What's App and others, encryption

[BBassic]

I'm sorry but the example of supporting a football team as ever being subversive is ridiculous. Nor am I sure what historical events can be evidenced to suggest that providing a level of access under condition would have avoided some abusive governemental behaviour.

On the other hand I am sure there are plenty of historical acts that could have been avoided or the perpetrators brough to justice if such access were possible

We live in a world where people are persecuted for their race, gender, sexual preferences, wealth, mental acuity, religious beliefs and countless other reasons. Considering that, it's entirely feasible that someone, somewhere, could be persecuted for following a football team.

 

[father_and_son]

I'm sorry but the example of supporting a football team as ever being subversive is ridiculous. Nor am I sure what historical events can be evidenced to suggest that providing a level of access under condition would have avoided some abusive governemental behaviour.

On the other hand I am sure there are plenty of historical acts that could have been avoided or the perpetrators brough to justice if such access were possible

Tell that to the Jews in 1940's Europe. I'm sure that they felt that just being Jewish would be somehow equated with being subversive was a ridiculous suggestion.
Or homosexuals... or gypsies... or academics... or American Communists... or people who wear glasses... or any other group that have been subject to abuses by their government.

I deliberately chose "Supporting a Football Team" as an example because it can be seen as such an innocent activity. But what if hooliganism were to rise again, worse that the 90s and progressed to such a state that the government of the time had no choice but to clamp down. What if you had stopped going to matches because of the violence, but the government were able to single you out as a football fan because of NSC. What if you disappeared in the middle of the night because the government knew you HAD BEEN a football fan in the past. Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe, 70s South America, 60s USA, modern-day China, ... the list of abuses by governments against their own citizens is long and shameful.

 

[clippedgull]

I would be extremely surprised if GCHQ or the NSA are unable to unscramble communications on these encrypted apps if they so wish. Maybe it's a double bluff being played out by the public faces of Government

 

[SK1NT]

We live in a world where people are persecuted for their race, gender, sexual preferences, wealth, mental acuity, religious beliefs and countless other reasons. Considering that, it's entirely feasible that someone, somewhere, could be persecuted for following a football team.

Agree...

I'm guessing most WhatsApp users, like myself, just use the app, because it's free for most to send images, videos, and phone and video calls.
If you have nothing to hide, then there's no problem.
The encryption thingy is just gimmicky really. IMO
Unless you're all budding secret agents!

If you have nothing to hide why object to it. If full encryption was banned so that anybody could read it as per facebook comments etc a few husbands and wives wouldnt be happy.

You may currently feel safe anyone seeing your watsapp messages now however with the speed and hatred within our society rapidly increasing it maybe you that will be the next target to be persecuted for beliefs or a group that are currently accepted in society. This is morally wrong. i do not want to see society going the way of 1984.

On another note the government are so incompetent at keeping private documents safe i wouldn't trust them to look after my cats. It's just a another load of private information that they can be careless about.


Technically is cannot be done anyway. You either have encryption or you don't . Can't allow back door access.

 

[BBassic]

I would be extremely surprised if GCHQ or the NSA are unable to unscramble communications on these encrypted apps if they so wish. Maybe it's a double bluff being played out by the public faces of Government

I'm absolutely positive they can do it. You could be right in the sense that maybe they're already doing it and this recent debate is just a Govt. play to drum up public support for an eventual law being passed.

 

[Rugrat]

Tell that to the Jews in 1940's Europe. I'm sure that they felt that just being Jewish would be somehow equated with being subversive was a ridiculous suggestion.
Or homosexuals... or gypsies... or academics... or American Communists... or people who wear glasses... or any other group that have been subject to abuses by their government.

I deliberately chose "Supporting a Football Team" as an example because it can be seen as such an innocent activity. But what if hooliganism were to rise again, worse that the 90s and progressed to such a state that the government of the time had no choice but to clamp down. What if you had stopped going to matches because of the violence, but the government were able to single you out as a football fan because of NSC. What if you disappeared in the middle of the night because the government knew you HAD BEEN a football fan in the past. Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe, 70s South America, 60s USA, modern-day China, ... the list of abuses by governments against their own citizens is long and shameful.

I am not suggesting that groups/individuals haven't been persecuted and that they won't continue to be. My point is that the likes of Putin et al will continue to do that regardless of what information they have available to them - they don't need help from Whatsapp/Facebook - The persecution of the Jews had nothing at all to do with abusing information

But when atrocities are being carried out and the perpetrators know they can freely communicate across the globe without any fear of detection then I'm all for making that information available

 

[AmexRuislip]

Two of the most naive comments possible in the debate.
I'm sure that millions of people would rather some fact about themselves, that wasn't illegal at that time they expressed it, wish that the state didn't know about it, hadn't declared it to be retrospectively illegal and hadn't had them executed for it.

I bow down to your superior knowledge in these matters.

 

[AmexRuislip]

Agree...





You may currently feel safe anyone seeing your watsapp messages now however with the speed and hatred within our society rapidly increasing it maybe you that will be the next target to be persecuted for beliefs or a group that are currently accepted in society. This is morally wrong. i do not want to see society going the way of 1984.

