There Is No 'Going Dark' Problem

from the to-make-investigative-omelets,-you've-got-to-crack-a-few-phones dept

Former FBI Director James Comey made plenty of headlines with his insistence cellphone encryption would be the end of law enforcement as we know it. Comey's assertions made it seem as though regular police investigative work was no longer of any use and that any and all evidence pertinent to cases resided behind cellphone passcodes.

He insisted the problem would only get worse in the future. If not put to an end by legislated backdoors or smart tech guys coding up "safe" holes in device encryption, we may as well accept the fact that no criminal committing more than a moving violation would ever be brought to justice.

Default encryption does pose a problem for law enforcement, but it's nowhere near as insurmountable as Comey has portrayed it. Multiple FOIA requests handled through MuckRock have shown law enforcement still has several phone-cracking options at its disposal and doesn't seem to be having many problems recovering evidence.

This is superbly illustrated in documents obtained from the Tulsa and Tuscon (AZ) Police Departments by Curtis Waltman. Tuscon PD documents [PDF] show law enforcement officers are using tools crafted by the same company that provided the hack to the FBI in the San Bernardino case, among several other options. But the real motherlode is the Tulsa PD's log of cracked phones.

The kicker really is how often these are being used - it is simply really hard to believe that out of the 783 times Tulsa Police used their extraction devices, all were for crimes in which it was necessary to look at all of the phone’s data… There are some days where the devices were used multiple times - Tulsa used theirs eight times on February 28th of this year, eight again on April 3rd, and a whopping 14 times on May 10th 2016. That is a whole lot of data that Tulsa was able to tap into, and we aren’t even able to understand the why.

The document contains page after page of cracked phones, ranging from Samsungs to HTCs to LGs… even iPhones (5 and 6). "Going dark" remains a Comey fairy tale, for the most part, if these documents are anything to go by.

And there's apparently very few rules for deployment of cellphone-cracking devices. Only one PD in Arizona returned any guidelines in response to requests and those rules basically state there are no rules. The Mesa PD's Computer Forensic Unit makes the most of its limited resources by limiting its work to… any crime at all.

This is the list of criminal activity the unit provides forensic work for, listed in order of priority.

Homicide
Sexual Assault
Child Crimes (which I assume means "crimes against children," rather than crimes committed BY children)
Aggravated Assault/Robbery
Property Crimes
All other felonies
All misdemeanors

Everything. That would explain the number of cellphones accessed by these PDs. Presumably other PDs are also operating under very loose guidance or none at all.

This sort of intrusiveness should be limited to serious felonies and investigations where it's plainly apparent the best route to evidence runs through the suspect's cellphone. Otherwise, law enforcement agencies are just using these tools because they have them, not because they necessarily need them.

Filed Under: data extraction, encryption, fbi, going dark, jim comey, law enforcement

Despite Stream Of Leaks Exposing Tremendous Gov't Surveillance Capabilities, James Comey Still Complaining About 'Going Dark'

from the really-just-working-with-a-single-talking-point-these-days dept

Following the Shadow Brokers' partial dumping of NSA exploits, a new batch of CIA exploits has hit the web via Wikileaks. Contained inside both sets of leaks was information explaining why encryption isn't much of a problem for the intelligence community. The NSA has put plenty of time and money into breaking encryption, but much of its Tailored Access Operations -- much like the contents of the CIA dump -- involve access efforts that bypass encryption completely by making themselves at home on the targeted hardware/device.

Despite these leaks, FBI Director James Comey is still insisting encryption is a problem. In his recent appearance at Boston College's cybersecurity conference, Comey had this to say:

[C]omey said that he a fan of "strong encryption" but noted that "it is making more and more of the room of what the FBI investigates dark."

Between September and November, the FBI received 2,800 devices it had lawful authority to open but could not open 1,200 of them "with any technique," he said.

Comey (again) called for "balance," a term he never bothers to define, but hints heavily at private companies being made to play by his rules, rather than offering any form of compromise from his end.

And it's partially true: devices seized after an arrest can't be forced open by exploits. The exploits need to be present on the devices first. But investigations always precede arrests. At this point, efforts can be made to target known devices to provide access during the investigation and prevent them from being locked up once they're seized. The legal framework, unfortunately, doesn't really exist at this point, but a lack of specific permission has never stopped the FBI from acting first and litigating later.

