US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks out for strong encryption
The Pentagon wholeheartedly supports strong encryption and opposes efforts to add back doors to secure software, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at a cybersecurity conference on Thursday.
While Carter refused to comment on the Apple case specifically -- calling it a "law enforcement matter" when asked -- he did say that for departments within his purview, "data security is an absolute necessity. We're foursquare behind strong data security and encryption."
He later added that he is "not a believer in back doors or a single technical approach to what is a complex problem," according to the AP.
Carter also noted that addressing the current divide between Washington and Silicon Valley will require cooperation from both sides.
If the parties refuse to come together, it could result in legislation "written by people who won't have technical knowledge, maybe written in an atmosphere of anger or grief," he said. The net effect of such legislative reaction could cause more harm than good.
While Carter refused to comment on the Apple case specifically -- calling it a "law enforcement matter" when asked -- he did say that for departments within his purview, "data security is an absolute necessity. We're foursquare behind strong data security and encryption."
He later added that he is "not a believer in back doors or a single technical approach to what is a complex problem," according to the AP.
Carter also noted that addressing the current divide between Washington and Silicon Valley will require cooperation from both sides.
If the parties refuse to come together, it could result in legislation "written by people who won't have technical knowledge, maybe written in an atmosphere of anger or grief," he said. The net effect of such legislative reaction could cause more harm than good.
Comments
Although, his non-comment on Apple's position, calling it a "law enforcement matter" seems to undo any of his other rhetoric about "Washington and Silicon Valley" cooperation.
No joke.
If if a machine can be built in the USA to do so, it can be replicated in other countries by less than trustworthy regimes.
Mmand you really think the hacker coalitions don't have that kind of cash easy?
lol
I had put a lot of thought about some compromise as well which included a lot of the features you’ve mentioned. I was also going to propose that it would take 4 people but I went for the ACLU head rather than Apple Chairman. I had actual personal hardware keys as well as their biometrics using their TouchID with their own iPhone wired in the machine as well, to deter any kidnapping intentions, all in a Faraday cage. There should be full disclosure of the warrant on the DOJ and Apple websites and a video recording of the event.
However, I stopped refining the whole idea when I realized that even with all these kinds of measures, all of this is still moot. In between drafts of this plan I had posted a reply in some forum about Cyrus Vance quoting a prisoner that iOS was a “gift from God”. This was part of my reply :
Strong encryption is the gift from God, [not iOS] and is available in 865 different flavours, most of them from outside the US. Bad guys are covered, they [understand] it, they have it. Normal good citizens mostly don’t. Apple did not invent it, they just democratized it and made it the easy baked-in default for everybody. If the government opens up Apple’s encryption to the world, it’s not the end of strong encryption, just more inconvenient for the good citizens to set it up, the bad people already are all set.
So here’s my point. Even if we had all this great apparatus described here in place, that would all be just for iOS encryption. All the other handful of OSes, hundreds of encryption products and thousands of phone models are still not covered, they are and will remain the choice of bad guys. And if, heaven forbid, the FBI would actually win this, it would be devastating, but only for the convenience of having this robust and easy pre-installed option as the default choice on a brand new pristine iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I would still be pissed, because like most here I buy Apple products for their ease of use, but it would simply mean we’ll just have to begrudgingly install some 3rd party product to get back to where we were, meaning the same level of protection as the bad guys, perhaps not as good or convenient at first, but I would think Apple would come up with an API akin to the content blocker API that would ease that task for developers as well as users. And if the DOJ or other foreign government would want to render such an API illegal, it will take time, more legal wrangling until another workaround pops up, and round and round we go. At which point I would hope that everyone would come to their senses and put a stop to the futile cat and mouse game that is still pervasive in many other matters of security. I call upon the authorities to save everybody, including themselves, time, money, resources and mostly aggravation, and do it now.
Will people need to jailbreak their phone for total security? Sound Ironic?