Subject: [saag] fyi: FBI Director Warns How Encryption Will Lead To Tears

From: =JeffH <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 11:03:25 -0700

FBI Quietly Removes Recommendation To Encrypt Your Phone... As FBI Director 
Warns How Encryption Will Lead To Tears

<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150325/17430330432/fbi-quietly-removes-recommendation-to-encrypt-your-phone-as-fbi-director-warns-how-encryption-will-lead-to-tears.shtml>

from the keeping-you-safe...-or-keeping-you-vulnerable dept:

Back in October, we highlighted the contradiction of FBI Director James 
Comey raging against encryption and demanding backdoors, while at the very 
same time the FBI's own website was suggesting mobile encryption as a way to 
stay safe. Sometime after that post went online, all of the information on 
that page about staying safe magically disappeared, though thankfully I 
screenshotted it at the time:
￼
If you really want, you can still see that information over at the Internet 
Archive or in a separate press release the FBI apparently didn't track down 
and memory hole yet. Still, it's no surprise that the FBI quietly deleted 
that original page recommending that you encrypt your phones "to protect the 
user's personal data," because the big boss man is going around spreading a 
bunch of scare stories about how we're all going to be dead or crying if 
people actually encrypted their phones:
Calling the use of encrypted phones and computers a “huge problem” and an 
affront to the “rule of law,” Comey, painted an apocalyptic picture of the 
world if the communications technology isn’t banned.

“We’re drifting to a place where a whole lot of people are going to look at 
us with tears in their eyes,” he told the House Appropriations Committee, 
describing a hypothetical in which a kidnapped young girl’s phone is 
discovered but can’t be unlocked.
So, until recently, the FBI was actively recommending you encrypt your data 
to protect your safety -- and yet, today it's "an affront to the rule of 
law." Is this guy serious?

More directly, this should raise serious questions about what Comey thinks 
his role is at the FBI (or the FBI's role is for the country)? Is it to keep 
Americans safe -- or is it to undermine their privacy and security just so 
it can spy on everyone?

Not surprisingly, Comey pulls out the trifecta of FUD in trying to explain 
why it needs to spy on everyone: pedophiles, kidnappers and drug dealers:
“Tech execs say privacy should be the paramount virtue,” Comey continued, 
“When I hear that I close my eyes and say try to image what the world looks 
like where pedophiles can’t be seen, kidnapper can’t be seen, drug dealers 
can’t be seen.”
Except we know exactly what that looks like -- because that's the world 
we've basically always lived with. And yet, law enforcement folks like the 
FBI and various police departments were able to use basic detective work to 
track down criminals.

If you want to understand just how ridiculous Comey's arguments are, simply 
replace his desire for unencrypted devices with video cameras in every 
corner of your home that stream directly into the FBI. Same thing. Would 
that make it easier for the FBI to solve some crimes? Undoubtedly. Would it 
be a massive violation of privacy and put many more people at risk? Absolutely.

It's as if Comey has absolutely no concept of a cost-benefit analysis. All 
"bad people" must be stopped, even if it means destroying all of our 
freedoms, based on what he has to say. That's insane -- and raises serious 
questions about his competence to lead a government agency charged with 
protecting the Constitution.

end