• Tag Archives encryption

  • Rand Paul, DHS chief tangle on encryption

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul tangled with a top Obama administration official Wednesday on the matter of protecting data privacy through encryption.

    The Kentucky senator questioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the bulk collection of phone records, and argued that consumers’ desire for encryption is a response to government surveillance.

    “The real culprit is government,” Paul said during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

    “You’ve been so overzealous vacuuming up our records without a legitimate warrant … [Encryption] is a response to a government that didn’t have a real sense of decency toward privacy.”
    Paul also criticized the government for surveillance during the civil rights era, which he described as a cautionary tale.

    “Look at the time the government wasn’t so good. The FBI director recently pointed back and talked about the times that Martin Luther King was spied upon. That’s why we want these procedural protections,” he said.

    Johnson, who has been making the rounds in tech circles arguing against full encryption, declined to weigh in on bulk data collection but urged Congress to act.

    “I’m in favor of a balanced solution to the [encryption] problem,” he said, adding that encrypting records makes it harder to conduct criminal investigations. “I think it’s something we need to address.”

    Johnson spoke to a major cybersecurity conference in San Francisco last week, where his stance on encryption was ridiculed by tech experts. “I wasn’t real popular for doing that,” he said of his speech.

    Full article: http://thehill.com/p … tangle-on-encryption


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  • The NSA wants tech companies to give it ‘front door’ access to encrypted data

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The National Security Agency is embroiled in a battle with tech companies over access to encrypted data that would allow it to spy (more easily) on millions of Americans and international citizens. Last month, companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple urged the Obama administration to put an end to the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata. The NSA, on the other hand, continues to parade the idea that the government needs access to encrypted data on smartphones and other devices to track and prevent criminal activity. Now, NSA director Michael S. Rogers says he might have a solution.

    During a recent speech at Princeton University, Rogers suggested tech companies could create a master multi-part encryption key capable of unlocking any device, The Washington Post reports. That way, if the key were broken into pieces, no single person would have the ability to use it.

    “I don’t want a back door,” Rogers said. “I want a front door…”

    via The NSA wants tech companies to give it ‘front door’ access to encrypted data.


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  • Deadline Looms for Suspect to Decrypt Laptop, or Go Directly to Jail

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    If a judge orders you to decrypt the only existing copies of incriminating files, are your constitutional rights against compelled self-incrimination being violated?

    That’s the provocative question being raised as a Wisconsin man faces a deadline today either to give up his encryption keys or risk indefinite imprisonment without a trial. The defendant’s attorney, Robin Shellow of Milwaukee, said it’s “one of the most important constitutional issues of the wired era.”

    Shellow is making a novel argument that the federal magistrate’s decryption order is akin to forcing her client to build a case for the government. That’s because encryption basically transforms files into unreadable text, which is then rebuilt when the proper password is entered, she said.

    “Some encryption effects erasure of the encrypted data (so it ceases to exist), in which case decryption constitutes re-creation of the data, rather than simply unlocking still-existing data,” Shellow wrote in a court filing.

    In a telephone interview Monday, she said “this area is a new way of thinking about encryption.”

    UPDATE: A federal judge this afternoon halted the decryption order, and demanded further briefing on the constitutional implications.

    Though rare, decryption orders are likely to become more common as the public slowly embraces a technology that comes standard even on Apple computers. Such orders have never squarely been addressed by the Supreme Court, despite conflicting opinions in the lower courts.

    The latest decryption flap concerns Jeffrey Feldman, who federal authorities believe downloaded child pornography on the file-sharing e-Donkey network. They seized 15 drives and a computer from his suburban Milwaukee apartment with a search warrant. A federal magistrate has ordered Feldman to decrypt the drives by today.

    Full article: http://www.wired.com … tion-deadline-looms/


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