FBI Director Christopher Wray On Encryption: We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement' (cnet.com) 447
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday. The technology that scrambles up information so only intended recipients can read it is useful, he said, but it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them. "It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide," Wray said during a live interview at the RSA Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in San Francisco. His comments are part of a back-and-forth between government agencies and security experts over the role of encryption technology in public safety. Agencies like the FBI have repeatedly voiced concerns like Wray's, saying encryption technology locks them out of communications between criminals. Cybersecurity experts say the technology is crucial for keeping data and critical computer systems safe from hackers. Letting law enforcement access encrypted information just creates a backdoor hackers will ultimately exploit for evil deeds, they say.
Wray, a former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice who counts among his biggest cases prosecutions against Enron officials, acknowledged Tuesday that encryption is "a provocative subject." As the leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, though, he's focused on making sure the government can carry out criminal investigations. Hackers in other countries should expect more investigations and indictments, Wray said. "We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."
Wray, a former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice who counts among his biggest cases prosecutions against Enron officials, acknowledged Tuesday that encryption is "a provocative subject." As the leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, though, he's focused on making sure the government can carry out criminal investigations. Hackers in other countries should expect more investigations and indictments, Wray said. "We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."
This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. They are under the authority of the department of justice, which is a part of the executive branch. Their funding comes from congress as well, they must abide by laws created by congress, and the court system has oversight for criminal cases they bring. They absolutely and positively answer to elected officials no matter what your special youtube videos tell you. Just because an authoritarian president finds that he can't order them about is not the same thing as the FBI being unanswerable to elected officials. The FBI members have taken oaths to uphold the law, not oaths to an individual office holder.
Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Interesting)
All police departments try to achieve zero crime. They constantly look for ways to detect criminals. This means they are constantly pushing the boundary of legal law enforcement methods, and sometimes they cross that line. The "Average" living room is beyond the reach of law enforcement. Only special living rooms justify surveilance (special = they have a reason for a warrant), meaning average living rooms are not bugged just like encrypted messages are not read. For most of human history what happened in private stayed private, so again this isn't a new situation for police and they know how to deal with it (lean on a person who has access to what you want).
But surely this is the first time in human existence that law enforcement has waged a war on mathematics? Until the elite are willing to limit their personal finances to 2^32 pennies, I will not give up my 256 bit AES or 2048 bit RSA. If we are going to put limits on math, we need to limit it everywhere
Um... who exactly hires the FBI director (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry to be flippant, but I really, really, really shouldn't have to point this out [google.com].
And our current president has pretty clearly removed all semblance of impartiality from the appointment while our Republican lead Congress (well, half of it now) is letting him get away with it.
Re:Um... who exactly hires the FBI director (Score:5, Informative)
Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump won because there are a lot of people that had their futures taken away by outsourcing and Trump was the first presidential candidate that said they were going to do something about it. If you want to avoid this happening again, stop squealing about Putin and start looking at how to solve this issue. Trump may or may not be a dead man walking but the reason he's there won't go away once he's gone, it will be ripe for someone potentially more competent to tap into it.
Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:3)
You must have been asleep then. Carry on as you are. I'm sure the nasty "racists" will evaporate after the 2020 election.
Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
You guys never do learn. You always think you are the smartest guys in the room and then you say something stupid-as-fuck. The deplorables comment hurt Hillary as much as anything else. Anyone in flyover country heard loud and clear just how much they could expect her to represent them. You guys prove over and over that you learned nothing.
Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Insightful)
>We can either have privacy and terrorism, or no privacy and a government that can't prosecute.
What makes you think the courts couldn't prosecute? People end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than eye-witness testimony - the least-reliable form of evidence, as any scientist can tell you.
Not to mention that you forgot to add "and terrorism using unassailable encryption" to the second half of that. No terrorist organization worth half a damn would would be more than mildly inconvenienced by the deliberate compromising of "officially sanctioned / legal" encryption. Even if you don't have the chops to roll your own, you can download real, secure, encryption programs and libraries from open-source repositories around the world.
There's no putting the genie back in the bottle - the most you can do is make sure that you can spy on every online action of law-abiding citizens and the most incompetent of criminals, and hopelessly compromise their security in the process. That's not much good for fighting crime, quite the opposite in fact. But it's of great value if your real target is to be able to blackmail or destroy political opposition before it can present a real challenge.
