back to article FBI: Apple and Google are helping ISIS by offering strong crypto

Apple and Google are helping terrorism by offering users encrypted communications, a senior FBI official has told the House Homeland Security Committee in Congress, and US law enforcement needs to stop them from doing it. Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, told Congress that ISIS and …

  1. LaeMing

    Apple and Google are helping anyone who doesn't want the FBI et. al. doing un-warranted drag-netting of their data. Since that set includes the entirety of the US population, I think they are at worst guilty of patriotism.

    1. depicus

      The fact that ISIS and other Syrian groups are rolling their own cryptographic software based on open source code and even hosting it on places like Github would suggest this is your basic scaremongering by people who do know better.

      While I'm sure the plebs of most terror organisations may still use Apple and Google any self respecting terrorist middle management would be using their own systems.

    2. g e

      Won't someone think of the children, too?

      Never mind terrorists, it must be directly responsible for pedo's and child-abusers in general, too, surely?

      Plus pretty much anything else that makes a voter pay attention to the guff the (in)security services spout.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Won't someone think of the children, too?"

        .... Careful, people get arrested for that!

      2. Thomas Wolf

        Re: Won't someone think of the children, too?

        The FBI already tried that route a few months ago - apparently, spouting nonsense about Apple helping pedophiles didn't work, so they're ratcheting their nonsense up a bit by claiming Apple is an aide to terrorism.

    3. Little Mouse

      Re: "un-warranted drag-netting" & "that set includes the entirety of the US population"

      @LaeMing +1. The security services want to spy alright, but are people still gullible enough to believe that the primary target is foreigners and terrorists?

      "Instead the FBI wants a front door; a system to allow it to break encryption created by US companies"

      Ever seen the film Sneakers?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      err wait...

      Given that ISIS is a CIA operation, why don't they want Greedle and Crapple to help them?

  2. Schultz
    Go

    You say yes, I say no.

    You say impossible, but I say impussyblah-blah-blah ...

    The NSA demonstrated that it is possible to have breakable unbreakable encryption with elliptic curve cryptography. Now it's just a matter of turning back the clocks and getting the cat back into the bag. (might it then, not, be a bit alive if we stop looking?)

    Now if we could just go on pretending that the world is flat, that three letter agencies can do no evil, and that cryptography is a state of mind as opposed to a mathematical concept.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Shadow Systems

    Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

    Anyone willing to give up Liberty for Security has already lost & shall have neither.

    I refuse to give up my Liberty for your false sense of security, so you can just fuck off.

    I'll be the Bastard using 1TeraBit Encryption on my damned grocery lists if that's what it takes to make it harder for you to violate my Right To Privacy.

    So see this gesture? It's me growing new appendages with which to Flip You Off.

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

      Many of us grew up in countries where terrorism was a daily threat, we lived with it, we didn't let it affect us, we just got on with our lives, with the thought that the next waste bin we pass could explode buried deep at the back of our minds.

      My father was lucky twice. When based in NI (RAF), he and some friends were off duty and went to the local pub. His mate ran ahead to open the car, while my father and the "girls" wandered slowly up the lane. As his mate arrived at the car, he was gunned down.

      Another time, he was visiting friends in Belfast and had to drive one to hospital, after he was crushed by a heavy machine they were unloading, as it slipped and pinned him against the side of the lorry. On his way back, he was stopped at the lights, when two men in raincoats walked past him, opened their coats and riddled the car in front of them with bullets.

      He didn't let it affect his daily life. Likewise, growing up I was affected by his example. On 9/11 I was staying on the 46th floor of an American brand hotel on the flight path to the airport. A lot of guests booked out, but the English guests remained where they were.

      If you give in to the terrorists and allow the government to eliminate your freedom in the name of security, then you have let the terrorists win.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        NI

        You are forgetting that the NI situation didn't involve Terrorists[1], it involved heroic Freedom Fighters financed by respectable USA based organisations like NORAID and Clan na Gael.

        [1] The IRA are not and were never registered as a "Foreign Terrorist Organisation" by the State Department - hence FBI ambivalence.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: NI

          That would explain why US troops weren't sent to NI after 9/11 after the promise to fight terror.

          Also no US troops in the Basque region.

          But thereagain, there were no oil interests their either.

          Coincidence? I think not!

          1. jason 7

            Re: NI

            I remember watching 9/11 on the TV and saying to myself "Welcome to the real world USA!"

            I was under the impression they would handle it like everyone else (as mentioned above) and just soldier on regardless.

            I was wrong.

            1. Mark 85

              Re: NI

              I believe that most people would have soldiered on. What I saw was an immediate pandering and scare mongering from politicos and media. For days on end... over and over the images of the planes flying in and media and politicians telling us we weren't "safe" and needed protecting.

