked if they control the backdoor.
Again, there is no such thing as a "back door", only two doors. If the hackers can't "pick" the first one, they still have a second one to try. So from a practical standpoint it is less secure. But encryptions are generated using that actual keys themselves - a pair of two prime integers over 7 digits in length, one public and other private. But if you add a 'back door', you must create a second pair of prime numbers - with equal ability as the first to decrypt. So instead of just one data point (the public prime number) for hackers to work from, you've handed them two. The whole point of one of the prime numbers being hidden was so that hackers didn't have two data points to work backwards from when trying to brute force an encryption. So from a mathematics standpoint, it is even less secure now - almost to the point of being useless.

What the FBI wants isn't a 'backdoor', but a complete destruction of encryptions - and the sad part is, I'm not convinced they even understand this. I believe they've just watched too many hacker movies and think backdoors are just something you can deliberately program without mortally wounding the security.
 
When you believe the govt is the bad guy and people wanting to hide from the govt are the ones we should protect, it means you live so far up in your ivory tower that you can't see reality down on the ground anymore.............snip..............And don't believe anything Oliver Stone puts out. His JFK movie was completely about a 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll, a theory without evidence. I wouldn't believe anything he makes.
look at history, it's essentially a history of governments and their bad deeds. Of course there is more, but it is incredibly naïve to think that Big Brother is benign, even toward their own citizens. I'm concerned about any organization or 'power' that has the ability to step into your life and make it hell or over. This is an area I could write pages about....not only historical, but my own family
I don't want to protect people wanting to hide from the government, I want to ensure people, like the nice ones I meet everyday, are able to live a life free from arbitrary government intrusion.
Oliver Stone? People are busy, if you don't know the history, it's a good primer. It is historical events he describes, they are well documented elsewhere. I have no investment in Oliver Stone or his movies. It's just what that one is called and it is fairly accurate.

edit: FWIW I am not American and my country has an equally long history of dirty deeds done to its citizens
 
This comment would have had weight if not for the revelations of the FBI et. al. already having spied on folks without justification. Simple fact is that the constitution is ignored by these people on a routine basis. Moreover, you cannot guarantee the integrity of any agency into the future.

If they can't unlock phones because the encryption is solid, that's a good thing.

You want to stop terrorists?

Don't let them in the country to begin with. You'll note Japan hasn't had many problems dealing with jihadis on its home turf.

Syed Rizwan Farook (San Bernadino shooter) was born in Chicago. Stephen Paddock (LV Shooter) was born in Iowa. Both of them has plans to kill more people had they not been killed first by the police. And I don't see why it's a good thing that authorities would not be able to unlock their phones to possibly find messages to accomplices. Both of these men had a wife/girlfriend who is suspected of helping, and both had bombs that didn't go off.

these aren't hypothetical situations - this stuff already happened. And as much as it's great to say 'dont' let them in' the fact is they're already here.
 
This comment would have had weight if not for the revelations of the FBI et. al. already having spied on folks without justification. Simple fact is that the constitution is ignored by these people on a routine basis. Moreover, you cannot guarantee the integrity of any agency into the future.

If they can't unlock phones because the encryption is solid, that's a good thing.

You want to stop terrorists?

Don't let them in the country to begin with. You'll note Japan hasn't had many problems dealing with jihadis on its home turf.
I agree with you about the encryption and the government encroaching on our constitutional rights. Unfortunately, the man behind the curtain in your avatar is, IMO, right there with the rest of those in government encroaching and advocating encroachment on our constitutional rights.

But, I simply do not agree with your statement - "don't let them in to begin with".

The simple fact of the matter is that like persisting to find a back door to an encrypted system, terrorists will find a way to get in, and as we have noted from recent news items, the US already harbors terrorists without even knowing it. But I guess we are not calling the latest gun toting waco a terrorist - we are calling him someone who suffered from mental illness.

