<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">In 1999, I wrote a white paper for the Cato Institute called “Cryptography the Global Tide of Change” on the futility and negative consequences of the Clinton Administration’s efforts to suppress strong cryptography, then primarily through export controls. (<a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/briefing-paper/strong-cryptography-global-tide-change" class="">https://www.cato.org/publications/briefing-paper/strong-cryptography-global-tide-change</a>) Among other things, I wrote:</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">“The stated reason for U.S. government opposition to public access to strong cryptography is to preserve the government’s ability to gain access to criminal communications through wiretaps and computer data files seized as evidence. Such claims usually invoke a troika of evils—drug dealers, terrorists, and child pornographers— though decades of wiretapping have not halted those crimes.”</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">In some ways, not much has changed, the same troika of evils are still invoked. But in other ways there have been vast changes. Here are some of the tools and resources now available to law enforcement that did not exist, and mostly were not even imagined, back in 1999:</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Ubiquitous use of cell phones, with GPS that track owners’ movements whenever they carry them </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Ubiquitous use of text messaging and email, with metadata easily available even if text is encrypted </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Numerous forms of insecurity in commercial hardware and software, enabling penetration of all but the most secure systems</div></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Password cracking tools that are capable of trillions of hashes per second</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Widespread social media accounts where users volunteer copious personal data</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Dramatic drop in cost of mass storage, enabling “full take” storage of metadata and intercepted content (about a factor of 1000, <a href="http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte" class="">http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte</a>)</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Big data warehousing, holding every credit card purchase, other financial transactions and anything else they can get</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Widespread use of cloud storage, coupled with third party “business records” exclusion from Fourth Amendment guarantees <i class="">U.S v. Miller, Smith v Maryland</i></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Widespread video surveillance, interconnected and linked with face recognition and AI filtering</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Inexpensive license plate readers</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Electronic transit fare collection that tracks riders</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Voice recognition and voice to text programs in multiple languages</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Quality automatic language translation</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Electronic medical records</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Passports with RFID</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Federal driver’s license standards that are effectively creating a national ID card</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Automated DNA sequencing</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o DNA databases large enough to zero in on a suspect through their relatives, even if the suspect’s DNA isn’t in the database</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o Millimeter radar looking through walls</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">o India’s attempt to create a cashless society and China’s efforts towards total citizen control (1984 Rev 2.0), creating model for the future that others will soon clamor to employ</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">I’m sure I’ve missed a few. In short, law enforcement has never had it so good. They’re hardly “going dark.”. </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Arnold Reinhold</div></body></html>