The government isn't saying that no one should be able to encrypt data. They just thing that, in some cases, it should be done in such a way that certain data can be read by use of a centralized master key.
This, of course, presents certain problems. What if that master key leaks?
But it's not binary. Data secured this way is absolutely safer than not encrypting something at all. "Is it safe enough?" is certainly a question that people can disagree on.
The fundamental issue is that any back door accessible to "the good guys" will also be accessible to sufficiently-technically-advanced "bad guys". And from the perspective of securing the United States' defense infrastructure, major corporations, etc., there are multiple sufficiently-technically-advanced "bad guys" in the world already (i.e., certain major foreign governments and their intelligence/defense complexes).
So if you're doing US national security, you cannot accept the Obama position; any technology to which our "good guy" law enforcement could get access is guaranteed to also be a technology to which a "bad guy" foreign enemy combatant could similarly gain access.
If you're a major US corporation, you cannot accept the Obama position; any technology to which our "good guy" law enforcement could get access is guaranteed to also be a technology to which a "bad guy" foreign intelligence/espionage agent could similarly gain access.
So as far as that is concerned, it is binary. You can either be secure against foreign threats, in which case you are also as a side effect impenetrable to the local "good guys". Or you can be penetrable by the local "good guys" and also as a side effect penetrable by the foreign "bad guys".
The argument advanced against Obama's position is that A) it fundamentally fails to acknowledge this reality, and B) seems to argue for deliberately compromising national security in order to... preserve national security? In other words, it is not only unrealistic, it is in fact nonsensical and self-contradictory.
We're talking about iPhones here. Not the nuclear launch codes. Maybe you have information on your phone that KGB is interested in, but most people don't.
Again, security & encryption aren't binary. It isn't on or off. Different levels of protection are appropriate for different levels of threats. The lock on my mom's suburban house is a lot weaker than the lock on the vault holding the gold at Fort Knox.
Similarly the kind of security appropriate for consumer grade cell phones might be different than the kind appropriate for guarding US national security secrets.
Maybe you have information on your phone that KGB is interested in, but most people don't.
You have a very narrow view of what information is sensitive. Do you know how many Americans work either directly in, or in industries associated with, defense? How many of them use Apple products as part of their work?
Or let's take a more down-to-earth example: I work for a company in the health-care space. We have health records on thousands of people, and as we expand we'll have more health records on more people. With your approach, where should we draw the line? Would it be OK to use security bad enough that, say, an Eastern European organized-crime ring could break in? Or do we need to defend against them and not against the KGB? How do we figure out what level of tools to use to do that? How do we figure out whether what we have now will still be mafia-proof in five years?
Oh, and keep in mind that legally we have to protect that data, and improper access to it can not just shut down the company but send me and my co-workers to jail. How much would you be willing to compromise with that on the line? If the potential consequences to you were jail time, how much on the side of Obama and the FBI would you be? How much risk of that would you take on in order to make law enforcement's life a little bit easier?
And in case you think this is a red herring, remember the San Bernardino shooter... worked for a public-health department.
If I can gain access to your customer's data by gaining access to a cell phone owned by one of your employees then you are doing something deeply, deeply wrong.
The fact that it's an iPhone in the San Bernardino case is kind of a red herring; the precedent it would set is not "iPhones and only iPhones and not any other type of computing device are subject to law enforcement unlocking". The precedent it would set is that any encrypted system must be built to be decrypted on demand by law enforcement.
And that gets back to my original comment: a system the "good guys" can decrypt is one the "bad guys" will be able to decrypt too.
Slippery slope arguments are lame when they start to go like this.
Like, I get you. By allowing X which might actually be OK, we might allow X+1 to happen and that wouldn't be OK. So we must oppose X as a practical matter.
I get the practicality of that.
But when you start opposing X as a matter of principle rather than simply as a matter of practicality that's when you've gone off the rails.
Well, for one thing it's not even a slippery slope. They want to unlock his work-issued phone, not his personal phone, and the FBI admits they have, and other law-enforcement agencies admit they have, an almighty queue of other things they'd like to get force-unlocked if they can only get precedent claiming that companies do indeed have to circumvent their own products on demand.
And you presume that compromising the iPhones belonging to the men and women who do control the nuclear launch codes wouldn't serve to compromise everything they control, by extension? Either by using the data as a lever against the people, or directly snooping, this would be a very powerful opening, and your position seems to defy all common sense.
Yes he did use it for a reason. He used it to make it seem perverse that you would want your information on your phone to be secure. Hes is trying, once again, to put forth the governments position that if you're not trying to hide something, you have nothing to fear.
