Page 23 - Aruba Today

TECHNOLOGY A23
Thursday 26 November 2015

Why government and tech can’t agree about encryption

BREE FOWLER tacks. For months, the Obama ad- in the cloud — for instance, on Ap- ney’s office, for instance, recently
TAMI ABDOLLAH ministration — which has steered ple’s iCloud service or Google’s called for a federal law that would
Associated Press away from legislative restrictions Drive — is also often available to require smartphone companies
NEW YORK (AP) — Your phone is on encryption — has been in talks investigators with search warrants. to sell phones they could unlock
getting better and better at pro- with technologycompanies to (Apple and Google encrypt that for government searches — in es-
tecting your privacy. But Uncle brainstorm ways of giving investi- data, but also hold the keys.) sence, forcing them to hold the
Sam isn’t totally comfortable with gators legal access to encrypted Some security experts suggest keys to user data.
that, because it’s also complicat- information. that should be enough. Michael In a report on the subject, the of-
ing the work of tracking criminals But technology experts and their Moore, chief technology officer fice called its suggestion a “limited
and potential national-security allies say there’s no way to grant and co-founder of the Baltimore, proposal” that would only apply to
threats. law enforcement such access Maryland-based data security firm data stored on smartphones and
For decades, tech companies without making everyone more Terbium Labs, noted that police restrict searches to devices that
have steadily expanded the use vulnerable to cybercriminals and have managed to take down on- authorities had already seized.
of encryption — a data-scramb- identity thieves. “It would put line criminals even without short- Privacy advocates and tech
lingtechnology that shields infor- American bank accounts and cuts to encryption. He pointed to companies aren’t sold, saying it
mation from prying eyes, whether their health records, and their the 2013 take down of Silk Road, would weaken security for phones
it’s sent over the Internet or stored phones, at a huge risk to hackers a massive online drug bazaar that that are already too vulnerable
on phones and computers. For
almost as long, police and intel- In this July 30, 2014, file photo, Silicon Valley pioneer and Silent Circle co-founder Jon Callas holds up Blackphone with
ligence agencies have sought to encryption apps displayed on it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
poke holes in the security technol-
ogy, which can thwart investiga- Associated Press
tors even when they have a legal
warrant for, say, possibly incrimi- and foreign criminals and spies, operated on the “dark Web,” es- to attack. Marcus Thomas, the
nating text messages stored on a while at the same time doing little sentially the underworld of the In- chief technology officer at Sub-
phone. or nothing to stop terrorists,” Sen. ternet. sentio and former assistant direc-
The authorities haven’t fared well; Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in an in- “The way they figured that out tor of the FBI’s operational tech-
strong encryption now keeps terview Monday. was through good old-fashioned nology division, argued that it’s
strangers out of everything from Lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Se- police work, not by breaking cryp- too late to turn back the clock
your iMessages to app data stored lect Committee on Intelligence tography,” Moore said. “I don’t on strong encryption, putting law
on the latest Android phones. But remain on what they call an “ex- think there’s a shortcut to good enforcement in a “race against
in the wake of the Paris attacks, ploratory” search for options that police work in that regard.” time” to obtain investigatory data
U.S. officials are again pushing for might expand access for law en- Others argue that the very no- whenever and wherever it can.
limits on encryption, even though forcement, although they’re not tion of “compromise” makes no But he urged security experts to
there’s still no evidence the ex- necessarily looking at new legisla- sense where encryption is con- find ways to help out investigators
tremists used it to safeguard their tion. cerned. “Encryption fundamen- as they design next-generation
communications. The FBI and police have other op- tally is about math,” said Mike encryption systems. The idea of
While various experts are explor- tions even if they can’t read en- McNerney, a fellow on the Truman allowing law enforcement secure
ing ways of resolving the impasse, crypted files and messages. So- National Security Project and a access to encrypted information
none are making much headway. called metadata — basically, a former cyber policy adviser to the doesn’t faze Nathan Cardozo,
For now, the status quo favors civil record of everyone an individual Secretary of Defense. “How do a staff attorney for the San Fran-
libertarians and the tech indus- contacts via phone, email or text you compromise on math?” He cisco-based Electronic Frontier
try, although that could change message — isn’t encrypted, and calls the idea of backdoors “silly.” Foundation, provided a warrant
quickly — for instance, should service providers will make it avail- Some in law enforcement have is involved. Unfortunately, he says,
another attack lead to mass U.S. able when served with subpoenas. compromise ideas of their own. cryptographers agree that the
casualties. Such a scenario could Data stored on remote computers The Manhattan District Attor- prospect is a “pure fantasy.”q
stampede Congress into passing
hasty and potentially counterpro-
ductive restrictions on encryption.
“There are completely reasonable
concerns on both sides,” said Ye-
shiva University law professor Deb-
orah Pearlstein. The aftermath of
an attack, however, “is the least
practical time to have a rational
discussion about these issues.”
Encryption plays a little heralded,
yet crucial role in the modern
economy and daily life. It protects
everything from corporate secrets
to the credit-card numbers of on-
line shoppers to the communica-
tions of democracy advocates
fighting totalitarian regimes.
At the same time, recent deci-
sions by Apple and Google to en-
crypt smartphone data by default
have rankled law enforcement of-
ficials, who complain of growing
difficulty in getting access to the
data they feel they need to build
criminal cases and prevent at-