'Five Eyes' nations discuss backdoor access to WhatsApp

&gt; Dealing with the challenge faced by increasingly effective encryption<p>They weren&#x27;t able to spy in bulk when communication was primarily offline, and they won&#x27;t when it&#x27;s primarily encrypted.<p>Don&#x27;t let them frame the brief, anomalous period when they could listen in on everyone, as &#x27;normal&#x27;.

Some info about disgraced former International Development Secretary Priti Patel, who is the UK&#x27;s new Home Secretary (a position that looks after home affairs such as crime, security, terrorism, immigration, citizenship).<p>- She resigned from her previous position as International Development Secretary in 2017 when it was discovered she held secret unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials and lied about it. The meetings were not sanctioned by the Foreign Office and were a breach of ministerial code.<p>- A supporter of Brexit, she suggested last year that the UK leverage the prospect of food shortages in Ireland in order to gain a better Brexit deal. Although, she quickly back-pedalled on her comments, she was rightly criticised for her remarks.<p>The depressing reality is that the current Conservative Party in the UK is stuffed to the rafters with nasty politicians just like her.<p>Priti Patel&#x27;s voting record in parliament: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theyworkforyou.com&#x2F;mp&#x2F;24778&#x2F;priti_patel&#x2F;witham&#x2F;votes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theyworkforyou.com&#x2F;mp&#x2F;24778&#x2F;priti_patel&#x2F;witham&#x2F;v...</a><p>&quot;<i>Generally voted for requiring the mass retention of information about communications</i>&quot;<p>&quot;<i>Voted for mass surveillance of people’s communications and activities</i>&quot;

&gt;The controversial so-called “ghost protocol” has been fiercely opposed by companies, civil society organizations and some security experts – but intelligence and law enforcement agencies continue to lobby for it.<p>Even if it it was possible I think the bigger question is do we want to live in a society where any and all conversations can be ease-dropped on? I get the point that they want it for investigations, but its been proven over and over that if there is a way it will be abused.<p>Would intelligence and LE also be ok with that same rules applying to them?

Ever since Edward Snowden&#x27;s revelations in 2013, I&#x27;ve had zero sympathy for or trust in any intelligence service, even in purportedly democratic countries.<p>Last year, my own country (Australia) passed a law which allows the government to force companies or even individuals to add backdoors to their products, and makes it a criminal offence to refuse or publicly disclose their requests. I would go to jail before I complied.<p>For those of you in other five eyes countries, you&#x27;ll have similar laws soon too. Our intelligence agencies have clearly set themselves up against fundamental principles of human rights, and their efforts to undermine these must be fought.

from what ive learned about encryption and cryptography in general, it seems like you dont get to put this cat back in the bag once it gets out.<p>You can hold all the meetings you want. pound fists to table, elegantly restate your problem, but the mathematic fundamentals of it are your immovable object. your only option is to block it throughout your nation. this just makes room for a new, or an updated version of the fly you swat last week that gets around your flyswatter.<p>Sure, you can try to poison the code base, or inject some kind of malware, but this trick only works once. its not a silver bullet.

If this works, it won&#x27;t actually stop strong e2e encryption, it&#x27;ll just make people download their strong e2e encryption communication apps from non-mass-surveillance states.<p>This isn&#x27;t p*rnhub. You can&#x27;t backdoor everything.

Does nobody realize how <i>inconvenient</i> it is that the relationship between the radius and circumference of a circle cannot be calculated readily by hand? Our manufacturing processes will be greatly improved by silencing those so-called &#x27;mathematicians&#x27; and standardizing on a value of 3 for pi not that never ending mess.

&quot;We need to ensure that our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies are able to gain lawful and exceptional access to the information they need&quot;<p>This entitlement is obscene.<p>If backdoor access is granted then a new set of heads will emerge from the hydra.

This just in:<p>Dealing with the challenges faced by having a mere 97% conviction rate, federal prosecutors and law enforcement conspire with foreign powers to remove pesky civil liberties.

In addition to all the ethical and privacy concerns brought up here, another thing that always crosses my mind is do we even trust these entities to properly store this information? What happens if all data that is being collected from these backdoors is compromised? Think about every private conversation you’ve ever had potentially leaking to the entire world.

CyberSaber..?<p>&gt; By choosing a simple but strong cipher that is already widely published and agreeing on how to use it, anyone with elementary programming skills can write their own encryption program without relying on any products that can be banned.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciphersaber.gurus.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciphersaber.gurus.org&#x2F;</a><p>And Pontifex, aka the Solitaire Encryption Algorithm (SPOILER ALERT):<p>&gt; In Neal Stephenson&#x27;s novel Cryptonomicon, the character Enoch Root describes a cryptosystem code-named &quot;Pontifex&quot; to another character named Randy Waterhouse, and later reveals that the steps of the algorithm are intended to be carried out using a deck of playing cards.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;academic&#x2F;solitaire&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;academic&#x2F;solitaire&#x2F;</a><p>Laws <i>cannot</i> stop encryption, they can stop law-abiding people from using it maybe but not criminals.

Tony Ma&#x27;s daughter better not go to any of the Five Eyes countries at this point.

For those of you searching for good E2E-encrypted messaging apps, Wire is really good. It has true cross-platform support without being tied to a phone number.

At some point, people are going to see the problem as not of a lack of privacy technologies, but of a small group who surveils them and exploits their personal information to keep them disadvantaged, and they will decide that this is the problem they need to solve.<p>It is also likely that the technology they use to solve that problem will be much less sophisticated.<p>Ballots, surely.

This will just drive people to more and more distributed platforms until there is nothing they can do.

Or could it be they already have a back door and stories like this serve them by making people believe they don’t.

As we worry about &#x27;Five Eyes&#x27; spying on us, we happily give Google and Facebook all our communications for free...