Encryption

If you were skeptical that polticians would be so audacious as to propose a law effectively requiring encryption backdoors... well, you just got proof.

For most of the past six weeks, the biggest story out of Silicon Valley was Apple’s battle with the FBI over a federal order to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter. The company’s refusal touched off a searing debate over privacy and security in the digital age. But this morning, at a small office in Mountain View, California, three guys made the scope of that enormous debate look kinda small.

Although the FBI has apparently paused its battle with Apple over encryption, there's now another branch of the technological world under fire: burner phones. A new house bill, introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), would essentially kill the anonymous prepaid phone industry.

The bill calls for retailers of prepaid phones to collect personal information on all buyers, including name, birth date and home address. The retailers would also be told to verify the info with a driver's license number, social security number or other suitable form of ID.

On the eve of his company’s court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a small theater in Cupertino to introduce a few new devices. The message of the event’s opening, though? Encryption matters. And soon, on iOS, it will matter even more.

While Cook’s remarks were brief, they were determined.

During a session at the South by SouthWest conference on March 11, President Obama was asked about his views on the Apple-FBI case—in which the FBI wants Apple to unlock the iPhone 5c cell phone used by San Bernardino County, Calif., shooter Syed Farook—in light of the fact that the president and his administration are at SXSW asking the tech community to help improve government overall.

As tensions heighten in the ongoing San Bernardino iPhone encryption case, some of Silicon Valley's top technology companies are said to be bolstering their own security measures.

The Guardian has it on good authority that WhatsApp is planning to encrypt in-app voice calls as it does with its secure messaging service in the coming weeks. Facebook, which purchased WhatsApp for around $19 billion in 2014, is also said to be considering tighter security for its self-branded Messenger app.

The US Department of Justice has opened another legal front in the ongoing war over easy-to-use strong encryption.

According to a Saturday report in The New York Times, prosecutors have gone head-to-head with WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Facebook. Citing anonymous sources, the Times reported that "as recently as this past week," federal officials have been "discussing how to proceed in a continuing criminal investigation in which a federal judge had approved a wiretap, but investigators were stymied by WhatsApp’s encryption."

Considering the size and semiconducting characteristics of carbon nanotubes, the prospect of using them to replace silicon is quite tempting. Unfortunately, there are a couple of known obstacles preventing that from being possible, at least for now. For those of us less scientifically informed, carbon nanotubes derive from random combinations of metallic and semiconducting nanotubes. As a result, when wiring up a processor, this makes the act of arranging them as needed an excessive engineering challenge.

Digital encryption has made headlines recently, with a U.S. court ordering Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in last December's attack in San Bernardino, Calif. — an order Apple has resisted, citing privacy concerns.

Amidst this, the Mozilla Foundation has launched a new campaign to explain encryption technology to the public. CBC Radio technology columnist Dan Misener explains the campaign.

The legal saga between Apple and the FBI has thrust encryption into the government’s policy spotlight again – but only if you live in the United States. In Canada, you could be excused for not knowing such a debate exists .

Ever since FBI director James Comey characterized the rising tide of encrypted data as “going dark” in an October, 2014 speech, American civil liberties groups, cryptographers, private companies and politicians have argued ceaselessly about encryption’s merits and the dangers of so-called backdoors.