              The best thing the politicos could have done would to been said "F*** you terrorists.. we're going to go about our lives and ignore you.". But then again, there's a lot of commentards here about who feel that protection and security trump freedom's.

              The terrorists are helping the politicians and the three letter agencies win. It's all about power and money....

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Republican fearmongering

                The republicans are the ones who fucked it up by trying to whip up fear after 9/11. They found they did very well in past elections with the "red scare" and when that started dying down in the 80s with fear of violent crime (google Willie Horton) so they know very well how fear swings votes their way.

                Since violent crime had peaked around 1990 and dropping every year they needed a new boogeyman and seized on the opportunity to give us something new to be fearful of on 9/12. The democrats, spineless as always, immediately caved and went along with all the bad ideas like the Patriot Act and invasion of Iraq, because they didn't want to risk being seen as weak on terrorism if there was another 9/11. That is probably why Obama has gone along with and even doubled down on Bush's policies, he knows if he gives in on anything he personally and the democrats as a party will have the blame laid at their feet. It isn't about what is best for the country, it is about what helps the future of his party.

                It is sad that freedom has become a bargaining chip in politics, but the men who seek power do it for their own sake, not because they give a damn about the country. There are undoubtedly some republicans who would like to see an ISIS strike in the US so they can blame Obama and by extension Hillary and all the democrats, for allowing it to happen.

      2. cantankerous swineherd

        Re: Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

        +1

        regrettable lack of stiff upper lip in the ruling classes these days.

        1. Captain Hogwash

          Re: Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

          > ruling classes

          There's the problem right there. That should a concept should exist at all.

      3. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

        "Many of us grew up in countries where terrorism was a daily threat, we lived with it, we didn't let it affect us" --- big_D

        Absolutely. Not only were the IRA and the Baader-Meinhof gang a real and credible threat where I grew up as a child (JHQ Rheindahlen), but the far bigger threat was the sick, authoritarian society just over the wall that was going to roll tanks over Europe and take away all the rights we had fought so hard for. Unfortunately, we didn't see the sick authoritarian society approaching from the opposite point of the compass ...

      4. Moonunit

        Re: Dear ThreeLetterAgencies. Fuck You.

        Second that motion. To be fair to the TLAs, they're just the reflection of society's lack of introspectiion and thought about The Stuff That Really Matters. I, too, grew up in a country where terror and some fairly enthusiastic* surveillance were the order of the day. We just got on with things too.

  4. Terafirma-NZ

    people use guns to hurt others they use knives and cars and bats and piratically any object made of metal/glass/wood/plastic so we need to outlaw all of those accept for the registered ones held by licensed people who maintain the GPS and video link back to the government.

    Would that finally make them happy....

    Government need to remember there is a step too far.

  5. big_D Silver badge

    Apple and Google protecting consumers

    against identity theft, data theft and scammers would be more accurate.

    If the FBI want no encryption on these devices, then maybe they and their colleagues should concentrate on doing their job and getting the scammers and thieves off the streets or off the net. If the net was a safe place to "walk down the street" there wouldn't be a need for the encryption.

    And if they hadn't been involved in mass surveillance of innocent people, then people also wouldn't need encryption.

    They only have themselves to blame. They have been distracted from doing their real job and got so greedy that the people reacted. Deal with it.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Apple/Google supporting ISIS? No.

    Apple and Google are simply making technology. ISIS are merely choosing to use it.

    Technology itself, with very few exceptions, is neither good nor bad, it's how we use it. Most can be used for both purposes.

    One can kill a person with their bare hands (or feet, if needed): does this mean the world's population should line up to have their limbs amputated? I think not.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Apple/Google supporting ISIS? No.

      "Apple and Google are simply making technology. ISIS are merely choosing to use it."

      So the FBI and NSA claim. Let's see their evidence, because I don't believe these lying Chicken Little bureaucrats (nor their poodles in the UK). ISIS aren't fighting electronic warfare, using clever encrypted communications. They're happily dragging the middle East back to the dark ages, using traditional forms of violence and with the convenience of modern weapons. The main technology angle is the free publicity via the web, and that doesn't involve encryption.

      It's quite clear that this is the paedo-terrorist excuse, being used (as it always is) to support dragnet surveillance of the innocent. At the higher echelons of these organisations we should only expect FIFA levels of morality and conviction. The real problem is that the NSA employ around a million Americans, and of that million, only one had the conviction to call them out. The other 999,999 were happy to ignore their constitution and spy on their countrymen in return for a few dollars. The FBI would appear to have a similar situation to the NSA, so that's around 2m US citizens who are happy to participate in the surveillance state.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Apple/Google supporting ISIS? No.

        A million employees across everything encompassing Homeland Security perhaps (including paper pushers, janitors and the lowest level, the TSA screeners) but the NSA itself is estimated to have 30-40K employees, nowhere near a million.

        Anyway, Snowden was a contractor, not an employee, so no matter how many there are, none of their employees had the conviction to call them out.

