Security Risks of Client-Side Scanning

Even before Apple made its announcement, law enforcement shifted their battle for backdoors to client-side scanning. The idea is that they wouldnt touch the cryptography, but instead eavesdrop on communications and systems before encryption or after decryption. Its not a cryptographic backdoor, b...

Cybersecurity for the Public Interest

The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly...

Ray Ozzie's Encryption Backdoor

Last month, Wired published a long article about Ray Ozzie and his supposed new scheme for adding a backdoor in encrypted devices. It's a weird article. It paints Ozzie's proposal as something that "attains the impossible" and "satisfies both law enforcement and privacy purists," when 1 it's bare...

Black Hat 2015 Going Dark Cryptography Presentation

LAS VEGAS – Try as they might, technologists are struggling to find a feasible way to solve the government’s and law enforcement’s “Going Dark” crypto issue. Cryptographer Matthew Green and D.C. intellectual property attorney James Denaro today during a talk at the Black Hat conference made no...

Crypto 'Front Door' Debate Likely to Go On For Years

SAN FRANCISCO–Encryption is the hot new topic in security at the moment, as it has been any number of times in the last few decades. And, as in the past, the notions of key escrow, mandated legal access to encrypted systems and other ideas for helping governments defeat cryptosystems have followe...

Mobile Device Encryption Could Lead to a 'Very, Very Dark Place', FBI Director Says

FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that the recent movement toward default encryption of smartphones and other devices could “lead us to a very, very dark place.” Echoing comments made by law enforcement officials for the last several decades, Comey said that the advanced cryptosystems...

The Folly of Internet Wiretapping

The last 10 years have seen a great number of advancements in the sophistication and usability of strong encryption programs, and many people now use encrypted messaging services by default. This has made it much simpler for people to keep their private thoughts and data private and secure, and n...