Backdoor Gov’t Encryption: Is it about Criminals or about you?

by

Mr. A (HCS’ Resident Cyber-Gandalf)

A lot of citizens would immediately think they should so that the government could better catch criminals and terrorist. After all, wouldn’t all of us want terrorist stopped and criminals caught? Of course we would. Does backdoor encryption access accomplish this, or is there something else at work?

Here’s the thing:

Smart terrorist and smart organized criminal groups will avoid potentially compromised systems. That means proposals like this one HERE are utterly stupid, and only about surveillance on you the innocent citizen.

So what is being proposed? This, essentially, is packaged as a ‘fair balance’ between privacy and government access to data. With a a biometric backdoor, the government could only access your data with a warrant that required you to use your biometric entry to access the data and decrypt it.

Sounds fair right?

Problem #1:  Biometrics are not the gold standard in access methodologies.

This is just one example HERE

Problem #2:  Why would a terrorist or criminal use an encryption scheme that could be biometriclly compromised with a warrant? A smart one wouldn’t.

All this talk about creating a system like this will do NOTHING to eliminate unbreakable encryption technologies that would always be used by criminals. This proposal can only be about accessing the citizens data. (and I’m sure the government could obtain biometric information and bypass it)

• If you ban guns, only criminals will use them.
• If you force biometric encryption or create mandatory backdoors, terrorist/criminals will simply rely on technologies without backdoors

The genie is out of the bottle, and it can’t be put back in.

Secure access to a system or to a decryption of data should be multi-factor. This means a passphrase, a token, and if possible biometric too. Government wouldn’t like that because the passphrase/token keeps them out.

Never has a government been as powerfully equipped to assess peoples thoughts and opinions, and to try to sway them through social media propaganda. There is a thought police, and it’s not always the government directly because the government can sway opinion and suddenly the tyrannical mob punishes those who think differently.

Think about it. Those who won’t bake a cake for a gay couple become the objects of a news media onslaught followed by a social media campaign. Soon public opinion fuels public and government actions that destroys people’s lives.

(Example HERE)

So with a government so powerful, encryption is the 2nd amendment of the internet. Calls for backdoors will only compromise the citizen, and will not affect the real terrorist and real criminals who know better than to rely on compromised systems.

And by the way . . . I’m not convinced some of the ‘unbreakable’ encryption is really unbreakable. And besides . . .a carefully placed key-logger malware program will collect every digit you type revealing your pass-phrase anyway.

 

Sincerely

Mr. A