    2. Adam 1

      Re: Apple/Google supporting ISIS? No.

      >does this mean the world's population should line up to have their limbs amputated

      Don't give them any ideas please.

  7. MacroRodent

    both ways

    Encryption helps also those who resist ISIS. In ISIS-controlled area they are the ones you want to hide things from! Also, If there was a mandatory backdoor, well-funded bad guys like ISIS would probably take advantage of it.

  8. RIBrsiq
    Facepalm

    Not only them!

    Very true, if you think about it. It's time we finally faced reality and did something about it, even if we don't like it.

    But on the other hand, the US army are helping ISIS by offering strong weapons platforms, as well.

    I forward that from this day forward, tanks should be made of papier-mâché, and guns should fire gum pellets.

    1. Haku

      Re: Not only them!

      Will a lifesize cardboard tank do?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not only them!

        Similar has been done before: Operation Fortitude: Wikipedia

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not only them!

      I've never understood why the US doesn't have the ability to remotely disable its weapons (big ones like tanks, not talking about M16s)

      If they could have a satellite send an encrypted signal to a tank with serial number xxx and cause it to do something that fries a bunch of circuit boards and makes it useless, that would have avoided ISIS getting their hands on the weapons we gave Iraq when their soldiers cut and run. Maybe Iraq wouldn't have liked that, but since they were free I doubt they would have refused them. They would have been glad of it about now when those weapons are being turned against them.

      I suppose someone would worry "what if someone hacks it" but we manage to keep nuclear launch codes safe, I'm sure we could treat the kill switch codes for weapons with similar safe handling. Or deservedly learn our lesson the hard way if we fail to do so.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Other way around

    ISIS are tech-savvy. If we didn't have strong crypto they would be carrying out far more assassinations because they could just plan them out from all of our comms data.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Of course, ISIS are riding around on camels using iPhones and coordinating attacks against the U.S. using facebook in war torn countries that probably don't have the best internet infrastructure and in the case of iraq I'm pretty sure the US probably own the networks anyway by now.

    I'm glad the FBI have cleared all that up for me, silly me for thinking a foreign combatant would not be stupid enough to use an American network to communicate.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What non-American networks are there?

      With tapped undersea cables, spy code built into cellular base stations, and so forth, just avoiding Facebook and Gmail is not enough to avoid the reach of US snooping.

  11. ratfox

    Die Gedanken sind frei

    Once again, I note that the FBI/CIA/NSA has not demanded mandatory, regular brain scans in order to read our every thought, and check we have no terrorist intent.

    And I ask, is the reason they haven't done so that they do not think they should have such an access to our thoughts, or is it merely that the technology does not exist – yet?

  12. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Don't just single out Apple & Google

    Apple & Google aren't the only people helping ISIS:

    - Firearms & ammunition manufacturers. How else are ISIS going to effectively kill people?

    - GPS providers & equipment manufacturers. How else are ISIS going to tell their arse from their elbow?

    - Vehicle manufacturers: How else are ISIS going to get to their next slaughter?

    Thank goodness there aren't American companies involved in these products that are helping terrorists.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't just single out Apple & Google

      Those technologies aren't really significant since they don't facilitate an IS threat to real people, only to Arabs and various minorities in the Middle East.

  13. Khaptain Silver badge

    Guns and stuff

    Will the FBI all also be making a future claim that all weapons manufacturing in the USA should also be stopped since ISIS use guns and other weapons, some of which might actually be of American origin......

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Guns and stuff

      I guess you hadn't heard. When the Iraqi Army runs away from ISIS they leave all those nice weapons and weapon-systems behind in their haste. I don't blame them for running, I'd give it more than a moments thought in their situation, but damn! We are talking literal billions of dollars of stuff laying around for anyone to pick up.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Guns and stuff

        "When the Iraqi Army runs away from ISIS they leave all those nice weapons and weapon-systems behind in their haste"

        Don't forget all the weapons (and indeed training in Jordan) that the CIA provided to "moderate rebels" supposedly fighting the Syrian government. All those trained fighters and their weapons are now part of IS or Al Nusra, and the US government is now in the the bizarre and self-inflicted position of arming and training both sides of a conflict that it is involved in, and by opposing both Assad and IS, they seem to be fighting on both sides.

        And the unfortunate thing is that having inflamed the conflict, the Yanks simply won't leave alone. They keep on pouring in more weapons, in the apparent hope of defending the arbitrary borders of Iraq, ignoring that this is essentially a tribal and sectarian split that is caused by those arbitrary borders combined with the locals being unable to operate any civilised and democratic government.

    2. Dan Paul

      Re: Guns and stuff @Khaptain

      You mean the ones they stole from the chicken shit Iraqi army?

