Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

If they get this next will be probation  on encryption djf


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: March 24, 2018 at 11:30:59 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones
> By CHARLIE SAVAGE
> Mar 24 2018
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/us/politics/unlock-phones-encryption.html>
>
> WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement officials are renewing a push for a legal mandate that tech companies build 
> tools into smartphones and other devices that would allow access to encrypted data in criminal investigations.
>
> F.B.I. and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on 
> approaches to provide such “extraordinary access” to encrypted devices, according to people familiar with the talks.
>
> Based on that research, Justice Department officials are convinced that mechanisms allowing access to the data can be 
> engineered without intolerably weakening the devices’ security against hacking.
>
> Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask 
> Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month 
> among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said.
>
> The F.B.I. has been agitating for versions of such a mandate since 2010, complaining that the spreading use of 
> encryption is eroding investigators’ ability to carry out wiretap orders and search warrants — a problem it calls 
> “going dark.”
>
> The issue repeatedly flared without resolution under the Obama administration, peaking in 2016, when the government 
> tried to force Apple to help it break into the iPhone of one of the attackers in the terrorist assault in San 
> Bernardino, Calif.
>
> The debate receded when the Trump administration took office, but in recent months top officials like Rod J. 
> Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, have begun talking publicly 
> about the “going dark” problem.
>
> The National Security Council and the Justice Department declined to comment about the internal deliberations. The 
> people familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioning that they were at a preliminary stage 
> and that no request for legislation was imminent.
>
> But the renewed push is certain to be met with resistance.
>
> “Building an exceptional access system is a complicated engineering problem with many parts that all have to work 
> perfectly in order for it to be secure, and no one has a solution to it,” said Susan Landau, a Tufts University 
> computer security professor. “Any of the options people are talking about now would heighten the danger that your 
> phone or your laptop could be hacked and data taken off of it.”
>
> Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, stressed the importance of strengthening 
> — not weakening — security protections for products like the iPhone, saying threats to data security were increasing 
> every day and arguing that it was a question of “security versus security” rather than security versus privacy.
>
> “Proposals that involve giving the keys to customers’ device data to anyone but the customer inject new and dangerous 
> weaknesses into product security,” he said in a statement. “Weakening security makes no sense when you consider that 
> customers rely on our products to keep their personal information safe, run their businesses or even manage vital 
> infrastructure like power grids and transportation systems.”
>
> But some computer security researchers believe the problem might be solvable with an acceptable level of new risks.
>
> A National Academy of Sciences committee completed an 18-month study of the encryption debate, publishing a report 
> last month. While it largely described challenges to solving the problem, one section cited presentations by several 
> technologists who are developing potential approaches.
>
> They included Ray Ozzie, a former chief software architect at Microsoft; Stefan Savage, a computer science professor 
> at the University of California, San Diego; and Ernie Brickell, a former chief security officer at Intel.
>
> [snip]
>
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