The FBI also has expanded access to the NSA's full-take surveillance programs, thanks to the recent lifting of restrictions. Nearly every phone utilizes the internet in some way, which would expose data and communications to the NSA's taps. This won't capture everything stored on devices, but it's far more info than the FBI would have otherwise. Comey's repeated complaints about "going dark" make less and less sense every time a new surveillance secret leaks.

Every new surveillance leak points to another disturbing fact: the FBI's promises of security and safety -- in reference to courtroom requests for "technical assistance" from device manufacturers -- are bullshit. If the NSA and CIA can't keep their exploits out of the public's hands, there's zero chance the FBI would somehow keep leakers and/or criminals from obtaining its cell phone-cracking secrets. The only balance that can be achieved by undermining device encryption is one where everyone loses.

Filed Under: cia, encryption, fbi, going dark, jim comey, leaks, surveillance

Our Founding Fathers Used Encryption... And So Should You

from the encrypt-all-the-things dept

While the FBI has apparently given up on trying to get a law passed to backdoor encryption, the ridiculous debate over "going dark" continues. Thankfully, at least some more knowledgeable folks in the government have been speaking up more loudly over the past few months. Just last week, the government's Chief Information Officer, Tony Scott, came out against backdooring encryption:

On this debate, CIO Scott is clear: “I think in the long run we are probably not well served by backdoors to encryption and in general we end up benefiting as a society by having very strong non-hackable encryption,” he said. “And I say that knowing that it will present some challenges for law enforcement and investigative agencies.”

And, now Seth Schoen and Jamie Williams, over at EFF, have put together a nice bit of history, showing how the US's founding fathers frequently used encryption themselves. Obviously it was a much earlier version of it, but it seems rather clear that the founding fathers would likely be big supporters of encryption if they were alive today.

• James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights and the country’s fourth president, was a big user of enciphered communications—and numerous examples from his correspondence demonstrate that. The text of one letter from Madison to Joseph Jones, a member of the Continental Congress from Virginia, dated May 2, 1782, was almost completely encrypted via cipher. And on May 27, 1789, Madison sent a partially encrypted letter to Thomas Jefferson describing his plan to introduce a Bill of Rights.

• Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the country’s third president, is known to be one of the most prolific users of secret communications methods. He even invented his own cipher system—the “wheel cypher” as named by Jefferson or the “Jefferson disk” as it is now commonly referred. He also presented a special cipher to Meriwether Lewis for use in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

• Benjamin Franklin invented ciphers used by the Continental Congress and in 1748, years before the American Revolution, published a book on encryption written by George Fisher, The American Instructor.

• George Washington, the first president of the United States, frequently dealt with encryption and espionage issues as the commander of the Continental Army. He is known to have given his intelligence officers detailed instructions on methods for maintaining the secrecy of messages and for using decryption to uncover British spies.

• John Adams, the second U.S. president, used a cipher provided by James Lovell—a member of the Continental Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs and an early advocate of cipher systems—for correspondence with his wife, Abigail Adams, while traveling.

• John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, used ciphers for all diplomatic correspondence made while outside the United States. And John Jay’s brother, Sir James Jay, invited a special invisible ink, also known as sympathetic ink, and sent a supply from London to both his brother and then-General Washington.

If it was good enough for them... it's pretty ridiculous that we're still having this debate now. As I've mentioned in the past, I've heard from a few different folks who have insisted that there are bills sitting in drawers ready to go to "ban encryption" (not just backdoor it), and that's so ridiculous in a world where encryption is used all the time and is a key driver of how we all live. But it's even more ridiculous when you understand how often it's been used throughout history.

Filed Under: encryption, found fathers, james madison, jim comey, thomas jefferson

Washington Post Publishes... And Then Unpublishes... Opinion Piece By Ex-Intelligence Industry Brass, In Favor Of Strong Encryption

from the what-happened? dept

Update: And... the article has been republished at the Washington Post's site with a note claiming that it was accidentally published without fully going through its editing process. Extra points if anyone can spot anything that's changed...

Earlier this week, we noted with some surprise that both former DHS boss Michael Chertoff and former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden had come out against backdooring encryption, with both noting (rightly) that it would lead to more harm than good, no matter what FBI boss Jim Comey had to say. Chertoff's spoken argument was particularly good, detailing all of the reasons why backdooring encryption is just a really bad idea. Last night, Chertoff, along with former NSA boss Mike McConnell and former deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, published an opinion piece at the Washington Post, doubling down on why more encryption is a good thing and backdooring encryption is a bad thing.

