Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET) [LWN.net]

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 24, 2013 23:45 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET) by dlang
Parent article: Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

What are Americans "learning about for the first time" ?

The NSA are spooks. They aren't a poetry society, or a dance troupe. Spying on people is what spooks do. When you hire spooks, it goes without saying that you're hiring them to spy on people, and to use dirty tricks to do so.

Americans have spent _decades_ with their fingers firmly in their ears pretending that the NSA isn't spying on them. On those dirty foreigners (aka your allies) sure - but not the people who pay their salaries. Right? But nobody who'd spent more than five minutes thinking about the problem would find that believable. I'm sure it sounded kind of plausible fifty years ago, in an age of limited international communications, if you didn't think about it too hard, but in today's global society, and particularly on the Internet, it's nonsense.

So the claim I'm seeing from so many Americans now is likewise unbelievable. Sure, it feels better to say "I didn't know" than "I guess I knew but I didn't want to think about it". But it's not true, is it.

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Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 0:36 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

the fact that the NSA is a spy organization is not news.

but guess what, there isn't a country in the world that doesn't have it's own version.

And of course it's mission is to spy on foreigners, that's the mission of almost every spy agency in the world (there are a handful that are explicitly created to do internal spying, but far fewer of those)

There are laws explicitly prohibiting the NSA from doing internal spying. No, it's no surprise that these laws have been broken at some point (organizations are made of people, people are not perfect, at some point, someone will abuse their power)

However, what is surprising is the fact that the government has created a secret interpretation of the law that they claim says that they are allowed to do this.

There is a lot of disagreement on if this is really legal or not, and there are a good number of calls to make it explicitly illegal again, overriding these 'secret interpretations' of the law.

Will this stop all abuse? Of course not!

By the way, for proof that other countries have similar problems, just look at the Kim Dotcom case. There it was the New Zealand spy agency, and there are laws prohibiting them from going after permanent residents (like Dotcom), and that has given the government a black eye. Unfortunately, the last I heard is that they are now working to change the law to make such internal spying legal.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 3:11 UTC (Thu) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link] (3 responses)

"it's mission is to spy on foreigners"

That was the case throughout the 1980s and 1990s, after the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s caught them spying on Americans. But it's abundantly clear that President Bush tore down those walls, so we're back at square one.

The NSA absolutely spies internally. Even before the Snowden leaks it was already known that NSA trawling is how the Feds caught Governor Elliot Spitzer paying prostitutes.

And as far as I know there are no laws that prevent the NSA from spying internally. You're thinking of the CIA. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense, which is why it's always headed by a general.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 3:50 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

The military is under it's own set of restrictions against being used for domestic law enforcement

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 4:01 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

And you don't think it's naïve to imagine that they will break those restrictions, just like the NSA broke its own?

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 4:47 UTC (Thu) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]

But the NSA doesn't do law enforcement. They do intelligence. They then hand the intelligence off to the FBI to do the enforcement part.

Surprising, really?

Posted Jul 27, 2013 11:16 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

However, what is surprising is the fact that the government has created a secret interpretation of the law that they claim says that they are allowed to do this.

Really? When there are secret laws, secret courts and secret orders, why do you think the secrecy is needed at all?

Hint: the terrorists don't really care about the number of FISA orders granted, or about broad orders that request data from telecoms; they know very well that electronic communications can (and will) be intercepted. Proof by reductio ad absurdum: otherwise they would be incarcerated by now. However, the general populace do care about these small details, as seen in the response to Snowden's revelations.

Surprising, really?

Posted Jul 28, 2013 15:38 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

The high-security world can be quite insane, Dr. Strangelove "no fighting in the war room" levels of insane, with multiple levels of pretending ignorance of things that everyone knows full well, misdirection, etc. The funny thing is that during the cold war, each side had largely penetrated the other with moles so much of the security practice amounted to kabuki theatre because it was all pretend secrecy any way.

I think a lot of secrecy practice is because the participants think they are cool, real operators, the more security they practice and to prevent embarrassment when they screw up. "Saving Lives(tm)" is pretty far down on the list, so are "We The People".

Surprising, really?

Posted Jul 29, 2013 16:10 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

There must exist some counterpoint to this madness. Usually it lies in the participants' ability to experience shame of themselves, but when it fails there must be some higher court (of the public variety which admittedly is not as cool as a "secret court") that sets things straight.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 1:17 UTC (Thu) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link] (4 responses)

> Americans have spent _decades_ with their fingers firmly in their ears pretending that the NSA isn't spying on them. On those dirty foreigners (aka your allies) sure - but not the people who pay their salaries. Right? But nobody who'd spent more than five minutes thinking about the problem would find that believable. I'm sure it sounded kind of plausible fifty years ago, in an age of limited international communications, if you didn't think about it too hard, but in today's global society, and particularly on the Internet, it's nonsense.

As a Canadian, I experience American politics and culture (nearly) first-hand, but have no control over their decisions nor do I fund any of their shenanigans directly. So I have no motivation to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that nothing is happening -- quite the opposite, really.