And quite frankly, yes, I do hold the security and privacy of data as more important than the terrorism song and dance the government is playing. And I do hold that view absolutely.
Plus, any key that the government can use without your permission, they can illegally abuse. And if there's one thing we've seen proven recently, it's that such abuse will occur.
It's worth noting that in this case we're only talking about keys that are useful to someone in physical possession of a phone. So as long as I retain physical possession of my phone no one can get at it, keys or not.
wow, when you put it that way it's like saying "either I have the right to own a gun or I do not." So I guess if people except limits on gun ownership they should accept limits on encryption cuz it's just as dangerous?
Actually no. What I'm saying is that you do have the right to own a gun, but there are limits on gun ownership.
* Minors cannot buy guns.
* Convicted felons cannot buy guns in most circumstances.
* There are numerous locations in which it is illegal to bring a gun.
* There are numerous types of guns that you are not allowed to own.
To me personally the concept of even owning a gun is utterly ridiculous, but I guess American people would be incredibly upset if every gun had to come with a built-in remotely controlled switch that could be used by the police to disable it. This is essentially what they are trying to do with encryption - you are free to use it, but we want to be able to manually switch it off if we want to.
Encryption is a measure that prevents unauthorized parties from taking part of what is encrypted. If it fails that on such a basic level that a specific unauthorized party can trivially access it, it's not effective encryption. Whether or not it is effective, then, is just a matter of whether you agree that who ever holds the master key is authorized to access whatever it is that you encrypted.
It's still not broken in any technical sense, but if I don't want a third party to read my data and they are still able to do so, it's a stretch to call it encryption.
I don't think that's true at all. If you use gmail your data is pretty safe. Unless you tell me your password I'm going to have a pretty hard time reading your mail. It's encrypted at rest on Google's disks. It's encrypted in transmission over the internet. Google's network is protected with various forms of encryption and security that makes it hard for an unauthorized party to get into.
But Google itself can access and read your email. It does so in an automated fashion to target ads at you.
Sure there is. We have a system of laws and courts that define the contract.
And besides, the existence of a contract or not isn't really my point. My point was that encryption isn't an all or nothing situation. You don't either have completely ironclad security where you and only you can access your data or nothing at all.
There are degrees of technical protection. That was my point. The black and white thinking about this issue is wrong.
> Sure there is. We have a system of laws and courts that define the contract.
Isn't the point of discussing this that you actually don't have anything that defines that contract? In terms of the fourth amendment, it seems like there is quite the opposite contract in place already. Also, as an Apple product user outside the U.S., this supposed contract is not something that I ever agreed to.
> And besides, the existence of a contract or not isn't really my point. My point was that encryption isn't an all or nothing situation. You don't either have completely ironclad security where you and only you can access your data or nothing at all.
It is an all or nothing situation. That there is only one unauthorized party able to intercept my data using a back door doesn't change the fact that there is an unauthorized party able to intercept my data using a back door. Whether that is practical for you or not, again, depends on whether you consider the third back-dooring third party authorized.
> There are degrees of technical protection.
I think that maybe the discussion here comes from the fact that you are indeed talking about "technical protection" in general and not encryption specifically. The point of encryption is that only eligible parties can decode the data. If others can decode the data it's not really encrypted, as a matter of definition.
For example, using Google as a mail provider may prove to be poor "technical protection", but the data is encrypted and the authorized parties are part of the terms of service. That the U.S. government can decode my encrypted data without permission may prove to be practical "technical protection", but in terms of encryption it really is a boolean situation.
There's no award for effort. Apple built a cryptosystem that doesn't work against an adversary that is Apple. "Encrypting" isn't some magical property that makes your data safe. The encryption itself is just one aspect of a whole system that must be designed to protect against certain adversaries with certain capabilities. The government would be totally allowed, for example, to tamper with your wax seals if it had a warrant to read your mail.
I lied, there is an award for effort. Wherever you have an "reasonable expectation of privacy", the government must get a warrant or your permission to exercise its search and seizure authority. That's the protection that you're entitled to by our laws.
Even the EFF is acknowledging the weakness of your argument when they try to frame it as an issue about Apple's free speech instead.
The government isn't saying that no one should be able to encrypt data. They just thing that, in some cases, it should be done in such a way that certain data can be read by use of a centralized master key.
This, of course, presents certain problems. What if that master key leaks?
But it's not binary. Data secured this way is absolutely safer than not encrypting something at all. "Is it safe enough?" is certainly a question that people can disagree on.
It's not binary.