  14. Nolveys
    Big Brother

    Gee, Mike, maybe you should talk to your friends in the DoD about supporting the establishment of the "Salafist Principality" in order to overthrow Syria. Ya know, these things don't always work out so well.

    Also, Mike, I should let you know that I trust you about as much as I would trust a starving, rabid rottweiler if I was trapped in a room with it.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There is a great deal of

    Amnesia currently pervading the "security forces" (sic).

    Lest we forget that USA, the UK and others helped overthrow the despotic, but essentially coherent respective governments and that single fact is what has allowed IS to gain the footholds it has.

    We are merely reaping what we sow....

    Encryption is a minor part of a much wider problem..

    But yeah, I like my communication to be secure, I like that hackers and identity thieves will struggle to get access to my data. I also like the fact I can talk to people and no one else know what it is I’ve said.

    In conclusion, fuck you FBI, GCHQ et al.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: There is a great deal of

      I often wonder how many the major powers are hoping that this IS thing will escalate a lot further.....

      Wars are always good for the economy...

  16. Decade
    Paris Hilton

    Lawmakers listen to this garbage?

    The problem is that the best minds in the field say doing so is mathematically impossible, and even if it were possible, you'd be painting a target on your back by telling the world there's a hack available and daring them to find it.

    To quote Whitfield Diffie (RSA 2015 Cryptographers’ Panel):

    “Not to disparage those ways in which it won’t work. Imagine that we adopt a key escrow regime. … Well, in the current state of technology, I think it’s much easier than it was when we argued about this 20 years ago, to pre-encrypt what you send into the channel. Now, that means that they exercise a warrant and access the outer layer that’s open to them. Then they’re going to find out that you’ve encrypted it in some way internally to the message they’re reading. Now, what are they going to do about that? Well, it might be in that case, they’ll do what they might have had to do anyway, come down on you with a bench warrant or something and order you to tell them how to read it. But that doesn’t gain them a lot.”

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lawmakers listen to this garbage?

      It's past time to start calling them what they are: crypto deniers.

    2. efestnetz

      Re: Lawmakers listen to this garbage?

      If you encrypt your symmetric message/HTTPS session key with your local TLA's Public Key (TLAPK) and broadcast that, it should be somewhat secure.

      Of course the government/militia must protect the TLAPRIVKEY corresponding to the TLAPK like their eyeballs. If they can assure that, the scheme is technologically very robust.

    3. efestnetz

      Re: Lawmakers listen to this garbage?

      Also, it could be mandated that in the course of one year 1% of all messages/sessions are decrypted and inspected for being double-crypted. If they found something double-crypted, you would be fined with some inconvenience like monetary loss or loss of internet connection. The inspection could be done by a separate entity from the judicial system instead of an intelligence service.

      That is much better than the status quo, where they apparently go for ALL KEY MATERIAL THEY CAN GET. Innocent or not. One single drive-by event might be sufficient.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bench warrant?

      Diffie is charmingly naive. If the spooks had this capability, they'd decrypt as much as they can get their hands on and sniff through it just like they're doing with unencrypted data today.

      The public might have believed they would abide by their end of the deal when key escrow was first proposed on the 90s, but post-Snowden only hopeless fools and our congressmen (but I repeat myself) would believe the spooks would be required to obtain a court order to access the escrowed key.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Safe?

    I am sick and tired of people telling me they can make me "safe" if only I will give up this, that or the other fundamental right. I'll NEVER be safe if I live in a free country, because that's the price of freedom. If you want to be safe and be able to walk the streets anywhere at any time of night, go live in Cuba.

  18. I_am_Chris

    Speak to DARPA

    Once DARPA invent bullets/missiles that won't kill friendlies [1], then we'll talk about 'safe' encryption.

    [1] Merkin's, yerpeens and the oil-rich

  19. Roger Kynaston

    UIS (aka ISIS) and encryption

    I don't think that the bullets and swords that have been used to massacre the people of Palmyra have been hiding behind strong encryption..

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm sick of these people....

    ...so Snowden was a Traitor, Apple and others are bad...Boo Hoo..

    Then you put out a press release telling the world how you found and targeted a command post

    Fucking idiots.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/4/air-force-bombs-islamic-state-hq-building-after-te/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm sick of these people....

      Its only a crime when little people do it.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quick question

    Are the terrorists going to be forbidden from buying foreign made devices and using them on foreign networks that are not subject to American Law Enforcement? Or have you finally cut a deal with the other non-5Eyes powers to mutually share data. Not that you need the contents (data), isn't the metadata enough or did that change too? You do know that terrorists know all about using strong encryption, VPN's, even TOR and how to use them in addition to anything that Apple, Google, et. al. are using. After all, you killed all the stupid ones with the drones. Darwin is a bitch.

    Guess it wasn't just a quick question.

  22. PassiveSmoking
    Facepalm

    How can an intelligence guy be such a moron? Has he never heard of PGP?