I cannot agree less with what is implied by "don't let them in to begin with" as it implies that all terrorists are external entities when the reality is that terrorists come from everywhere even unexpectedly. As I see it, your statement is the very definition of scapegoat/scapegoatism.
 
look at history, it's essentially a history of governments and their bad deeds. Of course there is more, but it is incredibly naïve to think that Big Brother is benign, even toward their own citizens. I'm concerned about any organization or 'power' that has the ability to step into your life and make it hell or over. This is an area I could write pages about....not only historical, but my own family
I don't want to protect people wanting to hide from the government, I want to ensure people, like the nice ones I meet everyday, are able to live a life free from arbitrary government intrusion.
Oliver Stone? People are busy, if you don't know the history, it's a good primer. It is historical events he describes, they are well documented elsewhere. I have no investment in Oliver Stone or his movies. It's just what that one is called and it is fairly accurate.

edit: FWIW I am not American and my country has an equally long history of dirty deeds done to its citizens
(y)
 
Syed Rizwan Farook (San Bernadino shooter) was born in Chicago. Stephen Paddock (LV Shooter) was born in Iowa. Both of them has plans to kill more people had they not been killed first by the police. And I don't see why it's a good thing that authorities would not be able to unlock their phones to possibly find messages to accomplices. Both of these men had a wife/girlfriend who is suspected of helping, and both had bombs that didn't go off.

these aren't hypothetical situations - this stuff already happened. And as much as it's great to say 'dont' let them in' the fact is they're already here.

If you have a 1,000 jihadis today, you don't continue letting them (them = people from the applicable regions and ideologies) in because "they're already here." You stop the influx and take care of the ones who've already made it in.

It's still unknonwn if Paddock was a jihadi, though indications are he may have been.

Farook was the son of Muslim immigrants (could be wrong on this one) from a terrorist hotbed who frequently visited said hotbed (Pakistan). You don't let his folks in, you never get San Bernadino.

More to the point, mandating a backdoor is at best a distraction if you are failing to deny entry. You can engineer all the backdoors you want, even if your backdoor is 99% effective at stopping further terrorism, it doesn't mean anything with regard to reducing instances of successful terrorist attacks if n continues to grow.

Engineering back doors because bad actors might take advantage of (or benefit from) strong encryption is trading freedom for security. Some might say, "but you aren't giving up anything because they need probable cause to use a backdoor." They ignore probable cause (as a layperson would understand it) on a routine basis. This has been documented.

Moreover, you'll recall that over the past year a number of classified government cyber weapons were leaked to the web.

So not only can the future integrity of the agencies who would have this power not be guaranteed, there isn't even a reasonable expectation that the backdoor itself would remain secure.
 
<...>Engineering back doors because bad actors might take advantage of (or benefit from) strong encryption is trading freedom for security. Some might say, "but you aren't giving up anything because they need probable cause to use a backdoor." They ignore probable cause (as a layperson would understand it) on a routine basis.<...>
Absolutely they ignore probably cause. In fact, there is a debate going on in congress right now that would make searching the data of Americans without a warrant completely legal - though the constitutionality of that is in question - as it should be IMO. This is what 45 and his partiers are doing.

Anyway, who cares if Paddock was a jihadi? As I see it, anyone without any actual affiliation to any cause can declare that they are a member of that cause and it is absolutely meaningless. What is, IMO, meaningful is the intention to do harm and the action he undertook to carry out that intention.

Even with the state of electronic surveillance such as it is in the US, he went unnoticed.

As I see it, there is significantly more mystery in Paddock and not much may ever be known about him because he kept very much to himself.

I think that your argument discounts the intelligence of people who would do harm to the US, and with public knowledge of anti-immigration programs, moles trained from a very early age by those knowledgeable in anti-terrorism tactics will be extremely hard to detect much like cold war moles.

In light of this, I see programs designed to keep out terrorists as little more than policies enacted by politicians that are designed to make their constituents feel good and give the impression those same politicians are doing something meaningful. These policies are a hassle at best and harassment at worst to peaceful people looking to improve their quality of life. To think that everyone who wants to immigrate to the US is a terrorist is delusional, IMO. The one thing that I see as needing the most attention in the US right now is infrastructure. Where is 45's attention to that? Where are his campaign promises to invest in US infrastructure? Instead, all government is continuing to do is point fingers and scapegoat which draws attention away from the fact they still are getting nothing meaningful done.

My apologies if you do not find what I have to say comforting. As I see it, until government sits down and figures out how to make fundamental changes that will make life better for everyone, nothing much will change as right now, me thinks government is treating the symptoms with little to no understanding of the cause.
 
.................snip................And I don't see why it's a good thing that authorities would not be able to unlock their phones to possibly find messages to accomplices........snip......
It's not a good thing, but sometimes things have unfortunate byproducts. When the upside outweighs the downside, we live with the consequences. This one is encryption vs. no encryption. The myth the government is propagating, that you can have encryption as long as the authorities have a backdoor is the no encryption option (as many have pointed out), with the smoke and mirrors removed that the gov't wants there to pass it by the regular citizen who just wants his **** to work and has no time for the details
 
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