Until recently, I have been of
the opinion that allowing terrorists access to strong encryption
technology was probably a mistake. But I was also torn with the need of
having a right to security and privacy.
In reading the article below, I was relieved that there are many more ways to capture terrorist activity. Although some of these represent potentially other methods of privacy compromise, hopefully there will be counterbalances for this.
It is an article all netizens should read.
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New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to
Track Suspects, Study Finds
By DAVID
E. SANGER JAN. 31, 2016 - www.nytimes.com
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey,
and other Justice Department officials have said moves by technology firms to
encrypt data have choked off critical ways to monitor suspects. Credit Kevin
hagen for The New York Times
WASHINGTON —
For more than two years the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies have
warned that encrypted communications are creating a “going dark” crisis that
will keep them from tracking terrorists and kidnappers. Now, a study in which
current and former intelligence officials participated concludes that the
warning is wildly overblown, and that a raft of new technologies — like
television sets with microphones and web-connected cars — are creating ample
opportunities for the government to track suspects, many of them worrying.
“ ‘Going
dark’ does not aptly describe the long-term landscape for government
surveillance,” concludes the study, to be published Monday by the Berkman
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
The study
argues that the phrase ignores the flood of new technologies “being packed with
sensors and wireless connectivity” that are expected to become the subject of
court orders and subpoenas, and are already the target of the National Security Agency as it places
“implants” into networks around the world to monitor communications abroad.
The products,
ranging from “toasters to bedsheets, light bulbs, cameras, toothbrushes, door
locks, cars, watches and other wearables,” will give the government increasing
opportunities to track suspects and in many cases reconstruct communications
and meetings.
The study,
titled, “Don’t Panic: Making
Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate,” is among the sharpest
counterpoints yet to the contentions of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director,
and other Justice Department officials, mostly by arguing that they have
defined the issue too narrowly.
Over the past
year, they have repeatedly told Congress that the move by Apple
to automatically encrypt data on its iPhone, and similar steps by Google and
Microsoft, are choking off critical abilities to track suspects, even with a
court order.
President
Obama, however, concluded last fall that any effort to legislate a government
“back door” into encrypted communications would probably create a pathway for
hackers — including those working for foreign governments like Russia, China
and Iran — to gain access as well, and create a precedent for authoritarian
governments demanding similar access.
Most Republican
candidates for president have demanded that technology companies create a way
for investigators to unlock encrypted communications, and on the Democratic
side, Hillary Clinton has taken a tough line on Silicon Valley companies, urging them to join the fight against the
Islamic State.
Apple’s chief
executive, Timothy
D. Cook, has led the charge on the other side. He recently told a
group of White House officials seeking technology companies’ voluntary help to
counter the Islamic State that the government’s efforts to get the keys to
encrypted communications would be a boon for hackers and put legitimate
business transactions, financial data and personal communications at greater
risk.
The Harvard
study, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, was unusual because it involved
technical experts, civil libertarians and officials who are, or have been, on
the forefront of counterterrorism. Larry Kramer, the former dean of Stanford
Law School, who heads the foundation, noted Friday that until now “the policy
debate has been impeded by gaps in trust — chasms, really — between academia,
civil society, the private sector and the intelligence community” that have
impeded the evolution of a “safe, open and resilient Internet.”
Among the chief
authors of the report is Matthew G. Olsen, who was a director of the National
Counterterrorism Center under Mr. Obama and a general counsel of the National
Security Agency.
Two current
senior officials of the N.S.A. — John DeLong, the head of the agency’s
Commercial Solutions Center, and Anne Neuberger, the agency’s chief risk
officer — are described in the report as “core members” of the group, but did
not sign the report because they could not act on behalf of the agency or the
United States government in endorsing its conclusions, government officials
said.
“Encryption is
a real problem, and the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies are right to raise
it,” Mr. Olsen said Sunday. But he noted that in their testimony officials had
not described the other technological breaks that are falling their way, nor
had they highlighted cases in which they were able to exploit mistakes made by
suspects in applying encryption to their messages.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and
computer science at Harvard who convened the group, said in an interview that
the goal was “to have a discussion among people with very different points of
view” that would move “the state of the debate beyond its well-known bumper
stickers. We managed to do that in part by thinking of a larger picture,
specifically in the unexpected ways that surveillance might be attempted.”
He noted that
in the current stalemate there was little discussion of the “ever-expanding
‘Internet of things,’ where telemetry from teakettles, televisions and light
bulbs might prove surprisingly, and worryingly, amenable to subpoena from
governments around the world.”
Those
technologies are already being exploited: The government frequently seeks
location data from devices like cellphones and EZ Passes to track suspects.
The study notes
that such opportunities are expanding rapidly. A Samsung “smart” television
contains a microphone meant to relay back to Samsung voice instructions to the
TV — “I want to see the last three ‘Star Wars’ movies” — and a Hello, Barbie
brought out by Mattel last year records children’s conversations with the doll,
processes them over the Internet and sends back a response.
The history of
technology shows that what is invented for convenience can soon become a target
of surveillance. “Law enforcement or intelligence agencies may start to seek
orders compelling Samsung, Google, Mattel, Nest or vendors of other networked
devices to push an update or flip a digital switch to intercept the ambient
communications of a target,” the report said.
These
communications, too, may one day be encrypted. But Google’s business model
depends on picking out key words from emails to tailor advertisements for
specific users of Gmail, the popular email service. Apple users routinely back
up the contents of their phones to iCloud — a service that is not encrypted and
now is almost a routine target for investigators or intelligence agencies. So
are the tracking and mapping systems for cars that rely on transmitted global
positioning data.
“I think what
this report shows is that the world today is like living in a big field that is
more illuminated than ever before,” said Joseph Nye, a Harvard government
professor and former head of the National Intelligence Council. “There will be
dark spots — there always will be. But it’s easy to forget that there is far
more data available to governments now than ever before.”
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===============================================
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