Sen. Grassley Asks DOJ To Get Back To Pushing James Comey's Mandatory Encryption Backdoors Plan

from the damn-this-administration's-showy-shrugs-over-encryption! dept

Thu, Oct 15th 2015 10:40am — Tim Cushing

It's hard to figure out just where Sen. Charles Grassley stands in terms of his assessment of the FBI's trustworthiness. Grassley demanded the FBI answer questions on its presumably warrantless use of Stingray devices. He also called it out for refusing to update Congress on the status of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.

But now that the debate over encryption and "going dark" seems to have come to a halt, Grassley is now encouraging the DOJ to take up FBI Director James Comey's lead and find a legislative "solution" to the supposed encryption problem.

FBI Director James Comey appears to have conceded defeat when it comes to legislation to require communications companies to make encrypted communications available to law enforcement on the basis of a search warrant. But Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley is not having it.

"I believe that the administration should use every lawful tool at its disposal and vigorously investigate each and every potential solution to this serious problem," wrote Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in an Oct. 8 letter to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

The letter points to some recent press coverage that suggests the administration has walked away from seeking mandatory backdoors to the encryption provided by Apple and Google. Apparently, a few "technically feasible solutions" have been put together by a "working group" but have not been discussed or otherwise made public. Grassley wants to know what these are and why the DOJ isn't pursuing these options.

I believe that the Administration should use every lawful tool at its disposal and vigorously investigate each and every potential solution to this serious problem, as your testimony before the Committee implied it would.

Grassley then goes on to cite efforts being made by the UK and France, as if the broad wording and overreach of their anti-terrorism proposals were something to be admired and emulated.

Moreover, countries like Great Britain and France are much further along in their national dialogues on how best to balance privacy and public safety with regard to and are currently contemplating specific legislative proposals to address the threat posed by widespread inviolable encryption.

Yes, but the "national dialogue" these countries are engaging in only includes pro-surveillance administrations and the intelligence agencies that stand to benefit from expanded powers and the increased budgets that come with them. The other stakeholders -- the citizens of these countries -- have been cut out of the discussion. Even in Comey's own words, the "threat" posed seems manageable ("dozens") and other evidence out there suggests encryption is rarely a problem for law enforcement or intelligence agencies, who have other ways of obtaining data and communications that do not require attacking encryption head-on.

Grassley appears to believe a legislative solution is the best approach. While this administration has demurred, another administration is on its way in little more than a year -- one that could take advantage of Congressional majorities to push through mandated encryption backdoors.

2015 10 08 CEG to DOJ (Data Encryption) (PDF)2015 10 08 CEG to DOJ (Data Encryption) (Text)

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Filed Under: backdoors, chuck grassley, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, james comey

24 Comments

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Violynne (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:40am

"I believe that the administration should use every lawful tool at its disposal and vigorously investigate each and every potential solution to this serious problem," wrote Grassley.

Waste of taxpayer dollars. The DoJ has been told many times what the solution is, but they seem to be tone deaf to the answer.

I'll repeat it here, on the chance Grassley reads the site: The solution to back door encryption is to keep the fucking door closed.

The solution provided at no expense to the taxpayers.

You're welcome.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:49am

Just because you make a law about it, doesn't mean it's any more secured. You can't make a law about the skies being red and expect it to change because you don't like the color.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:53am

Actually this seems like the old adage "Cutting off your nose to spite your face."
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:53am

Add this guy to the Idiot Brigade list.
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Whoever, 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:54am

Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
that defined Pi as exactly 3 or some other rational number.

This is no different. It is an attempt to legislate a mathematical impossibility.
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Whoever, 15 Oct 2015 @ 10:55am

Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
I should add:

King Canute would be proud.
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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:01am

Stop using encryption.
No Sir, we no longer use encryption, so you don't need a backdoor.

We just use obfuscation in the form of a mathematical formula applied to the data to enhance its opaque characteristics during traversal of the internet backbone and last-mile carrier routes for the safety of our users binary encoded traffic.

