The Liberal Gun Club Forum

Lady DiFi is thinking she is your overbearing controlling mother. Not only wanting to take away your guns but wanting to read all your messages and what's on your cell phones.

A leading Democratic senator will seek legislation requiring the ability to "pierce" through encryption to allow American law enforcement to read protected communications with a court order.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that she would seek a bill that would give police armed with a warrant based on probable cause the ability “to look into an encrypted Web."

"I have concern about a PlayStation that my grandchildren might use," she said, "and a predator getting on the other end, and talking to them, and it's all encrypted. I think there really is reason to have the ability, with a court order, to be able to get into that."

The lack of evidence showing that encrypted communications played a role in either the Paris attacks, which killed 129 people, or the San Bernardino shooting, which killed 14 people, has not deterred law enforcement, who believe the technology is making their job more difficult and Americans less safe

Apple and Google have made their devices encrypted where they can't open the device for anybody, also messaging is encrypted to this level. The FBI and othe law enforcement agencies have a big problem with this amount of privacy. They want to be able to read messages and what you have on your devices. They also say that it would be used only with a "court order" . If you believe that I have a toll road to sell you in New Jersey.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... ge-justice

The argument that if you don't have anything to hide why worry. Well if the Law Enforcement can open the messages or the device that means others can do the same and get to your banking or other information.

It's a problem for them. I'm not sure what the solution is but I don't see Apple or Google jumping in to change their policies. They had that before where they provided back doors and there is no way in hell they are going to get dragged into the middle of that again. And it's largely the Governments own fault, since one it was shown that the Judicial review was a literal rubber stamp process.

The FBI has the MSM saying how they couldn't read the messages from the San Bernardino Shooters and hinting theycould have stopped it if they could. Now I question how would they know to get the messages if they needed a warrant first and had no warning beforehand to get the warrant.

Oh DiFi... always eager to use any kind of tragedy to forward some terrible legislative power grab. She even managed to tie in a "for the children!" appeal preying on parental fears with the "omg kids can talk to people over games and the NSA can't spy on it!"

Neil Degrasse Tyson did a great interview with Ed Snowden a couple months back, and Snowden made an interesting analogy that "saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."


A group of leading cyber security experts put out a paper on this attempted legislation some time ago, and the National Security Council independently came to the same conclusion: every backdoor is a vulnerability that can be found and exploited by hackers and malicious nation-states. DiFi's plan would not only be a major breach of privacy, but it would do far more to endanger Americans than to protect them!

And I don't think the tech companies will be willing to help either, after how badly they got screwed with. Not only was the government using secret courts and PRISM to demand private user information, they also secretly and physically tapped into the fiber optic lines used privately by Google and Yahoo. This was called project MUSCULAR and the government tracked all their data without any warrant. The companies were shocked when this was revealed.

As a result, Google and others began encrypting all the data going between their servers, and I guess now Feinstein's upset that she can't so easily tap into private information without all that complicated legal stuff.

Basically DiFi got caught with her hand in the cookie jar, so the owners put a lid on it, and now she's trying to tell us to give her unfettered access to the cookie jar so she can protect our cookies.

Eh. When I was managing a network if it went out the building pipe in the clear I assumed it was intercepted. It was incumbent upon me to protect it. All my intrafacility links were always encrypted. And if Google wasn't doing likewise, maybe their vaunted network sophistication wasn't so sophisticated afterall.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear: any communication may be interpreted as one's "papers," owing to the method then of communication. So, DiFi, unless you can draw up a warrant supported by oath or affirmation, your proposal is unconstitutional.

CDFingers

Here are two prime examples of why we don't need DiFi snooping bill and all data should be encrypted.

Amy Hess, the head of the FBI's science and technology division has admitted that the FBI sometimes exploits zero-day vulnerabilities and uses stingrays to catch bad guys. Ars reports: "The admission came in a profile published Tuesday of Amy Hess, the FBI's executive assistant director for science and technology who oversees the bureau's Operational Technology Division. Besides touching on the use of zero-days—that is, attack code that exploits vulnerabilities that remain unpatched, and in most cases are unknown by the company or organization that designs the product—Tuesday's Washington Post article also makes passing mention of another hot-button controversy: the FBI's use of stingrays."

http://m.slashdot.org/story/303845

The former US Department of State man accused of hacking into hundreds of victims’ e-mail and social media accounts, stealing thousands of sexually explicit photographs, and threatening at least 75 victims that he would post those photos and other personal information unless they agreed to his “sextortionate” demands has entered a guilty plea to the nefarious attacks.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/301 ... -acts.html

Just think DiFi is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence committee. Maybe she needs to be moved to the Sewer and Public Works committee if she won't retire.

TrueTexan wrote:Just think DiFi is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence committee. Maybe she needs to be moved to the Sewer and Public Works committee if she won't retire.

From what I have seen of Congressional Committees those who are the complete opposite of the committee name are the one's who are selected to sit on them and chair them. (see the House Science and Tech committee)

As I said the other day, Due Process is not her strong suit. Neither is the actual constitution.

We already know the NSA employees abused the power they had: they'd spy on loved ones, stalk people they were interested in, and would share private nude pictures and sex videos they came across.

Remember all those celebrity nudes that were leaked a while back? I think there's a very high likelihood those originated from the NSA programs and were subsequently shared.

Those with power over others naturally tend to abuse that power. I wouldn't even trust myself with that kind of power, I'd never want it in the hands of politicians and agency types.

Merkwuerdigliebe wrote:Eh. When I was managing a network if it went out the building pipe in the clear I assumed it was intercepted. It was incumbent upon me to protect it. All my intrafacility links were always encrypted. And if Google wasn't doing likewise, maybe their vaunted network sophistication wasn't so sophisticated afterall.

I'm guessing that once your data left the building it was no longer under your direct purview, but relied on third party providers likely using already existing network lines to travel to other facilities?

Imagine your company had invested millions on infrastructure and setting up your own private cables to connect your facilities. Also you spent hundreds of millions with a couple other companies to lay fiber optic cables across the bottom of the ocean which you'd all share. But wait, now you're all surprised to see that the government has secretly tapped into your lines that you built yourself and cracked the limited security you did have in place - all with no warrant or process. Would that change things?

Inquisitor wrote:As I said the other day, Due Process is not her strong suit. Neither is the actual constitution.

She authored a constitutional amendment outlawing flag burning, got multiple "d" and "f" ratings from the ACLU and was supposedly responsible for "oversight" of the CIA during the largest unwarranted survaillence of citizens in American history. She also said she would like to enact gun confiscation.

So, yeah, not big on civil liberties that one.

CDFingers wrote:The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear: any communication may be interpreted as one's "papers," owing to the method then of communication.

It galls me to see my Facebook friends who would undoubtedly agree with this statement then post quips about the 2nd Amendment being limited to muzzleloaders. Which is cutting down on my time on Facebook lately.

Buck13 wrote:

CDFingers wrote:The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear: any communication may be interpreted as one's "papers," owing to the method then of communication.

It galls me to see my Facebook friends who would undoubtedly agree with this statement then post quips about the 2nd Amendment being limited to muzzleloaders. Which is cutting down on my time on Facebook lately.

Then I would suppose that "Freedom of the Press" only applies to newspapers and pamphlets since that's all that existed at the time the Amendments were written.

No t.v. or radio, no magazines, no online news sites, no blogs...

Do classes in U.S. government no longer include the Federalist Papers?