And yet, my reaction to this news was much the same as that of my American friends. The recently-revealed behavior of the NSA is completely beyond the pale, and most any sane person would dismiss such allegations as unjustified paranoia, given that they are flagrantly illegal. At least, six weeks ago they would have. Besides, I have met many Americans of all ages who still speak of the cold war as though it were yesterday, and have a deeply seated repulsion to domestic spying or any "Soviet" behavior.

The kind of insanity we have been informed of recently goes beyond the law and beyond the culture of America, and I certainly don't think that anyone should have known it except that they "didn't want to think about it".

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 25, 2013 8:40 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (3 responses)

I certainly can't say (as a USian) I'm surprised. The signs were there all along, or at least from 9/11 on, from the virtually unanimous approval of the (anti-)Patriot Act, to the congress vote (including Obama) to give the telecoms immunity for rolling over and handing the keys to the spooks, to the very idea of forbidding recipients of national security demand letters from even properly consulting with their lawyers about them, let alone publishing even anonymous statistics about them.

I actually expected Obama to deliver some excuse for that vote at the Democratic convention where his nomination was confirmed, as while I predicted his win[1], there was no way I could even /consider/ voting for him (and certainly no way I could vote for the party that was asking for it all in the first place) without at least /some/ semblance of "apology" for his "mistake", but it wasn't to be, and since then he has demonstrated time and time again that he was the "Bush lite" that he accused McCain of being.[2]

The fact is, after 9/11, both parties handed the spooks pretty much anything they asked for, including immunity for those cooperating with them where it broke the existing law, with the barest hint of limits even for appearance-sake. And the sheeple public lapped it up as they were trained to do.

I'm glad Snowden happened altho I have my doubts it'll ultimately change much except dispel a few myths the sheeple might have had previously, but it's not like anyone who thought about it had any myths dispelled by his revelations in any case.

Meanwhile, this particular additional revelation is only surprising in that they're going /that/ far and that it actually got out. Given the timing it's unlikely that this pressure occurred post-Snowden, however. I guess it's likely that'll encourage them to lower the pressure a notch for the time being, but unless laws changing the status quo get enacted, I expect they'll be back at it pretty quickly.

As for the (anti-)patriot act, etc, I've long held that (as the US Declaration of Independence states, but the US Constitution unfortunately doesn't fully backup) if it's a right, it's a right for everyone, not just US citizens. Other nations may or may not support that right and the US may or may not in practice be able to do anything about that, but the US *CAN* and *SHOULD* control its *OWN* actions in accord with the human rights it asserts for its own citizens, for ALL people, and any hint that it's failing to do so is simply a hint of what it's going to doing to its /own/ citizens in a few years, if it's not doing so secretly already. Once it's not held to be an inalienable right for all people everywhere, the barrier's gone, and it's only a matter of time.

There's nothing recent events have demonstrated better than the truth of the above.

Duncan
----

[1] As political pundits have pointed out, with very few exceptions at the POTUS level, it's the candidate with the most firmly optimistic message that wins, and from well before the Democratic primaries narrowed to Clinton/Obama, it was apparent Obama had the most optimistic message of any major candidate on either side, so I was predicting he'd take it. Bill Clinton used that too, but Hillary couldn't use it so easily given her gender and that she had to demonstrate sufficient decisiveness, etc. Still, that was far closer than I expected it to be.

[2] FWIW I was so disillusioned with the choices available in 2007 that I didn't bother voting, but then I had to live with the personal guilt and shame of that for four years and vowed never again, so in 2011 I was watching Ron Paul, and when that didn't pan out, I ended up voting Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate and former governor of New Mexico. Not that I fully agree with the Libertarians either, but they'd hardly be worse than the choices the major parties seem to offer, and given 6-year Senate terms, I figure it'd take more than a 4-year presidential term to reverse the now over a decade old situation even if by some weird fluke it was a Libertarian clean slate win everywhere they ran.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 26, 2013 0:02 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

It's funny really. Americans react as if they are shocked are confused, but if you'll take a look on reaction in Russia (which is kinda relevant because that's where Snowden escapes) then you'll find out that people are not surprised (they expected something like this anyway) and government officials are disappointed not because such an awful thing as PRISM is discussed openly but because these same companies refused (and still refuse) to give similar level of access to Russian spooks!

Which kind raises the question: what Snowden is really trying to achieve? Why leave country where you can get good money for your [perhaps awful] work and go to the country where similar work is perceived normal?

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 26, 2013 9:34 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

The use of "democracy" to scare the rest of the world into resource serfdowm -- I guess that stinks.

Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys (CNET)

Posted Jul 29, 2013 11:53 UTC (Mon) by njwhite (guest, #51848) [Link]

> Which kind raises the question: what Snowden is really trying to achieve? Why leave country where you can get good money for your [perhaps awful] work and go to the country where similar work is perceived normal?

Well I don't think Snowden became a whistleblower for the lifestyle implications. He was trying to achieve an improvement in the USA. I doubt being somewhat on the run the current USA government (and seeking refuge in other countries which have plenty of issues themselves) was something he would have preferred.

Is there an implication to your question? That he is a Russian agent or something?