Obama calls for public debate over encryption

[Reefa]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Barack Obama said Friday that he probably leans more toward strong computer data encryption than many in law enforcement, but added that he understands investigators' concerns over the matter because of their need to protect people from attacks.

He suggested having a "public conversation" about the issue because "the first time that attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers."

Obama was interviewed by the technology website Re/code after he addressed a White House summit on cybersecurity and consumer protection that was held at Stanford University.

"And so this is a public conversation that we should end up having," he said. "I lean probably further in the direction of strong encryption than some do inside of law enforcement. But I am sympathetic to law enforcement because I know the kind of pressure they're under to keep us safe. And it's not as black and white as it's sometimes portrayed."

The trend toward strong data encryption follows recent, damaging revelations that the U.S. government was collecting phone records and digital communications of millions of people not suspected of wrongdoing.

Obama said companies like Apple are "properly responding" to market demand because people, including him, want to know that their private communications remain so.

Apple's iMessage platform, for example, offers end-to-end encrypted text messages, unlike traditional text messages. That encryption likely means the only way police can see those messages is by obtaining a user's iPhone. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of devices that use iMessage.

Obama said he wants to "narrow the gap" in the differences of opinion over which has more value: privacy or safety. He said people who favor airtight encryption also want to be protected from terrorists.

"There are times where folks who see this through a civil liberties or privacy lens reject that there's any trade-offs involved, and in fact there are," said Obama, who still uses a protected BlackBerry for non-official communications. "It may be we want to value privacy and civil liberty far more than we do the safety issues, but we can't pretend that there's no trade-offs whatsoever."

bigstory.ap.org

[ffi]

Benjamin Franklin said it all in 1755: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

[flash48]

Perhaps before the NSA scandal broke this was a debatable topic; but now it is not.

[danieltex]

Theres is no encryption system any govenment wants its people to have that is totally secure from itself.

What they want is for you to think you have been consulted, listen to, and heard and for you to believe that you have secure communciations from everyone including them or worse - they get you to accept that they can listen in but will only do so if its for your own security. Anyone who thinks that their off the shelf encryption system is worth having and means that their communication is secure is living in fairy cuckoo land!

Now the general public, myself included on the whole doesn't really have secrets as such, So generally I don't need a very secure communication system, however if i did, I know already that it isn't going shield me from the powers that be.

THE only reason why governments ever "ask " for the public input is so they cover their arses when they pass laws they have already written and dress it up with the outcome as the will of the people.The real debate is why are even being asked for our opinion.

And saying they need it for catching terrorists and criminals is not a satisfactory answer. The clever ones stopped using these systems years ago, and the dumb ones we already know how to catch without them.

As for having to get hold of the person's Iphone to break it - what a laugh. Someone has been swallowing Apple's sales blurb for far to long.

All std encryption has and is routinely broken by the NSA,GCHQ and lord knows who else. The government agencies either makes it easy on themselves by having a backdoor courtesy of the manufacturer (knowingly or not), or the very system has already been hacked and broken. That's why you are ALLOWED to have it. Make no mistake, any commercial encryption software you can buy is there by kind permission. Any company who ever develops something that they cannot crack will be bought out or bullied into giving it up.

A marvellous historical example (decade or more past now) was Windows being sold with 128 bit encryption systems in its software. There was an export restriction for mainstream sales to China for some time, then all of a sudden its OK to sell it to them?=128 bit no longer a problem.

Its not that China didn't have access 128 bit encryption or couldn't get hold of a copy of Windows for that matter, but the idea and the restriction gives you an idea of the timing of when 128 was no longer regarded as worth having by the US government and that they wanted China to start using it so they could listen in to commercial communications easily. Its odd that China also has put major blocks on MS product usage within its borders for years possibly for this very reason.

Blackberry systems might be more secure than most for the hackers in the commercial world, but for military grade codebreaking it would be surprising if it even poses a challenge.

Obama uses a secure blackberry to call/text his wife and kids etc. and say hi????; maybe he does, maybe it just looks like a std blackberry. For just general privacy from the press for example, thats fine, but thats all he is ever going to use it for, and there is your answer. The US know how to crack it, and assume others might too. i.e it is not secure. And lets face it that's just the President of the US, who we all know actually knows very little, and deliberately so (deniability). The few secrets he is allowed or wants to know about are not trusted to a blackberry. It is not a good advert for it in any sense.

Apparently the UK police were not happy a few years ago that people organising protests in London were using BBM and they could not crack it in time for their liking to stop and intervene. Note also they have stopped complaining about this. So even the UK police could hack it if given enough time and now probably by the sound of it can do so at their leisure.

Lets be clear - a system is either secure or it isn't. Theres is no middle ground in encyption.

The best secure system is a personal "one time" pad type code. ANY repetitious code can and will be broken with linking information or number crunching. Recent Quantum computing developments are already driving government research into physically secure communication systems (quantum pairing based systems fro example) and hard wired or closed systems.They also rely on sysems that are just too difficult to intercept i.e micro burst transmissions, laser based communications or transmision systems that are just too expensive and expansive without governement level organisation/infrastructure (a good example is how they talk to subs underwater with virtual background level sonar type emission technology - the stuff thats apparently giving Whales effectively tinitus!).

Want secure comms, write a letter.

No, i'm serious - unless someone is already looking at you and yours in depth, in which case you are unlikely to have anything secure, writing a letter in a personal language or code is probably the most secure form of communication now available to joe public, Not fast or indeed helpful for most things but highly unlikely to be intercepted automatically on its content (like emails, texts and phone calls), will not be picked up by targeting geographical or internet source (email and website) and once destroyed physically cannot be recontructed (emails, hardrives, server copies etc).

[ffi]

I guess I am dort of okay with governments trying to break encryption or trying to sneak in backdoors, then it is up to us to try and make better encryption and block the backdoors but I am in principle against banning encryption, it sort of feels like a restriction of free speech or a right of the government to know your inner thoughts.