Yes, the very same Washington Post that has flat out ignored all of the technical expertise on the subject and called for a "golden key" that would let the intelligence community into our communications. Not only that, but after being mocked all around for its original editorial on this piece, it came back and did it again.

Of course, you may note that I have not linked to this piece by Chertoff, McConnell and Lynn at the Washington Post... and that's because it's gone. If you go there now you get oddly forwarded to a 2013 story (as per the rerouted URL), with a 2010 dateline, claiming that "this file was inadvertently published." Of course, this is the internet, and the internet never forgets. A cached version of the story can be found online. The title really says it all: Why the fear over ubiquitous data encryption is overblown. Of course, technical experts have been saying that for decades, but it's nice to see the intelligence community finally coming around to this. And here's a snippet of what was said in the article before it disappeared.

We recognize the importance our officials attach to being able to decrypt a coded communication under a warrant or similar legal authority. But the issue that has not been addressed is the competing priorities that support the companies’ resistance to building in a back door or duplicated key for decryption. We believe that the greater public good is a secure communications infrastructure protected by ubiquitous encryption at the device, server and enterprise level without building in means for government monitoring.

First, such an encryption system would protect individual privacy and business information from exploitation at a much higher level than exists today. As a recent MIT paper explains, requiring duplicate keys introduces vulnerabilities in encryption that raise the risk of compromise and theft by bad actors. If third-party key holders have less than perfect security, they may be hacked and the duplicate key exposed. This is no theoretical possibility, as evidenced by major cyberintrusions into supposedly secure government databases and the successful compromise of security tokens held by the security firm RSA. Furthermore, requiring a duplicate key rules out security techniques, such as one-time-only private keys.

The op-ed also points out that "smart bad guys" will still figure out plenty of ways to use encryption anyway and all we're really doing is weakening security for everyone else. And, of course, it raises the fact that if the US demands such access, so will China and other companies.

Strategically, the interests of U.S. businesses are essential to protecting U.S. national security interests. After all, political power and military power are derived from economic strength. If the United States is to maintain its global role and influence, protecting business interests from massive economic espionage is essential. And that imperative may outweigh the tactical benefit of making encrypted communications more easily accessible to Western authorities.

These are the same basic arguments that experts have been making for quite some time now. What's also interesting is that the three former government officials also point out that the "threat" of "going dark" is totally overblown anyway. It raises the original crypto wars and the fight over the Clipper Chip, and notes that when that effort failed, "the sky did not fall, and we did not go dark and deaf."

But the sky did not fall, and we did not go dark and deaf. Law enforcement and intelligence officials simply had to face a new future. As witnesses to that new future, we can attest that our security agencies were able to protect national security interests to an even greater extent in the ’90s and into the new century.

This is an important bit of input into this debate, and one hopes that the Washington Post only "unpublished" it because it forgot to correct some grammar or something along those lines. Hopefully it is republished soon -- but even if it was published briefly, this kind of statement could be a necessary turning point, so that hopefully we can avoid having to waste any further effort on the wasteful idiocy of a second crypto war.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, going dark, james comey, jim comey, michael chertoff, michael mcconnell, mobile encryption, william lynn
Companies: washington post

Both Michael Hayden And Michael Chertoff Surprise Everyone By Saying FBI Is Wrong To Try To Backdoor Encryption

from the going-dark? dept

Well, here's one we did not see coming at all. Both former Homeland Security boss Michael Chertoff and former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden have said that they actually disagree with current FBI director Jim Comey about his continued demands to backdoor encryption. Given everything we've seen in the past from both Chertoff and Hayden, it would have been a lot more expected to see them both toe the standard authoritarian surveillance state line and ask for more powers to spy on people. At the Aspen Security Forum, however, both surprised people by going the other way. Marcey Wheeler was the first to highlight Chertoff's surprising take:

I think that it’s a mistake to require companies that are making hardware and software to build a duplicate key or a back door even if you hedge it with the notion that there’s going to be a court order. And I say that for a number of reasons and I’ve given it quite a bit of thought and I’m working with some companies in this area too.

First of all, there is, when you do require a duplicate key or some other form of back door, there is an increased risk and increased vulnerability. You can manage that to some extent. But it does prevent you from certain kinds of encryption. So you’re basically making things less secure for ordinary people.

