A long-running debate concerning recent advances in consumer data encryption came to a head this summer when Apple rebuffed a Justice Department court order demanding access to iMessage transcripts, causing some in the law enforcement community to call for legal action against the company.
The worst thing about having a phone or laptop stolen isn’t necessarily the loss of the physical object itself, though there’s no question that that part sucks. It’s the amount of damage control you have to do afterward. Calling your phone company to get SIMs deactivated, changing all of your account passwords, and maybe even canceling credit cards are all good ideas, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
Yesterday FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates testified before a Senate Judiciary committee that they are stumped by end-to-end encryption and that while they want to work with the private sector to come up with a solution Yates noted that a legislative mandate “may ultimately be necessary” to force companies to comply.
Should all websites employ HTTPS browsing which helps make surfing the web more secure, at least as far as your privacy is concerned? Well some digital rights advocates are claiming that should be the way moving forward and while there are plenty of websites out there that continue to use the HTTP standard, you will be pleased to learn that Reddit won’t.
A union representing U.S. government workers says it believes detailed personal information on millions of current and former federal employees that was stolen by hackers was not encrypted.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) said the attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) resulted in the theft of all personnel data for every federal employee.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook echoed words from the security community on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s current push for backdoor encryption, which could weaken the current mobile encryption techniques used by Apple, Google and other technology companies.
Speaking at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC, Cook said “So let me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption or taking it away harms good people who are using it for the right reason,” and called the FBI plea for removal of mobile encryption “incredibly dangerous.”
"A lot of what we're talking about tonight isn't 'Here's how to make yourself totally secure and defeat the NSA, and you'll never get spied on.' It's about 'If you do these things, and if we all do these things, [surveillance will] become more expensive, and more hassle'," said Tom Sulston over a cup of tea late Friday afternoon.
Some of the technology industry's largest companies have applied pressure on President Obama over the issue of data encryption.
Random numbers in cryptography are key (pun intended). They can be a weak point in a crypto system and, consequently, are frequently the target of attack. So I've been trying to get my head around the subject of randomness.
The Obama administration hopes Silicon Valley technologists can think of a system with strong encryption that could be pierced legally by one party without opening the door to others, a White House official said.
White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel said at the annual RSA Conference on security that he is trying to set starting principles for a broad public discussion on the issue, which has been a major source of tension with technology companies and other cyber experts.
