[Cryptography] Canadian Police Had BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key since 2010

[Tom Mitchell]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 6:57 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:

> FYI --
>
>
> https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtained-blackberrys-global-decryption-key-how
>
> Exclusive: Canadian Police Obtained BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key

....

> Imagine for a moment that everybody’s front door has the same key.  Now
> imagine that the police have a copy of that key, and can saunter into your
> living room to poke around your belongings while you’re out, and without
> your knowledge.
>

In the US this risks the "exclusionary rule".   If the key was "stolen"
then
fruit of the poisonous tree begins to roll down hill.  Since employees are
almost universally constrained from divulging corporate secrets an employee
is unlikely to be in a position to gift the key to law enforcement.

Legal secret paths for the transfer of keys may exist.
One problem with master digital keys is once obtained they are difficult to
destroy
in a way that audit can follow.   Paranoid folk will consider parallel
reconstruction
built on "illegal" data slurps to help frame a warrant (FISA or public).
A key that was obtained in a legal but secret way can only generate
classified
data or the keys existence must be disclosed.

Since this is a "global" key global laws may cause problems for some
involved persons.

What a tangle...




-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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