[Cryptography] Govt Can't Let Smartphones Be 'Black Boxes, ' Obama Say

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 8:23 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:

> It would be a damned sight easier to take a view that allowed
> exceptional access with warrants, etc, if in the past the USG
> had abided by the notion that such access is in fact exceptional
> rather than routine, and needs to be provided for with warrants,
> etc.

I was at an MIT/Harvard workshop on norms in cyberspace. It was
focused on inter-government norms because that is where most of the
participants worked.

Non state actors are also bound by norms. ISIS being the exception
that proves the rule. The price they have paid for their norm flouting
behavior is to create a grand alliance of every bordering power, every
regional power and every great power against them.

PRISM and the mass surveillance program violated our norms, no
question. But these were not a surprise to anyone who had been paying
attention. The big surprise for me was the Abu Ghraib photographs. Any
way you consider them, the photographs demonstrate a total collapse of
the moral fabric of the US military. And to this day, nobody has been
punished for committing the torture. The only jail sentences handing
down was for taking the photographs which led to the program being
exposed.

> Show us any reason to think that this is to be reserved for
> individual instances with publicly acknowledged search warrants
> subject to due process, or any reason to think that any hole
> left for the USG would not also be exploited by Russia, China,
> and North Korea, and I'd consider it.

Which is why this is a fight that is mostly being pressed by the FBI
right now. The military are much more worried about the threat of
hackers devastating the critical infrastructure than the rather modest
operational capabilities that crypto provides actual terrorist groups
with.


On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 1:56 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:

> A case could be made that citizen crypto is protected -- at least in the U.S. -- by
>the *Second* Amendment.  Crypto has been considered "arms" on & off for
>hundreds of years, so crypto is as much a right under the Second Amendment as
>a firearm.

A case could be made but the interpretation of that case would depend
on a supreme court where four of the justices will reject your
argument because they always favor every government surveillance
capability and the other four will reject your argument because they
consider the second amendment to be limited to allowing the states to
form militias to round up run away slaves.

The only recent SCOTUS judge that might have accepted your argument is
the one they just buried.