  23. Velv
    Childcatcher

    Want to save 30,000 American lives every year?

    Ban guns.

    1. Schlimnitz
      Trollface

      Banning Americans would be even more effective

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Some more stats before you ban Guns because there are a lot of other things to be prioritised

        1 : Coronary Heart Disease = 370 198

        2 : Lung Cancer = 156 250

        3 : Lung Disease = 144 636

        4 : Stroke = 128 974

        5 : Alzheimers = 84 000

        6 : Diabetes = 75 576

        12 : Suicide = 41 143

        18 : Road traffic = 34 946

        27 : Homicide = 16 000

        You are far, far, far more likely to die from one of the other 26 causes than you are from being murdered with a firearm. And those homicide figures are not necessarily firearms related.

        The FBI states that around 65% of homicides are firearm related.

        From the approximate 1.4 Million deaths per year, homicide represents around 1.14% and therefore firearms related deaths about 0.74%. And in this 0.74% there are a high percentage of suicides, gang related violence and accidental deaths.

        In other words, guns are very unlikely to be the cause of your death in the USA unless you are a gang member, have suicidal tendancies or don't practice safe handling methods.

        Whilst heart disease and cancer collectively represent around 90% .

        So let's ban Fast Food, Television and the MEDIA before we ban guns.

        All figures were extracted from http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa-cause-of-death-by-age-and-gender

        1. SolidSquid

          Slightly less tongue in cheek, of the top 6 (since you jump to number 12 after that) we only have definite ways to reduce 1, 2 and 6. Reduction in smoking would reduce #2 by a lot and #6 we don't really know how much it could be impacted since your numbers don't separate type-1 and type-2, only one of which we know how to reduce the chances of.

          Surprisingly, stress and smoking both have significant impacts on coronary heart disease, so reducing smoking and reducing stress would help with this a lot (Scotland saw a 10% reduction in CHD after the smoking ban came into place). It can also be caused by diabetes, so reducing that would also reduce CHD. The last primary cause of CHD is cholestorol, which can be caused by diabetese (hence how this can contribute to CHD), smoking (same), lack of exercise, alcohol consumption and obesity.

          Diet is also a contributing factor, although there's been questions raised recently on whether this is a direct influence like obesity or alcohol (apparently consumption of cholesterol in foods like eggs is no longer considered to cause increase in the bloodstream as it's broken down during digestion) or whether it's just a case of a bad diet results in obesity and then that's what leads to CHD

          Since an increase in exercise would reduce obesity and inherently reduces cholestorol, it would seem to follow that rather than banning fast food or television we should be banning cars so that people have to walk or cycle to work. This would also reduce pollution which would likely reduce issues of lung cancer and lung disease, as well as reducing road traffic accidents, reduce incedents of type 2 diabetes and, since regular exercise can increase endorphins, potentially reduce suicide rates

          Oh, and of course there's no reason you have to stick with a single issue which causes deaths at once, so why not deal with guns at the same time as health conditions? It would make your walk to work safer if nothing else

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Because....

            "Oh, and of course there's no reason you have to stick with a single issue which causes deaths at once, so why not deal with guns at the same time as health conditions? It would make your walk to work safer if nothing else"

            ...all the other issues can be addressed by conventional legislation whereas "guns" cannot because a few paranoid, white, male slave owners back in the 18th century chose to embed firearms fetishism in the federal constitution.

            This is tricky to reverse because in the USA when someone asks what "the framers intended" by a particular choice of words, instead of replying: "Who the f*** cares, we're not slave owning white men in the 18th century anymore" people actually debate the matter and try to outdo each other in faithful adherence to the sunnah of the prophets (pbut) ....errrr....

            1. Khaptain Silver badge

              Re: Because....

              The Gun Debate in the USA appears to have become just another tool in the arsenal of the politicians to actually avoid discussing much more important issues.

              It makes for great media coverage and yet it only represents a nano percentage of the death toll.

              The rights and wrongs of owning firearms and the 2nd amendment debate are merely smoke and mirrors whilst the real issues are ignored.

              The 1st question that should be addressed is why people feel the need to defend themselves. Who or what is creating this fear ? Is it because violent crime has gone up, OK what is the cause for this crime.

              How much is caused by the inequality that the greedy politicians and corrupt businessmen have created ? Can't we address these issues first ?

              Just how does one go about resolving Human Greed ?

              1. Dan Paul

                Re: Because....

                People are afraid because our Federal politicians keep interfering in States Rights and telling the great "unwashed" that "They will get Justice" for so and so criminal when they have no jurisdiction at all. The fools believe them and then riot, loot and burn when they don't get the results they want.

                Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson incited the local populace and paid for people to come and protest to gin up the numbers. New Black Panther members incited the crowds even more and then rioters shot two policemen in retribution in Ferguson and again in NYC.

