William Barr gave a talk today at Fordham, on “going dark” and the need for encryption backdoors. A lot of this is old hat. The surprising thing is that it was the only subject of the talk: it seems like the Trump administration is serious about this. (Thread).
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2. The talk follows the typical pattern of asserting that the Fourth Amendment actually requires encryption backdoors. I’m no lawyer, but this is a hell of a legal theory. I just want to flag that one and move on to the technical.
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3. Barr cites Mexican cartels as using WhatsApp groups, and then notes that law enforcement is unable to penetrate these groups. This is a bit surprising to me, since WhatsApp group management is one of the weakest areas of the system.
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4. What’s really fascinating about this speech is how frankly the Trump administration has moved away from “we just want to access your encrypted phone” to making it clear that communications (text messages) etc. are the real goal.
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5. I have to quote this one because it’s unreal: “For example, providers design their products to allow access for software updates using centrally managed security keys. We know of no instance where encryption has been defeated by compromise of those provider-maintained keys.”
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6. Is the US Attorney General saying that his department knows of no instance where software update/signing keys were stolen? This is crazy. I can think of one: Stuxnet. But that’s hardly the last one.
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Perhaps a better example would be the SecurID seed data leak?
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