The second thing is that the really bad people are going to find apps and tools that are going to allow them to encrypt everything without a back door. These apps are multiplying all the time. The idea that you’re going to be able to stop this, particularly given the global environment, I think is a pipe dream. So what would wind up happening is people who are legitimate actors will be taking somewhat less secure communications and the bad guys will still not be able to be decrypted.

The third thing is that what are we going to tell other countries? When other countries say great, we want to have a duplicate key too, with Beijing or in Moscow or someplace else? The companies are not going to have a principled basis to refuse to do that. So that’s going to be a strategic problem for us.

He's right on all accounts, and does an astoundingly good job summarizing all of the reasons that many experts have been screaming about ever since Comey first started whining about this bogus "going dark" claim. But then he goes even further and makes an even more important point that bears repeating: it's not supposed to be easy for law enforcement to spy on people, because that has serious risks:

Finally, I guess I have a couple of overarching comments. One is we do not historically organize our society to make it maximally easy for law enforcement, even with court orders, to get information. We often make trade-offs and we make it more difficult. If that were not the case then why wouldn’t the government simply say all of these [takes out phone] have to be configured so they’re constantly recording everything that we say and do and then when you get a court order it gets turned over and we wind up convicting ourselves. So I don’t think socially we do that.

On top of that, he points out, as we and many others have, that even if you can't figure out what's in an encrypted message it does not mean you've really "gone dark." There are other ways to figure out the necessary information, and people always leave some other clues:

And I also think that experience shows we’re not quite as dark, sometimes, as we fear we are. In the 90s there was a deb — when encryption first became a big deal — debate about a Clipper Chip that would be embedded in devices or whatever your communications equipment was to allow court ordered interception. Congress ultimately and the President did not agree to that. And, from talking to people in the community afterwards, you know what? We collected more than ever. We found ways to deal with that issue.

Soon after that, at the same conference, Hayden spoke to the Daily Beast and more or less agreed (it is worth noting that Hayden works for Chertoff at the Chertoff Group these days). Hayden's denunciation of Comey's plan is not so detailed or thought out, and he admits he hopes that there is a magic golden key that's possible, but recognizing it's probably not, he thinks the damage may be too much:

“I hope Comey’s right, and there’s a deus ex machina that comes on stage in the fifth act and makes the problem go away,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and the NSA, told The Daily Beast. “If there isn’t, I think I come down on the side of industry. The downsides of a front or back door outweigh the very real public safety concerns.”

As the Daily Beast notes, this is -- to some extent -- a roll reversal between Hayden and Comey who famously clashed over Hayden's original warrantless wiretapping program after 9/11, with Comey actually arguing against some of the program (though what he argued against wasn't as complete as some believe). Still, it's quite amazing to see both Chertoff and Hayden point out what the tech sector has been telling Comey for months (decades if you go back to the original "crypto wars.") This isn't a question about "not wanting to do the work" but about the fact that any solution is inherently much more dangerous for the public.

Filed Under: encryption, going dark, james comey, jim comey, michael chertoff, michael hayden, mobile encryption

FBI: Bring Us A Unicorn. Techies: They Don't Exist. Senator: Stop Complaining & Tell Us Where The Unicorn Is

from the wait...-what? dept

We've already discussed the ridiculousness of yesterday's Senate hearings with Jim Comey on "going dark" and the desire to backdoor encryption. But one thing that came out in the discussions that deserves further scrutiny is the fact that Comey repeatedly admitted that he had no proposed solution to the question of how to do this. He admits that computer scientists say it's not possible, but he insists it's because they're "not trying hard enough" to figure it out. And whenever Senators suggested different possible legislative fixes, Comey would sort of throw up his hands and say "well, we're not making any proposals here, we just want a conversation."

And there's a good reason for this, which was actually admitted after the hearings by former NSA top lawyer (and proud Techdirt disliker) Stewart Baker (who recently argued that Blackberry failed because it had too much encryption) when he went on PBS Newshour to say that the government won't put forth a proposal, knowing that it will immediately get shot full of holes by actual experts. In the segment, Susan Landau, one of the experts who has explained why this whole idea is stupid and won't work, points out that there are no proposals being put forth because it's impossible to actually do this in a way that doesn't create massive problems:

SUSAN LANDAU: The issue is that the government is saying exceptional access, without explaining how they want this done, and all security matters in the details.

And, immediately, Baker shoots back the admission that no one else has been willing to make that, of course the government won't come up with a plan, because then all the experts can give details for why that plan would be a disaster:

STEWART BAKER: So, I think one of the things that's clear is the government isn’t trying to say this is exactly how we want you to do it, because I’m sure that Susan Landau would be saying, well, that won’t work and we have got these objections to being told how to do it.