                The Federal Dept. of Justice cleared Officer Wilson of ANY wrongdoing in the Ferguson MO incident after the local grand jury already did. The DOJ then trumped up charges of racism against the police department.

                This inflamed the entire country and it has been going on in various forms since the Watts Riots in 1968.

                Many of us don't trust the government (certainly not THIS administration) to defend us against an angry mob of their creation and that's one reason why people own guns. The lack of support for our veterans, police and emergency workers by Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, and DeBlasios admins is chilling. Emergency services will not be there when we need them and that is another reason why we have guns.

                In EVERY MAJOR CITY that has a Democrat mayor, the crime has spiked at least 20% because the criminals are unafraid of cops that have been neutered by these literally socialist mayors.

                The underlying cause of this crime is half Hollywood and their liberal baloney and the Dummycrats and their vote buying. They have glorified all the wrong things in life and turned all their voters into "victims" so they don't have to take personal responsibility for their own actions and are then beholden to the Democrats for their livelihood. The secondary cause is that police can't even trust their own gutless commanders and administration who are more concerned about appearance than crime.

                As it pertains to "Inequality" I say that those who actually work hard will get something in return and those who slack off for their whole lives get exactly what they deserve.

                It has NOTHING to do with race or greed, only a willingness to work hard.

                1. Lysenko

                  Re: Because....

                  >>telling the great "unwashed" that "They will get Justice" for so and so criminal

                  Your case in point being someone getting shot by a cop? With a gun?

                  >>then rioters shot two policemen in retribution

                  Shot? That would be with a gun again?

                  >>to defend us against an angry mob of their creation

                  Because said angry mob have guns?

                  >>the criminals are unafraid of cops that have been neutered

                  I thought the cops had guns? Indeed, your first point specifies armed police shooting people as a starting point.

                  >>It has NOTHING to do with race or greed, only a willingness to work hard.

                  Ummm, by your own argument it seems to have quite a lot to do with guns as well. Doesn't seem likely that a cop armed with a nightstick would have been able to shoot anyone in the first place.

                  Arguments about cop massacres if "only the crims have guns" hold little water. A British cop armed with a baton and CS gas (maybe a taser) has far less chance of getting shot on duty than an American one.

                  1. Khaptain Silver badge

                    Re: Because....

                    @Lysenko

                    Never ever make the mistake of believing the guns kill or that guns are dangerous because inherently they are not...

                    People are dangerous and people kill, with or without guns......

                    A gun is an inanimate object, just as is a hammer, an iron bar or a stone.

                    By your own point of view we should also ban martial arts and anything that could be used to harm others... In that case people would have to remain at home all day long because all homicides are caused by people not by inanimate objects...

                    If someone intends to kill another, the tool that might be used or not has no importance... All that matters is the intention and the determination.... Someone intent on killing will always find the means....

                    There were no guns around during the mythical bilblical period, or more historically before the 13th century and yet killing has always been a favorite pastime of the powerfull overlords...

                    Dont you see the connection, some people are simply bad, and their objectives will always be obtained regardless of the means that are available..

                    Do you think we should also remove guns from soldiers ?

                    1. Lysenko

                      Re: Because....

                      >>People are dangerous and people kill, with or without guns......

                      True, but irrelevant. The point is whether a particular technology tends to facilitate a negative outcome to the point where any positive effects are negated. You would not, for example, write an airliner flight control system in Zend PHP. Why? Because it is a fundamentally dangerous language that facilitates blowing your own foot off and that negates any advantages of fast and cheap development. Guns, like PHP make it too damn easy to do something stupid.

                      I worked on a NATO small arms proofing range. I know exactly how dangerous guns are (we routinely shot up livestock carcasses), we took extreme precautions regarding range safety and we still ended up with an accidental death. I am consequently actually qualified (passed exams and so on) to handle firearms and I wouldn't have one of the damn things in the house if you paid me.

                      >>A gun is an inanimate object, just as is a hammer, an iron bar or a stone.

                      ...or a bomb, nerve gas, arsenic, anthrax ...all of which could be argued to fall under the definition of "bear arms".

                      >>If someone intends to kill another, the tool that might be used or not has no importance..

                      It has every importance because people are fickle and emotional creatures. Essentially, if you make it difficult to kill someone there is a chance that tempers may cool and common sense be restored.

                      >>Dont you see the connection, some people are simply bad, and their objectives will always be obtained regardless of the means that are available..

                      However some people are just bad tempered drunks. The vast majority of gunshot victims aren't targeted by relentless, dedicated assassins.

                      >>Do you think we should also remove guns from soldiers ?

                      Of course not. Killing people is what soldiers fundamentally exist to do. It would be as daft as taking explosives away from quarrymen.

                      1. Khaptain Silver badge

                        Re: Because....