"Oh, Okay"
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:08am

Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
Does anyone remember how that never actually happened?
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:11am

Re: Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
King Canute? I assume you're referring to the guy who got so sick of his court's excessive flattery regarding his power as king that he brought them to the shore and commanded the tide to turn back so that he could laugh in their faces when such an obviously impossible thing ended up not happening, right?

So far you're 0 for 2. Care to try a third?
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Capt ICE Enforcer, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:19am

Thirsty
Well, I now know which senator likes to drink the Kool-aid. Have another sip.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:31am

wouldnt breaking encryption, without a law making it legal, technically be a crime under the CFAA?
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:32am

Re:
Isn't that the purpose of rose colored glasses?
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:38am

Re: Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
Indiana came closer than did Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
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David, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:38am

If US encryption has back doors...
Then only US people will (be forced to) use that encryption. Others, like terrorists, will continue to use illegal but non-backdoored encryption.

Additionally, no other country will purchase any US compliant security/encryption enabled equipment (Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, etc) due to the US having the backdoor to all their data.

So let's just bring it on and kill the US tech industry. You're worried about tech jobs moving overseas? That will do it.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:41am

Re: Re: Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
...which the Snopes article mentions. The bill never passed, though.
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Peter (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 12:01pm

Successess?
Not just the intelligence agencies, all Law enforcement agencies have been given unprecedented powers over the last decade. They can track and listen like never before, they can confiscate and raid without even a warrant in many cases, and even tend to get away unscarred if they 'accidentally' kill someone. If they set their mind to take someone out of circulation, there are very few legal hurdles left to protect the suspect.

How have these powers affected crime rates?
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 12:11pm

"the threat posed by widespread inviolable encryption"

This is what they fear; that people use their right to privacy to fight corrupt and unjust governments.
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JoeCool (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 1:25pm

Re: Successess?
They're down. The only crimes that are up are the artificial ones meant to fill the private-run prisons... the War of Drugs, the War on Terror, etc.

But the rates are down DESPITE the excesses of LEO, not because of them.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 5:49pm

Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
That's actually a simplification of the actual pi-law story.

On the other hand, tomatoes are officially vegetables for some purposes (tariffs on imports), which is the pretense by which ketchup and later pizza became vegetables for other purposes (acceptable school lunches).
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 6:13pm

Re: Re: Does anyone remember that some states passed laws ...
To be fair to tomatoes, whilst they are a fruit, in the scientific sense, there is no real scientific basis to what defines a vegetable - an arbitrary term used to describe a savoury edible plant. Tomatoes, for all their biological fruitiness are nothing, if not, savoury.
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That One Guy (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 7:07pm

Re:
Clearly you're not a politician, who do in fact believe that you can change reality just by passing the right bill, and if the first bill fails to do the job, pass more bills!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 7:12pm

I was with them as far as the imports thing
Since tomatoes are eaten (generally) with other saladstuffs, I understand why they might deserve more to be treated as other salad and dinner-type vegetables.

But yeah, at the point that we're using that as justification to define ketchup and pizza as the vegetable part of a student-child's allegedly square lunchtime meal, we're getting into the gray-zone of defining something as nutritious by fiat

Which serves as better example than the few pi-related laws at commanding nature through legislature. Food gets a lot of it, since things are often approved to be nutritious, edible and harmless before we have any facts to determine otherwise.

I do remember at one point we were discussing simplifying Pi to 3 in the aughts for classroom purposes, for the sake of improving math scores. I think it got shot down before it became a bill.
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Pixelation, 15 Oct 2015 @ 9:47pm

Assley
...pretty much sums it up.
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DigDug, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:25pm

Do the world a favor
Contact him. http://www.grassley.senate.gov/contact

Enlighten him about this topic. Keep it calm, and accurate. You might be surprised.

I used the DVD / BluRay encryption wars as a solid example of the uselessness of encryption with predefined decryption keys or with a master key by which all other keys are generated and files decrypted.

Every time they (the MPAA) modify the encryption of their movies, it's only a matter of days or even hours before it's broken and openly available for decryption.
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