Re:This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Informative)
People end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than eye-witness testimony
It is apparently even worse, people end up in prison all the time based on nothing more than a threat of longer sentence and a plea bargain offer.
Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's stop calling it a "plea bargain". That's a misleading euphemism. Let's call it what it really is: coerced false confession.
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You're not getting any disagreement from me on this, sorry.
Re: This is what tough on crime gets ya folks (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, it's worse. People go to prison because the police tell them if they don't confess their spouse will be charged and children removed.
Historically speaking (Score:5, Insightful)
governments are the entities people most need to be able to keep secrets from.
Just sayin.
Re:Historically speaking (Score:5, Funny)
So you've never been married, eh?
Points go to ze Kernel (Score:2, Informative)
Have you? Don't even try to pretend your old lady doesn't run the show at your place. That's a defacto government if I've ever seen one. Points go to ze Kernel.
Re:Historically speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Well sure. But then what would be the motivation to spend vast amounts of money to become a government official?
No. Seriously. Winning U.S. Senators spent an average of $10.4 million in the 2016 race, in order to secure a job that pay 174k/year for six years. Granted, a lot of that isn't their money - but when's the last time you spent 60 years salary in order to try to get a job?
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to approximate and detect your exact behaviour.
It approximates your exact behaviour?
Does this mean they are working on mind reading? (Score:5, Insightful)
A free society's highest priority is not to service law enforcement.
And if we give you the keys everyone will have ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if we give you the keys Mr. Government everyone will have them in 3..2..1.. because we all know how well law enforcement can keep a secret.
Yeah, I'm looking at you NSA, the most secure agency on planet earth that couldn't hang on to their toys, tools, and tactics.
Fun Fact: If it wasn't for the NSA leaks, we most likely would not have had the WannaCry ransomware attacks.
But We Are The FBI! (Score:2, Insightful)
FBI Director Christopher Wray just can't understand. "We're the good guys here! Why don't you believe us, we're the good guys!"
J. Edgar Hoover? That's in the past! Patriot Act? You can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs! The Panopticon such that even Grandma gets a working over due to too many internet searches for cross-stitch patterns? Well Grandma liked that Commie pinko Rudolph Valentino back in the day, that's reason enough to suspect her!!
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In layman's terms,
"Law enforcement must have master keys to all homes/offices/safes. Every cop must be able to freely copy them."
and "we promise we'll never lose them, pinky swear!"
See how that goes over with the general public.
captcha: "tyranny" - wow. First time I landed an apropos one.
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The first thing I thought of when I saw this post was Howard Payne and Deviant Ollam's talk "This key is your key, this key is my key". If you want to see how godawful most companies (and the government) are at security, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Or the incompetence of how the TSA master keys were leaked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yeah, let's not make any master keys please.
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With key escrow, the device manufacturer keeps the keys in offline storage. The key for your device is only retrieved when presented with a lawful warrant.
And nobody with a brain will trust that device for anything important anyway.
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What you're saying is you want people to go after the key holder. Because that is what will happen as sure as robbers went after banks because 'that's where the money is.'
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anything, and i do mean anything, that a person squirrels away for 'later' can and will be found and exploited by another.
so offline is only good until the building/room/safe is breached.
You can't legislate software out of existence. (Score:5, Insightful)
But you can make it a crime to use them (Score:4, Insightful)
No but what they will do is make it a crime to use robust encryption schemes. If you are caught using one then you go to prison for a long time on the basis of possession (regardless of whether you are actually involved in anything else illegal). Of course, criminals won't care, since they are already doing illegal stuff, but regular folk will basically have to make all their data discoverable to the authorities on demand. Similarly anyone in a position of authority, or with large amounts of wealth will be able to apply for an permit to use stronger encryption. As for data breaches, well, these seem to occur every few months at the moment, but unless it is panama paper stuff, very few seem to care (and even then...).
This is the middle class' biggest weakness - they have enough invested in the 'system' that you can use the threat of loss of participation in the system to make them conform to silly rules. Unfortunately we have only had a middle class for about 60 years now out of thousands of years of recorded civilisation, and I'm not entirely convinced it has the political will to sustain itself in the face of oligarchic leadership that seems intent on bringing back feudalism.