                        "True, but irrelevant. The point is whether a particular technology tends to facilitate a negative outcome to the point where any positive effects are negated"

                        "facilitate a negative outcome" - Sorry, you lost me here, "Nothing" can facilitate a negative outcome more than thought, so let's ban evil thoughts..

                        "we routinely shot up livestock carcasses"

                        I hunt, therefore I shoot live animals, yes, I know that damage that hunting caliber rounds can do.

                        " we still ended up with an accidental death"

                        So someone didn't follow procedure resulting in a death, do we blame the inanimate object or ht eperson handling the said object.. Every year on building sites people are killed for the same reason, it's not the equiment to blame unless that equipment fails...which is extremely rare on a gun.

                        "...or a bomb, nerve gas, arsenic, anthrax ...all of which could be argued to fall under the definition of "bear arms"."

                        Exactly my point, if you ban guns you have to ban everything else. Just banning guns changes nothing.

                        "It has every importance because people are fickle and emotional creatures. Essentially, if you make it difficult to kill someone there is a chance that tempers may cool and common sense be restored."

                        If such were the case, then again we should be banning knives and a thousands other implements too.

                        "However some people are just bad tempered drunks. The vast majority of gunshot victims aren't targeted by relentless, dedicated assassins."

                        Case in point, I was in a bar in London when a drunk guy decided it would be a good iea to stick a pint glass in my face.. Let's just say that I still have a nice reminder of the incident.

                        So now we will ban glasses in bars and every one should drink from rubber cups at a distance of 2m....

                        "Of course not. Killing people is what soldiers fundamentally exist to do. It would be as daft as taking explosives away from quarrymen."

                        And yet even before the days of the gun, Soldiers still managed to do their business.

                        "Killing people is what soldiers fundamentally exist to do"

                        I believe the definition is more along the lines of defending their country.... Soldiers are people by the way....With our without guns they know how to kill.

                        "However some people are just bad tempered drunks. The vast majority of gunshot victims aren't targeted by relentless, dedicated assassins."

                        In that case, ban Alcohol, which is the cause....

                        After you ban guns and killing continues what will you blame then, the true cause always resolves to that of the killer i.e. Human Beings......

                        Guns are just a means, they are not the cause..

        2. Mark 85

          Better yet... let's just ban "death", shall we?

          Not at you Kkaptain but at those who know who they are:

          We're all going to die sooner or later. I put my time in Vietnam. Everyday since I left that hellhole has been a gift. F*** the terrorists and the politicos, and the 5-eyes. You want me? Then kill me. I can deal with that. But don't take my freedoms to make bad choices, good choices, and enjoy the sunrises away because you're scared shitless.

    2. SolidSquid

      Don't really need to go that far, treating it like a car and requiring a licence with a minimum level of training for safe use would have a huge impact on accidental deaths from guns

      Also yes, lets ban coronary heart disease instead!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        They already do that in some places. Unsurprisingly, its hard to get a "license" if you're a minority. Who knew?

    3. Dan Paul

      @ Velv

      Are you just a fool that can't read or understand statistics or a shill for the demow@nker party?

      Because we have such a great mental health system here in the USA (even after Obama gave everything away and made it 25% MORE expensive for me to have company insurance that I pay 50% of) there are roughly 19,000 people who use a gun to kill THEMSELVES.

      That is roughly one half of the figure you anti gun nancy boys keep spouting as gun related deaths in the US. Why don't you morons come up with a way to fix the frikkin mental health system?

      The remaining half of those 36,000 deaths is mostly due to black on black gun crime in major cities.

    4. Richard Altmann

      Banning

      cops from wearing guns would be a start

  24. james 68

    Matter of perception

    The argument could also be made that Apple and Google are protecting us all by denying ISIS affiliated hackers the opportunity to create chaos, financial instability, and perhaps deaths by insisting on strong crypto.

    But that argument wouldn't be very successful at scaring people no matter how Bill O'Reilly and pals tried to spin it so they'll stick with the other thing.

  25. Richard Wharram

    But but but...

    The FBI and CIA can already request all the communications data of suspects from Facebook. They just need to request it. Just because it's encrypted in transport doesn't stop that. Facebook store it and will respond to lawful requests.

    Oh wait. That's the point isn't it.

  26. jason 7

    They don't want to look for terrorists.

    They are under orders from the 1% and the corporations to look out for future political dissent at home so they can avoid what happened in Eastern Europe in the early 90's.

    They need to watch out for and deal with anyone that might get enough people to say "You know what? This isn't fair and it's not working for me anymore!"

    Things are not going to get better, they've run the numbers and they need to take steps to keep us all under control when it starts getting really bad.

  27. efestnetz

    Email To Bruce Schneier

    I just sent an Email to Bruce Schneier on this issue and I guess it makes sense to add it to this discussion:

    Hello Bruce,

    I see you recently take part in the crypto and cyber war discussion.

