Obama brain trust sidesteps mandatory hackers' backdoor idea An Obama administration working group mulled four mechanisms for breaking the encrypted smartphones of terrorist and criminal suspects before rejecting them all as too politically fraught or impractical. While planting backdoors was "technically feasible", each method risked becoming a focus of attacks by third parties and …
What most USA government authorities and technology pundits fail to grasp is that a significant proportion of best Internet networking and software protocols and applications are "not" developed" here in USA and are actually Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), not owner or controlled by any Government, corporations or other proprietary entities and therefore are out of reach of NSA for implanting "back doors" in their operation.
This is good for everyone, as the NSA planted back doors in Cisco routers, for example, have allows the crackers (bad guys!) the exact same access to this networking equipment.
I mean seriously there are many forms back doors can take. In fact if you have the resources you can even encourage back doors without the people writing the code actually knowing. You could do this with complexity in mandatory standards.
Just look at UEFI. It's way to complex for the simple task it needs to do. More complexity means more code. More code means more bugs. More bugs mean more security critical bugs which in turn means more exploitable bugs.
So if you manage to convince people to solve a problem in a to complex way, you effectively make them add back doors to those systems without them even knowing.
It's not the beginning of the end. In fact, it's not even the end of the beginning.
No matter what the reality, these people simply will not accept 'NO' for an answer. When it comes down to it, they will be quite prepared to compromise our security, if they think it will help them stay in power.
At least the working group recognizes the scope and implications. How the politicals and TLAs respond is a different matter entirely. Just because the politicos might agree it's a bad thing won't stop the TLA's from their work under the table. And it doesn't matter which country you're in. They basically operate the same way.
Now here in the States, we're getting ready for an election. New bosses.. or new but still the same? I suspect that the next administration will continue this "let's find a way to backdoor stuff".
"I suspect that the next administration will continue this "let's find a way to backdoor stuff".", Sure they will, there is no going back anymore. If they don't do it some other government will. Today it's about how and by who those possible backdoors, and the data, is used.
As for the election, yes the circus has started, the zoo is full, and Hollywood hasn't got a chance to compete in money or entertainment for a long time. I wouldn't give shit about it, if it was about "Zzstan", but it's not. Please Americans, get involved, be critical, don't eat shit, vote. The result will touch you too.
"government-proposed technical approaches would almost certainly be perceived as proposals to introduce ‘backdoors’ or vulnerabilities in technology products and services"
They "proposed technical approaches" ARE backdoors and vulnerabilities introduced into products and services.
Oh, and a "framework with industry that respected key principles such as no backdoors and so-called “golden keys”" is a contradiction. A crypto system with "golden keys" is backdoored. Clipper proposed this kind of system; it didn't just fail due to political pressure from everybody but the feds and police (who of course thought it was great) -- it failed because they assumed everyone outside the NSA was stupid... they thought once it was forced onto the market that it'd still take the world's best cryptographers a minimum of 20 years to crack the chip and algorithm, when in fact it took a small research team something like 6 months.
"Please Americans, get involved, be critical, don't eat shit, vote."
Pray tell, vote for who? The people running range from extreme religious nutjobs to slightly less religious nutjobs, to people who are somewhat normal but still favor giving the gov't more and more power. I mean, I plan to vote libertarian, but most people here pretend there are only two parties (who effectively would be a single party in any other country); nobody good is running for either party.
The USA has reached a decidedly dark period when most of the politicians and their faithful supporters represent the most idiotic, stupid residents in this country in 21st century.
With a significant proportion of the electorate denying Climate Change overall, Evolution and almost as many that still believe in September 2015 that President Obama is a Muslim, born in Kenya, it is no wonder that a critical USA/International study, supported by OCED was published recently which showed that "adult" Americans scored substantially below their peers in developed nations in Math, Reading and Comprehension as well as Problem Solving/Analytical Skills, even for non-complicated issues.
How are these millions of morons expected to vote intelligently! and for sensible political representatives - if they exist - on a matter as complicated as National Security policies and practices.
Keep dreaming.
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