Stross on Cameron's proposed UK crypto ban
antipope.org
antipope.org
No amount of wishing, legislating, or fear-mongering is going to prevent terrorist organizations from implementing these well-described, mathematically sound, publicly available algorithms.
Since we cannot prevent terrorists from using crypto, the only ones without crypto will be non-terrorists.
This proposal only serves to enshrine within the government the chilling capability and authority to surveil its citizens.
Mr Cameron also said that a Tory Government would pass a new law to ensure that the intelligence agencies would be able to track phone calls and internet messages.
He said that this power to track “who made which call, to which person, and when” was “absolutely crucial not just in terrorism but finding missing people, murder investigations, almost every single serious crime.
“What matters is that we can access this communications data whether people are using fixed phones, mobile phones or more modern ways of communicating via the internet.”
I refuse to believe our PM is so technologically ignorant that he believes the 'banning encryption' policy will ever fly. The most plausible explanation to me seems to be that he is trying to rebalance the public's expectations of privacy towards greater surveillance to the extent that slightly less egregious (but still objectionable) laws can be passed in their place. I have a feeling that this kind of rhetoric has been used before and probably has a name.
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/1134...
Correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
To say with a straight face, after the events of the 20th century (and the horrors of Russian and German domestic intelligence services, past abuses committed by the FBI, the current human rights clusterfuck in places like China, Iran, and Syria), that all communication should moderated and monitored by the government?
Can anyone support that idea in good faith? I agree with you that it's an almost unbelievable level of stupidity and one that betrays an ulterior motive. But normally I'd say something like this played into some industry or private-interest wish, but what bank or corporation (much less any commercial tech venture) is pushing for this? What group could this possibly serve in society other than the most high-ranking (and power-hungry) officials in the intelligence establishment?
Of course, given that the big crime networks are sophisticated this won't stop them. They'll go back to old cyphers and steganography. Same goes for the compulsory handing over of encryption keys, there are now multi-level encrypted filesystems, where you have n keys where each opens a different set of files. Have a few keys protecting embarrassing but not incriminating files and disclose those.
Surely scifi has taught us that totalitarianism never wins?
You can still have all the encryption you want on HTTPS, but it then get stored on a server somewhere.
That said, I believe both ideas are abhorrent, so if we have to take some technical liberties to cause enough uproar then so be it.
"But the question is are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read. My answer to that question is: no, we must not."
"If I am prime minister, I will make sure that it is a comprehensive piece of legislation that makes sure we do not allow terrorists safe space to communicate with each other. That is the key principle: do we allow safe spaces for them to talk to each other? I say no, we don’t, and we should legislate accordingly."
The only way to guarantee there is no "safe space for [terrorists] to talk to each other" is to ban all means of communication that cannot be decrypted. If we simply ask Whatsapp to record all their messages (and keep the decryption keys somewhere), that still leaves all kinds of encrypted communication applications available (or safe spaces) for terrorists to use.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/12/david-cameron...
Presumably he is going to ban the XOR operation since with a one-time pad...
Anybody intent on breaking the law will just [continue to] use steganography and side-step the issue completely. If anything, a cryptographic ban would most likely result in an easier life for terrorists (especially but not exclusively cyber terrorism). One honestly wonders if that's what he wants because it has to be impossible to be this stupid.
You can even create spray paints in Counter-Strike which are images, these could be used to hide secret messages.
Point being, anyone can hide a message if they really wanted to without anyone noticing.