{"id":60853,"date":"2015-07-13T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=60853"},"modified":"2015-07-11T19:58:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T18:58:44","slug":"cybersecurity-encryption-and-the-golden-age-of-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/07\/cybersecurity-encryption-and-the-golden-age-of-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybersecurity, Encryption and the Golden Age of Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Amy<\/a>

Amy Goodman<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Jul 2015 – <\/em>The Internet, the electronic nervous system of the planet, has changed human society, profoundly altering the way we conduct our lives. It has been a great leveler, allowing people to connect, publish and share on a global scale. You can write, shop and bank online, or organize a demonstration that could overthrow a dictatorship.<\/p>\n

But the Internet also opens us to intense monitoring, exposing our most personal, private communications to the prying eyes of corporations and government spies, not to mention criminals. One way we can protect ourselves is with encryption, which provides security for our data, allowing us to send and store digital information safely, essentially scrambling the information. In order to unscramble it, you need a key, a password. The ability of regular people to access encryption tools has prompted the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom to propose special access to all communications. They want a master key to everyone\u2019s digital life.<\/p>\n

FBI Director James Comey appeared before a Senate Committee on Wednesday, July 8, along with U.S Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates. As the meeting convened, the frailty of our networks was on display for the world: The New York Stock Exchange was shut down for half a day, supposedly due to a computer \u201cglitch\u201d; United Airlines grounded flights when it lost access to its computer systems; and The Wall Street Journal website was down due to \u201ctechnical difficulties.\u201d The Senate panel was called \u201cGoing Dark: Encryption, Technology, and the Balance Between Public Safety and Privacy.\u201d \u201cGoing Dark\u201d is a term used when people encrypt their communications. A joint statement from the duo, delivered by Yates, acknowledged \u201ccitizens have the right to communicate with one another in private without unauthorized government surveillance \u2014 not simply because the Constitution demands it, but because the free flow of information is vital to a thriving democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the lofty pledge, Comey and others in the so-called intelligence community want unlimited access to all communications, all the time. They want what digital security experts call \u201cextraordinary access mandates.\u201d This means that any encryption tool would be required to have a \u201cback door,\u201d through which the FBI, the CIA or whomever possesses the requisite authority could access and read the communication, whether it is email, text, video chat or any other format. Why do they want this unlimited access? As Comey and Yates said, \u201cWhen changes in technology hinder law enforcement\u2019s ability to exercise investigative tools and follow critical leads, we may not be able to identify and stop terrorists who are using social media to recruit, plan and execute an attack in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

A group of the world\u2019s leading experts on computer and Internet security published a paper this week on just how deeply flawed Comey\u2019s demand is. Fifteen authors contributed to the paper, published by MIT and titled \u201cKeys Under Doormats: Mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Schneier, one of the paper\u2019s authors, is a security technology guru and author of \u201cData and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.\u201d He said on the \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d news hour: \u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary that free governments are demanding that security be weakened because the government might want to have access. This is the kind of thing that we see out of Russia and China and Syria. But to see it out of Western countries is extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comey wants to mandate a back door, a built-in security weakness. Schneier continued: \u201cWhat Comey wants is encryption that he can break with a court order. But as a technologist, I can\u2019t design a computer that operates differently when a certain piece of paper is nearby. If I make a system that can be broken, it can be broken by anybody, not just the FBI. So his requirement for access gives criminals access, gives the Chinese government access.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been one of the most vocal critics of government spying. In an online critique of a blog post by FBI Director Comey, Wyden wrote: \u201cTrying to restrict the use of encryption would cast suspicion on those who legitimately seek protected communications, such as journalists, whistleblowers, attorneys, and human rights activists. … It\u2019s time to stop attacking the technology and start focusing on real solutions to the real threats facing our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Schneier summed up: \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about the security of our data, and encryption is a valuable tool. To deliberately weaken that at the behest of the FBI or the U.K. government, I think, is a really crazy trade-off. It doesn\u2019t make us safer; it makes us more at risk.\u201d Ultimately, it is democracy that is at risk. The freedom to communicate without the government spying on us is essential to the functioning of a free and open society.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of \u201c<\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier,\u201d<\/em> recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ability of regular people to access encryption tools has prompted the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom to propose special access to all communications. They want a master key to everyone\u2019s digital life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}