Re: You can't legislate software out of existence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: You can't legislate software out of existence (Score:4, Informative)
Capone got busted on tax evasion. I'm not sure bringing him up is relevant here.
And the FBI has never gotten over the fact that it was IRS accountants who got him..........
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They also can't legislate mathematics, which is the only way they could get this mythical secure encryption that allows in law enforcement but no one else.
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Poodle mentality is rapidly fading. In most of the world, Trump is seen as a dumbed down version of Homer Simpson. We in the UK are put off by the idea of GM food, meat with hormones and chlorinated chicken to the extent that the government might find any kind of siding with the USA difficult. In a lot of other parts of the world, the government has very little influence over what people do (ever heard of Mexico?)
let me translate it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The first is held sacrosanct on both sides of the isle. Don't let the actions of a few fringe weirdos paint half the country for you. And stop worrying about the left or the right, they're both WRONG and misguided. Aim for the center instead of treating politics like a stupid football game.
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Revolvers, as a whole, ARE semiautomatic.
Given that during the average self-defense gunfight, the defending expends nine rounds, the average defensive shooter would need to reload at least once during a fight. Reloading revolvers is slow.
Note, though, that there’s no parity: A party attempting to kill someone need only get close and fire one round, though they’re probably wise to use two to the chest and one to the head, just to be sure. (However, if someone’s sending trained hit-men, you
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Re:Let me translate this for willfull morons. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I can't remember which one but there's an amendment that guarantees a civil trial with jury whenever a damage of "twenty dollars" is suffered. So some interpretation of it's intent is obviously required.
In other words, don't be so fucking literal.
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Trump Supporter Here (Score:4, Informative)
I donated, volunteered, and voted for Trump but I gotta say... fuck his FBI director on this.
Both of my positions as a conservative (small government) and a hacker (individual software freedom) are against this.
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking the Democrats would be any better on this issue. Both parties are chock full of authoritarian fuckwits.
Leave me alone with my guns and computers please. :(
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Papers, papers please.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Land of the free my ass.
USA: “Free Speech is #1.......” (Score:2)
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I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey me and die.
An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish c
"Encryption should have limits" (Score:5, Informative)
>"Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday."
No, it shouldn't. And it can't. We have been over this over and over again. It has been proven in the REAL WORLD over and over again. Either something is secure with encryption or it isn't. You can NOT have back doors or intentional weaknesses in encryption or, eventually, EVERYONE loses and suffers. It is either secure or not secure. Back doors and weaknesses will be found by the "bad doers"- bad governments, rogue elements in governments, corporate competitors, hackers with nothing better to do, terrorists, whatever.
>"it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them."
We have ALWAYS had such playgrounds. Before the days of computers and text messages and Email and web logs and "security" cameras everywhere, the government couldn't just watch what everyone did/say/go/read/etc. We had privacy and security BY DEFAULT due to the fact that it was either impractical or impossible to collect such information and sift through it en-mass. And it would have been UNTHINKABLE that citizens would ever allow the government to do so in a free country.
In an age where information is power, privacy and security are more important than ever. And just passing laws to "protect" this or that isn't going to cut it. Strong encryption is the only option we have. Mess that up, and we have no real protections left.
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Those protections will always exist, regardless of the law. The law can, at best, only attempt to prohibit you from using them.
It is even possible (easy even) to make encryption that is undetectable to anyone who doesn't know *EXACTLY* what to be looking for, so there's no way for anyone else to detect people using it. There's further literally no upper limit to how many of these encryptions that could ever exist, it's as unbounded as human imagination... and considering that we can imagine things like
Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile criminals (and non-stupid people!) will use non-backdoored encryption and not give a fuck.
Criminals will also find the backdoor and have access to everything!
Why the ACTUAL FUCK can't these brainless idiots get this through their thick skulls!?
Re:Damnit.. THIS IS A BINARY ISSUE! (Score:5, Informative)
Because. . . . if you keep repeating the lie, eventually people start to believe it.
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No law ever had a goal of eliminating the crime, only curbing it.
Said that, I do not believe much crime is committed by means of telecommunication. Shady relations between government and business is the major source of the crime (Waste management, anybody?)
backdoors (Score:4, Insightful)
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Give it to another nation, cult, faith, a company, another nations mil, some kingdom, some theocracy.
Split loyalty sets in and another nation is handed the keys.
Media brands, criminals, private investigations, random police, ad brands soon get the same keys.
Protesters, think tanks, NGOs then get the keys.
All with great political, faith, profit, criminal reasons to spy and collect it all.
A world of weak and junk crypto o
Re: backdoors (Score:2)
1. Exclude patriotic Americans with the "wrong politics" from serving their country.
2. Exclude anyone who has experienced typical working-class challenges. Credit, employment history, etc.
3. Exclude anyone with the "wrong" friends.
4. Exclude anyone who reads the "wrong" books.
5. Exclude pot smokers and similar hippies.
6. Exclude anyone who takes their religion seriously.
7. The secrets still walk out the door
8. ???
9. Profit!
and yet another FBI fascist whines..... (Score:5, Informative)
Its because of jackasses like you, Hoover, etc, that we NEED and DEMAND bullet proof network security and encryption.
If you need a refresher on the reasons why, try the following.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And finally, go back and re-read this thoroughly. Shut your yap until such time you UNDERSTAND the material in question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: and yet another FBI fascist whines..... (Score:2)
They're not really fascists. More like Stalinists.
Other Countries (Score:2)
Yes, We Can! (Score:2)
We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement
Si, se puede!
Post? (Score:3)
East German style?
Not just scan the envelope and keep text front and back?
Yet on the internet that electronic mail and data should be opened all the time by the federal gov?
This same conversation happened in 1440 (Score:3)
When Gutenberg's press went into production.
The facts are that encryption is a byproduct of math and any computer science student can develop and encryption system as a school project. This is like trying to hold back the printing press. It's not going to happen.
What did happen is that law and social values evolved to accommodate the printing press. Defamation was compartmentalized into libel versus slander and social and political conventions emerged to balance different interests.
The same is happening here.
Unsolved Elephant in the Room (Score:3)
What they don't really address is that crooks have been pretty good at finding back-doors. No known technology can make a practical back door for law enforcement that's not a potential and fairly likely access point for crooks.
In fact, the crooks have proved smarter and faster than law enforcement, in part because 3rd-world labor is cheap and plentiful compared to law enforcement staff, and crooks are happy to outsource. The crooks have a much bigger eArmy. Law enforcement will lose a labor contest.
The important question they aren't answering (Score:3)
Pandora's box was opened a long time ago. Criminals can use open source encryption to avoid mainstream services.
The question the FBI and others haven't answered is - how is this any benefit to crime control when all it does is relocate the dark users to their own platforms that they alone hold the keys to?
Why therefore break it for the vast majority of law abiding citizens thus exposing us to not just bad actors in government but the criminals too?
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Peter Principle (Score:2)
What jackoff put this guy in charge of the FBI, anyway? And why does he hate freedom so much?
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And why does he hate freedom so much?
He doesn't, it just isn't part of his job. Just like, setting the rules for encryption aren't part of his job, so his comments are just random musings by some old guy with some unrelated important job.
This is all normal and consistent. I wouldn't expect the leader of FEMA to know shit about encryption. And I wouldn't care, same as with this schmuck.
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Is he old? His bio says 52. I don't know what's old any more.
Damn you mathematics.... (Score:2)
Have you no regard for Government power ?
If he is right about encryption (Score:2)
The next step is to make the same argument as to why the government should be able to mandate the placement of microphones in every room of every building. You can’t have an unfettered real-world space where criminals can discuss and plan crimes beyond the reach of law enforcement.
Envelopes (Score:2)
It is still illegal to open somebodies snail mail. Why is encryption any different, legally, than an envelope?
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Opening envelopes takes work for every individual one. For encryption backdoors, it just takes a bit of electricity once the software is written. People like this one believe that they finally have victory in sight in their war on civil liberty and freedom. They want to make sure everybody is afraid to say what they think in any circumstances, because everything can be under surveillance all the time, no safe spots.
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Opening envelopes takes work for every individual one. For encryption backdoors, it just takes a bit of electricity once the software is written.
I understand that they are doing something insidious by simply scanning the from and to address on every piece of mail and making a database of associations. All automated.
Pillow Talk (Score:2)
You definitely shouldn't be able to talk privately with your wife.
No privacy from Leviathan.
Send nudes.
Get that guy some Schineer books (Score:2)
This guy needs to read some good Bruce Schineer books like Data and Goliath and Click here to Kill Everybody. Then maybe these idiots will understand that if their goal is to catch bad guys (i.e. people who are out to commit things like terrorist attacks or mass murders or the other things the FBI is meant to be trying to stop) back-door access to encrypted devices isn't going to help (and in fact can make that job harder in some cases as well as increasing the risk that things like cyberattacks will occur)
current status (Score:3)
Some people in government feel that they should be able to poke into whatever, whenever, wherever they want. If we give these people control, we'll end up like China. No thanks. I like my western democracy. The executive branch+NSA has overstepped these bounds in the past and I don't approve at all. Suck it up, spooks! Spend the time, fill out the paperwork and get your frikkin subpeonas approved by a judge. Every. Single. Time. It's designed to be hard on purpose.
Some people on the other side feel that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. Laws be damned. Some of these people call themselves libertarians, some call themselves anarchists, some are truly criminals, but a lot of them just don't like being told what to do. These people need to get a clue. If you want to live like that, find an uninhabited spot and live as a hermit. Rural Australia, Siberia and the Arctic are good candidates. You won't last long, but you'll be free according to your own terms. The second you want to live in a group with other people (aka a civilization) there are rules to follow.
FBI Director attacks US Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a technical issue.
For the last 232 years, the supreme law of the land in the United States is the US Constitution. All government powers, whether Executive, Legislative, or Judicial, are subordinate to the limits defined in the Constitution.
Claiming that the US Legal system must have unfettered access to all information is the same as saying that the US Legal system must not be fettered or subject to the US Constitution. That leads me to 3 important questions:
Its always been there (Score:2)
The FBI is one of the biggest jokes we have in government today. They have become so lazy about how they investigate crime that I'm sure they are missing whole cargo ships full of drugs, slaves and bootleg media. If they had to pick from those three things to stop, the bootleg media would be their first choice with the slaves a distant third. I wonder if they ever tried to outlaw private meetings and force people to have all conversations through a phone. "Hey we can't have all these people just going t
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The cat's already out of the bag. (Score:2)
Sure we can (Score:2)
Look at us, we already have.
I agree (Score:2)
We can't have people who are exempt from law and out of reach, no matter what kind of damage they do to society. I welcome the push to finally do something about corporations flaunting their disregard for laws.
That's what you mean, right?
Encryption is Math (Score:2)
... and math isnt illegal.
Good luck stopping it when the entire world runs on computers.
Can't be done (Score:2)
Crypto is just mathematics. You can't unlearn maths. For sure, popular apps with strong crypto can be banned or whatever but people can have privacy if they want it.
"Unfettered"... a ghastly thought (Score:3)
"It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide..."
Funny how often officials and policemen unintentionally reveal their inner thoughts when speaking in public.
Can't have... "unfettered"...
Fetters, of course, are chains. Apparently this Gestapo officer believes that all citizens belong in chains - at all times. Even their thoughts, ideas and words must be in chains.
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As long as fingers are breakable, so will be encryption.
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A good reason not to write your key or your finger.
Re:People are often ignorant about computers. (Score:5, Insightful)
And many people over 40 invented your computers, punk.
You're welcome.
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It's almost enough to make you feel like some kind of god, isn't it? The world debating whether or not unbreakable encryption should "exist", and you can create it in five minutes or so any time you want.
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If the existence of idiots is enough to make you feel god-like, I recommend not returning to the surface. Ever.
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Careful with that generalization there bud.
I am over 40, and started with VT220's, Apple //'s, and DOS.
PGP was a thing in the DOS days.
-Miser
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Using them wasn't.
I'm under 40, for a while longer anyway. I can code in assembly on a few different architectures, because when I learned to code, it was often necessary.
My aunt just retired and is looking for something new to do, and so I gave her some Python tutorials. She's loving it. "So much easier than when I first learned to program 100 years ago." It wasn't actually 100 years ago, but she learned to program on punch cards. Punch cards you had to physically mail to the nearest place that actually
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