INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
I want to talk about malignant incompetence on the part of our elected officials, and this isn&t even about the pandemic
Rather, it about the spectacularly misguided, counterproductive, expensive, and overbearing approach to end-to-end encryption by the USA
along with Australia, Canada, the UK, and New Zealand — the so-called &Five Eyes.&
Consider the TSA Lock program
(Bear with me; this is important.) It an initiative to ensure all luggage locks can be opened by universal keys, held by the TSA and other
aviation security agencies, so that any luggage can be searched at any time
The cited purpose is to prevent terrorism, which of course we all want
Unfortunately, the TSA master keys have been publicly leaked, such that anyone could make copies
Furthermore, TSA agents are numerous, fallible, and prone to misusing their authority.
Still, preventing terrorism is a good thing which we
all want, right? Some people may feel that TSA Locks are an unacceptable intrusion into personal liberties, but a majority seem basically OK
They&re a trade-off between public security and personal privacy which we have collectively more-or-less agreed on.
Suppose, however, that
the situation was tweaked slightly
Suppose that anyone who really wanted to could, at the cost of some slight inconvenience, instead use invulnerable luggage, proof against
keys, scans, and external access of any kind, all for free … and airlines were required to convey that luggage anyhow
Call it the &TSA Locks Except For People Willing To Take An Extra Half Hour To Pack& program.
Suddenly that whole program sounds completely
insane, doesn&t it? Suddenly this isn&t a trade-off at all
Clearly people with anything to hide, such as terrorists, drug smugglers, etc., would immediately switch to using the invulnerable luggage,
and the rest of the TSA Lock mandate would become a gratuitous invasion of personal privacy.
Suddenly the program chief impact would be the
imposition of significant and unnecessary risks, such as leaked master keys, rogue TSA agents, and misuse by tyrannical governments, on the
entire flying public who don&t go to the inconvenience of using invulnerable luggage
Suddenly the program brings no benefit whatsoever
Suddenly it is a poster child for malevolent government overreach, negligence, and authoritarianism.
Well, &TSA Locks Except For People
Willing To Take An Extra Half Hour To Pack& is, I am appalled to report, a perfect and exact metaphor for what the Five Eyes want to do with
They want a ‘golden key‘ back door — aka a TSA Lock — for all messages sent over messaging systems like WhatsApp, Facebook
Messenger, iMessage, etc., despite the inescapable fact that unbreakable encryption — aka invulnerable luggage — has long been widely
available, open-source, and free to all.
Even if you wanted to put that genie back in the bottle (and you really shouldn&t, as it has
granted us many wishes which protect us all) it is far too late now
Even if you wanted to prevent messages with strong encryption from being transferred (which you really really shouldn&t) you couldn&t; there
are too many ways to disguise them as other messages, e.g
Invulnerable luggage is a fact of life, and has been for decades.
And yet governments keep trying to legislate it out of existence, with
legislation that will only harm people who use the metaphorical TSA locks, courtesy of leaked keys, rogue government workers, and
authoritarian governments everywhere
The latest attempt is the EARN IT act, introduced Thursday by a bipartisan coalition
Here is a summary of its most grievous flaws, by Riana Pfefferkorn, he Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford
Center for Internet and Society, who previously described the bill as &how to ban end-to-end encryption without actually banning it.&
The
cited intent of the bill is to fight &child sexual abuse material,& or CSAM
Which of course is a most laudable goal, which we all desire
Just like the goal of preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes
But as with the TSA Locks metaphor, this will simply drive awful people to use their own encryption — their own invulnerable luggage —
while giving authoritarian governments, people with leaked keys, and rogue agents access to potentially trillions of previously secure
private messages worldwide
It is a catastrophically dumb idea crafted by people who don&t understand what they&re doing
Let hope, just as with the pandemic, there still time enough to convince them of the reality.