    I think it is important to look at history: Military Intelligence/General Staffs have been covertly reading letters probably since letters were sent by courier. Something like 1550 A.D. or probably earlier. The U.S. general staff were reading telegrams since the 1920s. The Austrian Empire had a "black chamber" for covertly opening and re-sealing letters 200 years ago. So did the British and the Russians. Maria Stuart was sentenced to death on the basis of an opened letter sent to an agent provocateur. The U.S. gained a superior negotiating position by reading ciphered japanese telegrams in the 1920s in the fleet size limitation talks.

    Now, I am quite positive we COULD design+build un-hackable operating systems, CPUs, USB-like interfaces, ethernet interfaces, RAMs and so on. See the L4 operating system, which attempts to prove correct the entire operating system kernel. INRIA has attempted to mathematically prove correct a C compiler.

    Also, we need to get rid of using the C language ASAP. In practical use it is a hellhole of insecurity. Both Apple and Mozilla are doing excellent work with the Swift and Rust languages. These languages are "memory safe", which eliminates about 50% of exploits in the CVE database.

    BUT - if there were a truely secure computer/OS/compiler on the free market, this would enable everybody to build encrypted communications endpoints aka. "cipher machines". The U.S. general staff would be mightily offended by millions of arabs having a "strong" cipher machine in their homes. So they currently facilitate the subversion of the Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, Solaris kernels by covert means (double-paid software engineers in these projects).

    We all know this is a dangerous thing and the "cyber war domain" is essentially un-controllable.

    Still, we need to address the "strong cipher machine" issue, or they (governments/general staffs) will continue to subvert commercial IT systems.

    So maybe "key escrow" would not be a too bad thing after all. Because that would enable the respective(!) national intelligence/police agencies to look into communications without having to resort to making operating systems and hardware insecure.

    For example, if you make an HTTPS connection from America to Egypt, both NSA and Egypt intelligence would get a copy of your HTTPS session key. It would be encrypted once with the public key of NSA and once with the public key of egypt's intelligence service. Both key-cryptograms would be sent along with the HTTPS session.

    If you sent a message inside Germany, only the BND or BKA (something like the FBI) would receive your HTTPS session key.

    As long as the IT thinkers are dogmatic about this issue, the government will simply run over our interests.

    Kind regards

    XXXXXXXXXXXX

  28. NotWorkAdmin

    Interestingly...

    A TED talk went up this week regarding the FBI by researcher Trevor Aaronson. They don't need to catch actual terrorists - it's way easier to put a gun in someone's hands, arrest them and then claim to have stopped an act of terror. Targeting men of Middle Eastern origin with mental illnesses is the best way to do this apparently.

    1. jason 7

      Re: Interestingly...

      Kind of like knowing that 9/11 was going to happen but just sitting on the info.

      The gamble being that if it went to plan, your dwindling post Cold War budget would increase 1000 times afterwards and your monthly meeting with the Secretary of State would become a daily briefing with President and a new office down the corridor.

    2. Dan Paul

      Re: Interestingly...More lies....

      You must mean those "Middle Eastern" men that got hammers and knives by themselves or got guns themselves and attacked people after they were inspired by ISIS?

      Any FBI sting operation caught them before they could use them. The Fort Hood shooter did it on his own.

  29. Richard Altmann

    Steinbach

    still does not get it. That very moment his NSA detects an encrypted mail coming out of the near or middle east, it´s automaticlly rendered suspiuos. Therefore terrorists don´t encrypt their mails. They use an advanced Enigma based system which looks like innocent clear text mail. Up to date Enigma code can not be broken as long as one does not have the code books. The islamic radicals learn one thing in the Koran schools: To recapulate their book from A to Z out of the head. No problem for them to store the Satanic Verses and use this a the code book. Just to take the piss. No house surch will ever provide a code book with pencil marks used for encoding the enigmad code cause they have it all in their brains.

    As for money laundering and financing terrorist groups: There is the islamic equivalent of Western Union.Enigma coded in innocent phone calls or even transfered from ear to mouth. Its build on trust, not on digital verification. Analogue encryption and communication will always and ever beat the most advanced computer systems. As long as the Steinbachs of this world don´t wake up and realize that they are heading in the wrong direction they have to be rendered more dangerous to western civilisation than any terrorist organisation out there. In fact, they are playing in their favour by destroying our values from the inside.

    Sorry, for my bad writing, have had a long day but i had to let it out.

    R.A.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not that far from Langley to Fort Meade, yet it seems sometimes that they are a world apart.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There is a way to deal with ISIS...

    ...but we are not using it. We should shower ISIS with fire from AC-130s and other such technical wonders, then we would not have to give up our freedoms, but that appears to be entirely too harsh for His Imperial Highness Barak Hussein the First. I suspect that His Majesty is also a Muslim in his heart, but that is just speculation on my part.

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