Julian Sanchez: This Is the Real Reason Apple Is Fighting the FBI »
1. This offers the government a way to make tech companies help with investigations.
2. This public fight could affect private orders from the government.
3. The consequences of a precedent permitting this sort of coding conscription are likely to be enormous in scope.
4. Most ominously, the effects of a win for the FBI in this case almost certainly won’t be limited to smartphones.
The infotech war has begun, for real.
First we had the fight over illegal file sharing, creating a divide between Big Entertainment backed up by Big Government and a large portion of the general public. (Young people in particular.) Parallel we have had the fights between Big Telecom and activists campaigning for a free and open internet. And the struggle between Big Intelligence and civil rights / privacy advocates.
Then came Edward Snowden, providing actual proof of what our governments are up to. This created an even bigger splash, still causing ripples.
And with the San Bernardino iPhone backdoor/unlock case between the FBI and Apple the tech sector will have to choose between loyalty to its’ customers or abiding by overreaching anti-terrorism and anti-privacy legislation. That ought to be easy enough. The money is with staying loyal to customers and their right to privacy. But it’s not. Not even Silicon Valley might be able to stand up against the state monopoly on violence.
The stakes are sky high. The San Bernardino case is not just about that single case or even just about privacy. It’s about secure encryption – imperative for safe communications, online banking, medical records, confidential information, trade secrets and public affairs. Apple cannot back down on this one.
This might be what finally will unite all sorts of activists and the Valley. I rather hope so. Alone, it’s very difficult to stand up against the government (and related special interests). But if the Internet generation, net activists, civil rights defenders and tech companies stand together — we might stand a chance.
Unjust laws will stay unjust if no one stands up and fight them. Civil rights will be eroded if no one stands up to defend them. There are no limits to what governments will try to justify under the pretext of security — that, by the way, is an illusion.
The government will always try to “balance fundamental rights and security”, time and time again until there are no fundamental rights left.
Now is the time for activists (who know how to actually change politics) to team up with Silicon Valley (where the money needed to make campaigning effective is).
We can win this one — and at the same time establish a red line that governments will have to recognize.
But it will be dirty. It’s all about power and control.
/ HAX
Related: Apple’s FBI battle is just the beginning of a reality check for the tech sector »
Update: FBI Admits It Urged Change Of Apple ID Password For Terrorist’s iPhone »
The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.
This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake. (…)
Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us.
For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers’ personal data because we believe it’s the only way to keep their information safe. We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business. (…)
The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable. (…)
While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.
Apple CEO Tim Cook: A Message to Our Customers »
A must read!
Netflix’s solution to its problem is about to create a huge new one — for millions of people who aren’t trying to trick the service out of a Canadian show in the US. One year ago, UK-based GlobalWebIndex estimated that 54 million people use VPNs to watch Netflix every month (Netflix declined to comment to Variety on GWI’s numbers).
What Netflix is asking (er, forcing) its customers to do is, well, insane from a privacy and security perspective. That a company might insist you use 123456 as your password because it solves an internal problem for them sounds … ludicrous. Except that’s pretty much what Netflix is doing by disallowing widespread use of a security tool as critical as a VPN.
National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers said Thursday that “encryption is foundational to the future,” and arguing about it is a waste of time.
The Intercept: NSA Chief Stakes Out Pro-Encryption Position, in Contrast to FBI »
During the cold war, the Soviet Union deployed radio jammers in the bay of the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia. The purpose was to limit people’s access to Finnish television in the then Soviet Baltic states.
It didn’t work. When Finnish television aired the soft porn movie Emanuelle, the streets of Estonian capital Tallin were empty. And after every episode of Dallas, people in northern Estonia kept friends and relatives in other parts of the country up to date with the doings of JR & Co by mail. (There is a very interesting and amusing film about this, Disco and Atomic War.)
When the Berlin Wall fell, people in the GDR had a rather good picture of life in the west from radio and television, transmitted from the BRD and West Berlin. And they knew that the world was watching and supporting the change that was going on.
Free flow of information is a facilitator of democracy.
Today, we have the Internet. It’s global, it’s instant and even in places where the regimes try to build digital walls, there are often ways to connect to the global network.
The Internet is as important for people who live under political and religious oppression today, as radio and television were during the cold war.
With access to strong encryption and other tools, the Internet also allows people within such countries to communicate in a relatively safe way with each other. This is essential to build a democratic opposition, enable activism and build alternate structures.
It has turned out that it is very difficult to introduce and uphold democracy by military means. And the Arabian Spring shows that freedom and democracy cannot be won overnight. It is a frustratingly slow process, that frequently backfires. But to succeed it is essential that people in totalitarian and failed states can find support, inspiration and good examples from us in the (relatively) free world.
The fight for a free and open internet is not only about our freedom and privacy. It’s about a democratic and peaceful world.
Here is an interesting video from the 32c3 congress in Hamburg in December: Crypto Wars Part II — The Empires Strike Back.
Speaker: Kurt Opsahl, EFF
https://youtu.be/BweBCNBxJxM
Description:
Governments around the world are seeking to put a stop to secure end-to-end encryption, from the UK’s Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, to Australia’s Defence Trade Controls Act, to India’s draft proposal to require plain text copies of all secure messages, to the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation’s public pressure on global companies like Apple and Google to weaken their security and provide law enforcement access to plain text content.
Yet it is impossible to give these governments what they want without creating vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors. Moreover any attempt to prevent people from writing and publishing strong encryption without backdoors conflicts with the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This presentation will address the history of crypto wars, update the audience with the latest information on government proposals from around the world, and discuss how we can fight for a future that will allow for secure communications for everyone. The discussion will also include information about EFF’s effort to protect and promote strong encryption, including the Secure Messaging Scorecard, Encrypt the Web report and the Who Has Your Back reports.
The presentation will explain how the unintended consequence of these efforts to provide law enforcement unfettered access to communications for users’ privacy and the security of the Internet far exceeds the benefits that would be gained. The proposals are often made in the name of protecting national security, but are likely to have severe economic, political and social consequences for these nations and their citizens, while doing little to protect their security. Contrary to these government proposals, encryption has a critical role to play in national security by protecting citizens against malicious threats. The harm to the public that can be presented by lax digital security has been illustrated too many times: weak or flawed cryptography led to vulnerabilities such as Logjam and FREAK that compromised the transport layer security protocols used to secure network connections worldwide. Encryption is not only essential to protecting free expression in the digital age – it’s also a critical part of national security.
This presentation will address the history of crypto wars, update the audience with the latest information on government proposals from around the world, and discuss how we can fight for a future that will allow for secure communications for everyone. The discussion will also include information about EFF’s effort to protect and promote strong encryption, including the Secure Messaging Scorecard, Encrypt the Web report and the Who Has Your Back reports.
Confidence in secure communication and storage data is essential for the future growth potential of the Dutch economy, which is mainly in the digital economy.
Dutch government backs strong encryption, condemns backdoors »
“To put it bluntly: the call to provide law enforcement (or, anyone) exceptional access to communications and content poses a grave threat to the future of the Internet. It is simply not possible to give the good guys the access they want without letting the bad guys in. There’s nothing new or novel in this statement. Experts have been saying the same thing for 20 years. While the message is old, with the integration of Internet technologies into nearly all aspects of life, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.”
Meredith Whittaker and Ben Laurie: Wanting It Bad Enough Won’t Make It Work: Why Adding Backdoors and Weakening Encryption Threatens the Internet »
