US officials ponder ban of end-to-end encryption

Well this is beyond shocking....

Senior Trump administration officials want to ban the end-to-end encryption, according to a report by Politico on a National Security Council meeting that took place earlier this week. The encryption challenge, called “going dark”, was discussed with officials from key agencies, including FBI, Department of Justice, Commerce and State Departments. There was no final decision, but the report suggests the issue will not stay in the background for much longer.

Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook rely on end-to-end encryption of data where only users sending and receiving it can read it. However, that way terrorism, drug trafficking and child pornography cannot be clamped, officials claim.

The DOJ and FBI were quoted that catching criminals is a top priority, “even if watered-down encryption creates hacking risks”. They are backed by the IRS and Secret Service, but the Commerce and State Departments pointed out there are going to be economic and diplomatic consequences of mandating encryption “backdoors”.

https://m.gsmarena.com/us_officials_...news-37845.php

I would think they already have ways around all that "end-to-end encryption", considering that many of the "end points" are simply massive server data centres located on US soil.

Posted via CB10 on Z10

Originally Posted by spARTacus

I would think they already have ways around all that "end-to-end encryption", considering that many of the "end points" are simply massive server data centres located on US soil.

Posted via CB10 on Z10

e2e means the endpoints are the device itself.

If they have ways in, it would be complicated. Especially for the services that have published their specs or that have had 3rd party review.

Sadly, we have officials now who likely can’t spell encryption or western liberal democracy. So this could go lots of different ways.

When one end point is a mobile device and the other end point is some sort of cloud based service, then the cloud based service become a nice funnel point for a lot of traffic and a natural place for monitoring.

Posted via CB10 on Z10

Originally Posted by spARTacus

When one end point is a mobile device and the other end point is some sort of cloud based service, then the cloud based service become a nice funnel point for a lot of traffic and a natural place for monitoring.

Posted via CB10 on Z10

That is not what end to end means in message apps. The ends are the two devices of the two users.

Otherwise it’s just not end to end encryption. If they banned server to device encryption, that would mean banning all messaging apps.

time to bring back BBM consumer the perfect choice without end to end encryption

Like with many other things, I think the idea "if you ban it, only criminals will have it" applies here as well. Let's hope they figure something out that doesn't restrict freedom or privacy.

I imagine that most of the blowback from this would be from larger enterprises who have a real need to keep business secrets out of the hands of competitors.

Originally Posted by PantherBlitz

I imagine that most of the blowback from this would be from larger enterprises who have a real need to keep business secrets out of the hands of competitors.

Might make a case for some type of licensing control... like BlackBerry has with BBMe and BlackBerry's UEM.

In that case the government could subpoena BlackBerry to tell them the company who sent a message that they suspect, and then subpoena the company for the data they need from their servers - as most these do retention.

I thought it was Europe that had the monopoly on "dumb internet regulation ideas", guess America wanted to regain the top spot.

Originally Posted by yohannyphm

time to bring back BBM consumer the perfect choice without end to end encryption

Originally Posted by PantherBlitz

I imagine that most of the blowback from this would be from larger enterprises who have a real need to keep business secrets out of the hands of competitors.

Or from the EFF and the other usual suspects, and for good reason. Maybe even Facebook, since they've pivoted Whatsapp to E2E.