The amazing thing is that Baker doesn't even seem to realize what he's admitting, as he then immediately shifts to saying that the government just wants the industry to solve this problem. But the whole point is that there is no solution that doesn't make lots of other things much worse.

The fact that the government refuses to put forth any solution should be seen as a massive problem. But, incredibly, during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, Senator Barbara Mikulski blamed privacy advocates for not offering up a solution to the impossible (starting around the 58 minute mark).

In our briefing materials I read letters from the ACLU, whose views we so value, the Software Alliance, and I saw a lot of criticism of what we're pursuing here for some type of opportunity to not go dark. But I didn't see any solutions. I saw a lot of criticisms. I saw a lot of critiques. But I didn't see solutions. Now I believe, as Senator Heinrich said and others, we have tremendous technical know-how, and I believe that the people in Silicon Valley are indeed very patriotic people, and they don't want drug dealers and international traffickers and child pornographers to be able to get away with nefarious things. So, if we could perhaps actually get from those as well as the civil liberties community how we could start working to a solution that would actually be great.

This is the point at which you should be banging your head on whatever wall or desk is closest. All of those patriotic folks in Silicon Valley have been going into great detail about how there is no good way to backdoor encryption, highlighting many explanations of how it actually makes online security much, much worse. To then say that the people pointing out how there are no good solutions should be the ones responsible for offering up a solution, rather than the government, which is insisting that something must be done, is ridiculous.

It takes quite an incredible train of thought to argue that the people telling you that magic fairy dust doesn't exist need to be the ones to tell you how to make magic fairy dust, rather than the naive folks who believe in magic fairy dust. And yet, that's exactly what Senator Mikulski did. And that's because, as Stewart Baker rightfully points out, if the government actually produced a plan for magic fairy dust, actual experts would quickly point out that it's not magical fairy dust, and actually makes people ill.

How is it that these people are in positions of power and influence?

Filed Under: aclue, barbara mikulski, details, encryption, jim comey, proposals, security, stewart baker, susan laundau

President Obama Complains To China About Demanding Backdoors To Encryption... As His Administration Demands The Same Thing

from the irony dept

Back in January, we pointed out that just after US and EU law enforcement officials started freaking out about mobile encryption and demanding backdoors, that China was also saying that it wanted to require backdoors for itself in encrypted products. Now, President Obama claims he's upset about this, saying that he's spoken directly with China's President Xi Jinping about it:

In an interview with Reuters, Obama said he was concerned about Beijing's plans for a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys, the passcodes that help protect data, and install security "backdoors" in their systems to give Chinese authorities surveillance access.

"This is something that I’ve raised directly with President Xi," Obama said. "We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States."

This comes right after the US Trade Rep Michael Froman issued a statement criticizing China for doing the same damn thing that the US DOJ is arguing the US should be doing:

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the banking rules, saying they "are not about security – they are about protectionism and favoring Chinese companies".

"The Administration is aggressively working to have China walk back from these troubling regulations," Froman said.

Those claims would sound a hell of a lot stronger if they weren't coming immediately after DOJ officials from Attorney General Eric Holder to FBI Director James Comey had more or less argued for the exact same thing.

Just last week, Yahoo's chief security officer Alex Stamos raised this exact issue with NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers, asking if Rogers thinks it's appropriate for tech companies to build backdoors for other countries if they build them for the US. Rogers ignored the question, just saying "I think we can work our way through this," which is not an answer. And now we're "working our way through this" by having to deal with other countries, such as China, leaping at this opportunity.

And the week before, President Obama himself claimed that he was all for strong encryption, but argued that there were tradeoffs worth discussing, and that some in his administration believed that demanding backdoors made sense to try to stop terrorist attacks. But it's tough to see how he can claim that it's okay to entertain those ideas on the one hand, while using the other hand to try to slap China for doing the exact same thing.

As security researcher Matthew Green rightly points out, "someday, US officials will look back and realize how much global damage they've enabled with their silly requests for key escrow." But that day is apparently not today. The administration keeps bleating on and on about how China is a massive cybersecurity "threat" out there, and then hands the country this massive gift by having a kneejerk reaction to better encryption that protects American citizens.

Filed Under: backdoors, china, encryption, eric holder, jim comey, michael froman, president obama, xi jinping
Companies: apple, google