On another note the government are so incompetent at keeping private documents safe i wouldn't trust them to look after my cats. It's just a another load of private information that they can be careless about.


Technically is cannot be done anyway. You either have encryption or you don't . Can't allow back door access.

Total sum of my messages are harmful, so as I say nothing to hide!

 

[halbpro]

I would be extremely surprised if GCHQ or the NSA are unable to unscramble communications on these encrypted apps if they so wish. Maybe it's a double bluff being played out by the public faces of Government

They might well be able to, but it's probably not very easy. The maths behind these protocols is well understood and very hard to break, and while there may be a flaw in the protocol itself, WhatsApp is using an Open Source protocol, meaning any security researcher can look at it and find the same flaws that security agencies would seek to utilise.

In the WikiLeaks haul that was recently released, it seemed that the CIA was instead trying to infiltrate individual devices instead. It doesn't matter how good encryption is if you can grab a message as someone's typing it in.

 

[gazingdown]

Intercepting WhatsApp messages is pointless as if they did do this the terrorists would use another service or create their own (bit of IT skills and find an open source codeproject app and away you go). All the end result would be a lot of cost to WhatsApp (and others) to make their software less secure and most people would also move onto something else. So what it really means is putting WhatsApp out of business for no reason.

Also, Govt./intelligence services have no need to intercept my messages as I am not a terrorist. End of.

 

[father_and_son]

I am not suggesting that groups/individuals haven't been persecuted and that they won't continue to be. My point is that the likes of Putin et al will continue to do that regardless of what information they have available to them - they don't need help from Whatsapp/Facebook - The persecution of the Jews had nothing at all to do with abusing information

But when atrocities are being carried out and the perpetrators know they can freely communicate across the globe without any fear of detection then I'm all for making that information available

You might need to check up on the history of the Holocaust. The fact that it was able to happen was absolutely about governmental abuse of information... the national census of each occupied nation was used in the first instance to identify the Jewish population. Before it became clear what was happening, the Jews were actually self-Registering themselves, just because no one seriously believed that what did happen, could happen or was going to happen.

 

[binky]

I would be extremely surprised if GCHQ or the NSA are unable to unscramble communications on these encrypted apps if they so wish. Maybe it's a double bluff being played out by the public faces of Government

No they can't.
And that's what's making them crazy.

Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires 2128 times more computational power than a 128-bit key. Fifty supercomputers that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made) would, in theory, require about 3×1051 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack

Most security which has been shown to be cracked in recent years succumbs because of a flaw in the implementation of the math, or a lack of real randmoness in the RNG.
But crucially, it still takes an enormous amount of time and computing power to crack one message.

What government want, is to be able to read any given message at any time.
This is simply not possible with modern cryptographic techniques, hence the push to criminalise privacy by the back door.
i.e. Legislating to criminalise a message carrier for not being able to decrypt messages they are carrying, is functionally identical to criminalising the use of personal encryption, but without the political backlash.

Imagine if the government passed a law saying you could not use envelopes for your mail, or were not allowed to have curtains on your windows.
This is the same.

 

[The Clamp]

It's not a road we should go down but we will. The government doesn't start making noises about this kind of thing without the end intention being to achieve full access to our private date and exchanges.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Govt./intelligence services have no need to intercept my messages as I am not a terrorist. End of.

In my experience, the fact that an individual is not a terrorist is not enough to prevent the security services investigating them. Since the investigation also includes making enquiries of friends, neighbours and associates, it can be very damaging to the reputation of the subject of the investigation.

 

[BensGrandad]

I do not use whatsapp but if I did I would have no objection to the security services being able to read the messages, but that is only me.

 

[father_and_son]

It's not a road we should go down but we will. The government doesn't start making noises about this kind of thing without the end intention being to achieve full access to our private date and exchanges.

"All that is required for Evil to flourish is for Good men to do nothing"

If we all make a fuss, it won't happen because nothing scares powerful people more than the thought of losing that power.

 

[clippedgull]

I do not use whatsapp but if I did I would have no objection to the security services being able to read the messages, but that is only me.

You could keep them busy on a full time basis just with your tech help questions BG, even if they unencrypted them they would still be scratching thier heads.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I do not use whatsapp but if I did I would have no objection to the security services being able to read the messages, but that is only me.

How would you feel about the security services turning up at a pub that you drank at and telling fellow-customers that they were investigating you?

 

[Audax]

The issue here is that if the government enforces any sort of backdoor access, then that automatically opens up vulnerabilities for hackers to also gain entry via the same backdoor. Whether or not the government has the best intentions is irrelevant, I don't want some random hacker out there being able to access private communications.

The argument of "if you've got nothing to hide" doesn't wash with me. There's plenty of things that could be shared between people that are completely legal, but that the people doing the sharing should still be entitled to keep private. Setting aside the obvious (sexual preferences), there's plenty of highly private communications that should be kept private - such as confidential conversations with lawyers, doctors, business associates etc.

 

[CheeseRolls]

Valley?

Ballet bloody auto correct

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