FBI director says companies should ditch encryption

I interpret his words to talk specifically about people who choose not to add their own crypto layer on top of the OS / provider product layer. "opt-in" could mean the provider makes it available to the user, or (IMHO more likely) it could mean the average Joe that is unfamiliar with setting up a secure communication channel on their smart phone would not likely go through the hoops of learning to do just that.

The resulting influx of credit card theft would do wonders for the headcount and political importance of the credit card fraud investigation department...

It would just allow them to get a warrant and wiretap someone's convos.

- When doors are locked and police want to go inside, they can still break the lock or the door. It will only take some time.

- When a safe is locked, it doesn't prevent it from being opened. It will only take some time.

What the FBI ultimately wants is not necessarily ban encryption, or give them an additional key; what they really want is breakable encryption so they can decrypt the content. Much like a lock is not unbreakable but is defined in terms of security by how much efforts it takes to break it, and much like a KDF is defined to take a given amount of time, they want to have breakable encryption -- ie, encryption that only takes, let's say 1 M$ to break (the figure is just to have clear ideas).

Of course, as we all know, if it takes 1 M$ to break, everybody with 1 M$ can break it (not only the "good guys"). This is further exacerbated by the fact that it's online (contrary to a physical lock, for which you need the appropriate tools and physical access to the lock).

So the equivalent is not "Comey wants us to remove all locks", it is "Comey would like us to use locks that can't resist a 1 M$ attack". That is still undesirable (we've grown extremely accustomed to almost-infinity $-resistant crypto), and looks very much like a call back to exports-grade crypto. If the quality of a crypto cipher doesn't decline too fast, I think I'd be happy that LEO could decrypt the messages provided they have all the required legal provisions.

In one case, a citizen was protected from giving over the password to their phone, but was compelled under penalty of contempt of court to unlock the phone for investigators to analyze. In other cases, courts have compelled defendants to hand over the passwords.

Providers can be compelled, but that is because companies have no strong desire to protect the civil liberties of their customers (or in the case of social media -- their products), but _do_ have a strong desire to prevent financial punitive damages or legal defense fees from being incurred.

The FBI wants providers to be able to unlock data because that can be done without the notification to users that there is an investigation about them (which serves multiple purposes).

James Comey has been attacking crypto since the first crypto wars 15+ years ago. There is no way he is ignorant of how crypto works or how easily available it is. His rhetoric is an attack on the power that Silicon Valley has been acquiring, and tech companies better start treating as an attack. This latest push is trying to paint tech companies as "being unreasonable" in the public eye, so legislation can be pushed outlawing encryption wherever it is inconvenient (finance can always have an exception carved out). It need not be effective - it's just another tool that can be selectively enforced.

So where are the "full-page ads" and other media blitz form tech companies countering these attacks? Where are the counterattacks accusing Comey of trying to undermine American Businesses Interests? Well, far too many of those businesses use surveillance as a business model, and actual security would undermine their interests as well. I hope they like the future they are creating.

For everybody else, the time to start fighting against these political attacks was "yesterday". Better late than never?

At the end of the day backdooring encryption does nothing but weaken everyone's security without actually helping intelligence agencies, at least in the face of serious actors.

Fine, agree to a global backdoor or all crypto with a handful of trusted key holders, how long until the algo or key is leaked, how long until a flaw in it's implementation is found, how long until some TSA agent is photographed with the password blinking on his screen in a news article.

All this will do for bad actors is ensure they assume whatever service provider isn't to be trusted in their implementation and just use a 3rd party process and/or open source tool chain to produce encrypted messages that will be routed over already encrypted networks. Great, your backdoor got you to a second layer of ciphertext that you still can't make heads or tails of, meanwhile you've weakened the security of literally every person on earth.

A backdoor is unacceptable, no matter it's perceived strength, value, or safety.

That would be the just-world fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis