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Encryption Facebook Technology

Facebook Tells US Attorney General It's Not Prepared To Get Rid Of Encryption On WhatsApp And Messenger (buzzfeednews.com) 109

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Facebook said it would not weaken end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps, despite pressure from world governments, in a letter to US Attorney General Bill Barr and UK and Australian leaders. From a report: The letter, sent Monday, came in response to an October open letter from Barr, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, and then-acting US homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan, which raised concerns that Facebook's continued implementation of end-to-end encryption on its WhatsApp and Messenger apps would prevent law enforcement agencies from finding illegal activity such as child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling. The US, UK, and Australian governments asked the social networking company to design a backdoor in its encryption protocols, or a separate way for law enforcement to gain access to user content. "It is simply impossible to create such a backdoor for one purpose and not expect others to try and open it," wrote WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and Messenger head Stan Chudnovsky in Facebook's response. "People's private messages would be less secure and the real winners would be anyone seeking to take advantage of that weakened security. That is not something we are prepared to do."
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Facebook Tells US Attorney General It's Not Prepared To Get Rid Of Encryption On WhatsApp And Messenger More

Facebook Tells US Attorney General It's Not Prepared To Get Rid Of Encryption On WhatsApp And Messenger

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  • Encryption Backdoors are Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @12:52PM (#59504758)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    This is pretty much why it won't work.

    • Re:Encryption Backdoors are Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @03:09PM (#59505288)
      Backdoors can and will be abused by any asshole with some technical knowledge and time. The real bad guys will use other communication means anyway, what the agencies trully wants is the old absolute power over the average person.

    • The 1980s called and wants it's crypto debate back.

      Remember Skipjack?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • The real winners (Score:3)

    by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @12:56PM (#59504776) Journal

    and the real winners would be anyone seeking to take advantage of that weakened security.

    That's why they ask. Even though a lot of agencies around the world have "keeping digital communication safe" as their prime objective, they are actively endangering it

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

      It is almost as if Facebook is giving the Trump admin the "all clear" to keep using whatsapp...

    • I'm not a fan of FB nor do I really trust them.

      These days, what's the best way to send encrypted? Anonymous?

      Back in the day there were the anonymous emailers, the ones you'd set up with multiple "hops" with layers of encryption to each remailer, and if you wanted to be really anon....you could have the end point be on a USENET group someone would know to look for.

      I thought I heard years ago that there weren't many of these left and that what was there had been compromised.

      What's the best way to send ema

      • Considering that all encryption is likely broken...

        1. Fall back to one-time pads and use a physical means for pad exchange to create encoded message
        2. Use stegongraphy and conceal your original message in an image on some massively available medium (USENET or 4chan/Archive), as a virtual dead-drop

        Anything else is easier, but will likely tie your identity directly to the encrypted message, which we must all concede will no remain encrypted for lon

        • Considering that all encryption is likely broken...

          Is this something that is largely believed to be true?

          If so, why would governments be trying to get FB and others to put backdoors in?

          Or are you thinking this is a smoke show for the government entities to entice bad guys to use these systems?

          • The first rule in breaking all encryption is letting people think that encryption still works.

            • The first rule in being a complete idiot is to think in circles without being able to falsify anything.

              Once you have that part down, everything else is just a question of style.

          • the truth is that the government security apparatus will never let you know what they have or have not broken. The FBI, famously, when trying to force Apple to build in backdoors for them, had already broken Apple's encryption, they were just trying to force the issue to pretend to the world that they couldn't get into Apple products and to force Apple to do their (illegal) bidding.

            • Weirdly enough, those same governments use the same algorithms as us for classified data...

            • You say "famously," but what you describe has slightly different details than anything that has been widely reported.

              Are you sure it was the FBI that cracked something?

              And are sure it was Apple's encryption that somebody broke, and not some other aspect of the device?

        • "Considering that all encryption is likely broken..."

          I gather you don't have any understanding of how encryption works.

        • I doubt that all encryption is broken. If worried, use VeraCrypt's triple cascade, which will ensure that if AES is broken, SERPENT will definitely hold up. If still worried, find another algorithm that one can use either "below" or above. AES is getting all the attention, but if I were to use an encryption algorithm that would have the best chance at being secure 30-50 years from now, I'd go with Serpent.

      • Ultimately, I wonder if the best answer would be going back to NNTP, perhaps a subset of NNTP servers that are not for warez or IP content, but something along the line of alt.anonymous.messages, where one doesn't know where the message really came from, other than the server that injected it into the NNTP pool, and only the person with the key could decrypt it. With forward secrecy, a key can be used for a communication session, then tossed.

        That might be the way to do things if an anonymous protocol has t

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Nobody wants anonymous communication because it will instantly be overwhelmed by spam, phishing and trolls.

        That's why most of the free email providers have gone away and the ones left want a phone number.

        Signal works for semi anonymous encrypted chat but people using it in China have been disappearing so just be aware that it doesn't obfuscate the fact that you are using it.

  • Do some work ya lazy bastards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @12:57PM (#59504782)

    For once here I am talking to law enforcement, not Facebook.

    It doesn't matter if communications are encrypted if you are doing the work required to find people doing bad things.

    It may be somewhat easier to scan for what you think is bad, but also a lot of fans positives and "catching" people not really guilty.

    So do the real work of finding and monitoring criminals instead of relying on some hub to open every single private comm channel for you, so that you can also vicariously snoop on your ex GF or whatever.

    • Re:Do some work ya lazy bastards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jodido ( 1052890 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:26PM (#59504872)
      This would be useful if "law enforcement"'s purpose was solving crimes. It's not. It's convicting people. So they don't actually care if it's a false positive. As far as they're concerned, there's no such thing. Throwing you in jail is just as good as throwing whoever actually did it in jail.

      • True, the end goal is very rarely "justice", instead the end goal is getting reelected, moving up the legal ladder, impressing the boss, and so forth. I am no longer surprised when someone is freed from prison because of new incontrovertible evidence and the original DA still pouts and cries that someone dangerous is being let go.

    • It would be impossible for anything to remain private.
      You think the black hats wouldn't put major effort to finding this? It would a gold mine for them.

    • Exactly. Many of the threats that are called out are happening in plain sight. Worse, *our elected officials are engaging in some them with impunity*. The same people who are publicly denying this stuff is happening want to weaken encryption to try to prosecute the rest of us.

      Are we living inside a bad joke?

  • Telling Bill Barr to eat a dick (Score:5, Informative)

    by mmdurrant ( 638055 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:07PM (#59504810)
    ... should be SOP. Our nation's top cop is a corrupt fucking scum bag.

    • Re:Telling Bill Barr to eat a dick (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:35PM (#59504910) Journal
      Why do you think I refer to it at the moment as the 'Department of Injustice'? He's a Trump sycophant; he puts his loyalty to Trump ahead of his loyalty to the Constitution and Law. Allegedly. We won't know that for certain, see actual hard evidence of it, for years to come, unfortunately. But even I have to point out that whether Barr is or is not corrupt has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is that having so-called 'backdoors' in encryption technology is monumentally stupid. You may as well just outlaw encryption entirely and send all communications 'in the clear' instead, at least it's less processing overhead, and then no one suffers from any illiusions of security or privacy and would act accordingly.

  • There is no Private Back door. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:22PM (#59504860)

    Computers are a Human Made Devices and they are people (A lot of people) who know how these things work and communicate.
    A back door for the "Good Guys" will be used by the "Bad Guys" because these "Bad Guys" know how these computers work just as much as the "Good Guys" do. These "Bad Guys" can be anywhere, including inside the company. So End to End encryption is very useful, Because the developers and network engineers who are in the company cannot access the flowing data.

    Now I am not keen of Law Enforcement looking at my family pictures and trying use that data to profile me. But I am more afraid of a rouge engineer at Facebook, sending this information to someone else who may use it to blackmail me, or use me as someone to be blackmailed for.

    • I am frequently reminded of a quote from a a long-ago DefCon conference, "Never underestimate the effectiveness of a brute force attack"

      All Your Rainbows are Belong to Us!

  • Just a suspicion (Score:3)

    by AVryhof ( 142320 ) <amos @ v r y h o f r e s earch.com> on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:28PM (#59504878) Homepage
    But I wonder if this is more about making the Government(s) pay for the data, rather than to protect people's privacy.

    • But I wonder if this is more about making the Government(s) pay for the data, rather than to protect people's privacy.

      Not likely. The PR is worth more than whatever the governments might pay, particularly when you factor in the massive negative PR they'd get when info about the sale inevitably leaked.

    • Not a suspicion, just a stupid conspiracy theory.

  • Funny how Facebook plays both sides of this. On one hand, they want strong encryption, on the other hand, they want to slurp any data that touches their apps.

    My recommendation: Just use Signal for short messages, and for longer stuff, break out your PGP/gpg keys, and use Firefox Send for 2.5 gig stuff of smaller, or use a box or AWS bucket and send/receive using GPG or VeraCrypt (with a keyfile encrypted via PGP/gpg) for larger items.

  • You first (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tokolosh ( 1256448 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:32PM (#59504892)

    If the government is serious about this, they should provide a backdoor into themselves, so that we can catch any wrongdoing on their part. If they can demonstrate good faith by doing this, I am willing to have a backdoor into my Whatsapp.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by balbeir ( 557475 )
      Um. Given that we just entered the Caligula era of american politics, I would rather keep that away from them.

  • Arggh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:32PM (#59504894)

    .... god damn shitty government, how DARE you make me side with Facebook on something....

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      .... god damn shitty government, how DARE you make me side with Facebook on something....

      Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Though in Facebook's case I wouldn't wait for the second time.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

        A broken clock is never right, because you can't know when the actual time matches the broken clock time by looking at the broken clock.

      • .... god damn shitty government, how DARE you make me side with Facebook on something....

        Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Though in Facebook's case I wouldn't wait for the second time.

        You're good. Facebook runs on military time. Its broken clock is only right once a day, vigil over.

  • Just wait a month or two. Whom ever is Lord Trumpkins top Justice Department's lackey will more than likely be fired via twitter or quit in disgust. Leaving nobody in the US to follow through with anything. MAGA at it's finest.

  • This is what I mean:

    Some entity should create enough headache to its products that opting for the non encrypted messaging platform becomes an obvious choice.

    Once the potential for a revenue hit becomes apparent, Facebook will relent.

  • ..however: at least they've got the technical reasons correct and are sticking to it. Ostensibly. While I'm willing to golf-clap for them for ostensibly sticking to their guns on this, I have to say I'm not convinced that they don't already have their own 'backdoor' into everyones' allegedly private, secure conversations. This is Facebook we're talking about, after all, sticking their nose into everything everyone does and says is at the core of their entire business model.

    Just said this elsewhere in thi

    • I'd sooner see all encryption banned across the board than see any encryption compromised, and have everyone communicate and conduct their business 'in the clear' instead. At least that way no one would suffer from any illusion of 'privacy' or 'security', and (hopefully) act accordingly.

      That's nice. Of course it won't work. You might give up your encryption, but that won't stop other people from using their own in any way. Yes, you can tell a message is encrypted by the gibberish, but that won't stop so

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        I wrote a short story in which the bad guys coordinated their attacks by waiting for a picture of coordinator's daughter to show up on his MySpace page with a clock in the background and a calendar with one day marked "Birthday".

        • Yes, and as you, I, and many others have pointed out in past iterations of this same discussion, bad guys will use 'unbroken' encryption, or other methods of obfuscation to hide their real messages, meanwhile everyone stuck with 'backdoored' encryption will GET 'backdoored' by criminals and any nosy people who have figured out what the 'backdoor' is. This has all been covered ad nauseum; now, if everyone will just bury the DoJ with letters explaining it to them, then when we drag them out into the street to
      • but that won't stop other people from using their own in any way.
        Yes yes yes we all already know this, have covered it extensively, to the point where it shouldn't even have to be mentioned, common knowledge, etc.
  • Since this is a legal operating company in the USA it will have to go by the rules. If we don't stand up against the rule makers on their decisions we should not be surprised when they go against us since obviously that is what always eventually happens. They need to be fought against in the court of opinion or if that does not work voted out. This will not go well for Facebook since it needs everyone to agree and unfortunately I don't see that right now. The only people that will have end to end encryption

  • First time in forever Facebook made a decision I agree with. Now, don't give in under pressure, because they will ramp up the pressure, it's what they do when they don't get what they want.

    • You're assuming that the NSA didn't already crack Facebook's encryption years ago, and that this is all for show.

      Hell... I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook already KNOWS that their encryption has been cracked, and both sides are just doing this for security/privacy theater.

      So, keep posting those drug deals in FB Messenger, criminals... nothing to worry about there ;)

      • just as an FYI, if the NSA cracked it, they probably wouldn't tell the FBI... these differing agencies each have their own agenda's and their own views of the world... For example, during WWII when the Germans codes were broken, the GCHQ allowed allied ships to be sunk by German U-Boats because they did not want the Germans to know their codes were cracked.

        reference: https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re 'Germans to know their codes were cracked"... Germany actually did try and add some extra quality to their codes until the end of the war..
          Re "GCHQ" and keeping secrets... Ireland and Irish supporters in the USA was their best work. Nobody worked out that nation wide tracking ..

          The tension between the GCHQ, NSA and FBI now.
          The GCHQ/NSA wants no news on collection ever. Collect everything as in past decades and act as needed eg. the SAS did something.

          The FBI needs good news often, so it needs the

      • "You're assuming that the NSA didn't already crack Facebook's encryption years ago, and that this is all for show."

        True, but only because he isn't a moron.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      and the PRISM years was?

  • Every person I've ever talked to who is connected with the alphabet agencies says that the NSA can already pretty much read anything you have no matter whether it's encrypted or not, and that articles like this are just well... public relations.

    • They could read Osama bin Laden's messages, because it was worth however much effort they had to put into it. They could get Facebook to send a backdoored app update to one user, with a court order.

      If you make a reasonable effort to be secure, you can make it not worth their time as part of routinely monitoring everyone. Facebook is fighting backdooring everyone.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Hillie ( 63573 )

        I suppose this is true. Though my friends who are in the industry or know people who are imply that they can do it easily at will.

    • They're capable of intercepting and decoding just about any message, given time and effort. That adds up to serious dollars though.
  • what the NSA got with PRISM?

  • where's the freaking article?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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