ṤⱧǠᴆŐƜ
Encryption, Terrorism
Law Enforcement
&
Muslims
In this paper I intend to cover two of today’s most controversial topics; encryption and terrorism and how they relate to law enforcement, privacy and government.
The first major law enforcement argument is that encryption obstructs agencies from preventing terrorism. Recently, FBI director James Comey provided the following example of how end-to-end encryption was problematic:
“In May, when two terrorists attempted to kill a whole lot of people in Garland, Texas, and were stopped by the action of great local law enforcement. That morning, before one of those terrorists, left to try to commit mass murder, he exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist. We have no idea what he said because those messages were encrypted. That is a big problem.”
I disagree completely here with the director on may facets of his remarks. There is no substitute for good old-fashioned police work. The quote above illustrates a severe lack of technological understanding by those whom have the capacity to influence policy. The fact that the alleged messages were encrypted is irrelevant, the plot, if it existed in the first place, was thwarted by exceptional law enforcement officials using due diligence. The director just proved that we can disarm terrorists without the need to subvert our own security and privacy. I personally would like to see the director try to manage the agency without encryption on his devices. We have seen time and time again the effect of little or no encryption on private company databases such as Sony, Target, Ashley Madison and many others within the last few years. These attacks are only increasing. To deliberately lessen security as Comey suggests will only lead to a severe decrease in privacy, data abuse by those entrusted with it and open up new avenues of attack vectors for black-hat hackers. Does it not seem reasonable in light of the most recent government hack that exposed millions of employees private information that we should consider using common sense? Disabling encryption will only put at risk those whom are not technologically inclined. Those whom intend to commit crime will simply alter their communication techniques enlisting other forms of encryption. I can tell you as a security expert that if I want to keep my information, messages, emails and files secure, they will be. Comey also lacks the technological expertise to understand that OTP (One Time Pad) encryption cannot be broken without the key and therefor can be used by anyone, anytime.
As a security expert, I have to question the motives of allowing ANY government agency free access to un-encrypted materials from citizens. Edward Snowden has demonstrated that the NSA does not use its vast data acquisition methods to assist the U.S population but rather to turn this country into a surveillance state and not to mention severely abuse private intimate correspondence of citizens by passing nude images between employees like baseball cards; this is unacceptable and infuriating.
I refer to history in many of my penned documents as the lust for power and control parallels our institution not only today but as far back as the inception of the United States. It is as evident today as it was in 1964 during the Gulf of Tonkin incident that our government, the U.S. government has lied to the people on countless occasions in almost every possible venue. It stands to reason that the recent terrorism propaganda would have an ulterior motive or motives. We must also understand that some government officials still believe in the ideals of the constitution and therefor we cannot cast blanket statements asserting that all government and government officials are corrupt, making such a statement would be as self-defeating as making a statement that all police officers, Muslims, Christians or Californians are inherently bad.
The fact is, the government lies to us, plain and simple. If the FBI want’s to investigate, they will simply have to find another way. If a criminal want’s to hide information from the FBI, NSA, CIA they can. There are many way that law enforcement can adapt to the technological era without invading the privacy of its citizens. I have many colleagues who are able to investigate a person or persons just by using the internet and a search engine. This parallels to a noticeable event in our history when the music industry decided to place security measures on music tracks, the hackers did not suffer, the people whom did not know technology suffered as their devices stopped working. In the end you are not going to stop progress.
First let me say that I do not believe in any god or anyone’s definition of god. That being said, it disturbs me that I see some Americans publicly showing intolerance for Muslims. I am going to get a bit non-scientific and just say what should be said to this group of people. If one draws hate against a Muslim because of current events, putting it mildly, you are an idiot. You are easily controlled by propaganda and sit down for once and read book. I don’t see these types of people harassing the German population calling them Nazi’s just because they are German! It is plain bigotry.
The conclusion of this paper will reiterate some points I have made previously and also it is my hope that the read open his/her mind to the possibility that our government does not have our best interests at heart. We should all seek the truth for ourselves without relying on certain controlled media sources and other manipulated news conglomerates.
Hold on everyone, I am going to give you the answer to the question the government would spend a million dollars on researching.
Q: How do we maintain privacy and allow law enforcement to do their jobs?
A: The same way you did it before computers existed!
When the state begins to trample the rights of it citizens, there is a problem. The government is not willing to let go of its power of the population. That power comes from that data secured by the NSA. Knowing everything one has said and done is stored on a database somewhere instantiates control by fear. I do not assert that all records collected by the NSA have a criminal element to them, I am however asserting that private moments such as pictures, conversations, emails and videos should never be in the hands of the NSA. That point was proven when two NSA employees used the system to stalk their ex-wives.
The absolute disconnect between law makers and technology must be addressed. A person or persons that do not possess sufficient knowledge of Information Technology should never be permitted to make decisions on IT policy. We see that this is being done every day.
Encryption is not a privilege it is an absolute.