Schneier on Security

Davi Ottenheimer • October 20, 2005 4:01 PM

The police can demand evidence useful to help certain investigations, especially in cases of imminent danger. This is the opposite of a "backdoor", however, since the demand is meant to be directly addressed to the person with knowledge or evidence relevant to the investigation.

In that sense, what need for a backdoor would there be if the frontdoor law already exists?

Davi Ottenheimer • October 20, 2005 9:06 PM

Ok, I'll take another stab at answering your question, particularly since I've been wondering about whether the police should have some sort of emergency access (frontdoor) to the systems I've been working on:

"How soon before there's a law requiring these webcams to be built with a police backdoor?"

The good news is that it's fairly trivial to block/interfere with remote administration of networked surveillance systems so there's a big technical hurdle to backdoors. The bad news is that, from my experience, very few systems are hardened enough (no logs, no encryption, etc.) to prevent just about anyone from stealing credentials and using the system secretly anyway. Don't get me started on the security deficiencies of networked physical security systems...

Aside from that, timing of a police backdoor law would be based on a perceived need by the police and willingness by the businesses to give up their freedoms. The need expressed in the cited article seems overly broad and far too naive to win people over:

"Montanez's son, a police officer, responded to a bank robbery in Corona. A good vehicle description would have helped officers capture of the suspects more quickly, he said."

A good case of want (what investigator doesn't want instant and unfettered access to all information). However, I do not think it qualifies as a pressing "need". In fact, a more realistic need should originate from the business owners themselves. I mean how many businesses are going to think they should forget the 4th and 5th Amendment just because some local bank had a robbery? Or, for that matter, when was the last time local business owners said they'd be happy to give the government free access to their books just because some other company experienced fraud? Business owners are generally smarter about managing risk than that and I hope they do not give an inch without some kind of audit and protective control like a log of when/what the police monitored their space(s).

And then there's the issue of whether the average police station is actually ready to manage a deluge of consumer-grade network video evidence. Given the wide range of formats and standards, I'd say the Corona police are also incredibly optimistic or talented to think that they can effectively access and aggregate a heterogenous neighborhood of surveillance systems. If they realize this, the "need" for backdoor might never be pursued at all, or at least until other standards/practices are in place to make it more feasible.

@ Moshe

If I remember correctly Chicago has invited business to join a centrally managed camera network that was meant to monitor public spaces. That means some significant infrastructure is already in place. Sending feeds to a central system is very different than Corona's apparent request -- "pay for us to be a fly on your wall and we'll protect you". Something tells me Corona's approach would never have worked in Chicago...

Davi Ottenheimer • October 21, 2005 11:05 AM

@ William

Funny point about your pickles and tomatoes, but I have to disagree with your assessment that the current trend in US governance should be described as a a move towards a "socialistic communist police state."

It has far more in common with right-wing fascist political ideologies (a seizure of power by an elite group through pseudolegal means) than socialism or communism (public revolution).

Today someone might proclaim "all your cameras are mine", but it's only a shade different from the official phrase in 1925: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato"

This means the legal system will be revised to crush (liberal) opposition (a "weakness" conveniently blamed for all state failures) and enable those in power to achieve the ultimate in non-democratic goals, whether it be unfettered economic domination of markets, domination of the media and public discourse, or worse.

Sorry for the tangent...

Davi Ottenheimer • October 21, 2005 2:19 PM

@ Frank

I knew you were out there somewhere. You're confusing anti-totalitarian feelings with anti-left sentiment.

Unfortunately totalitarianism can come from right or left, as you point out, but your hatred of totalitarians from the left doesn't mean the right should be ignored or indirectly labelled infallible.

In fact, it's dangerous to go around thinking that everything that is totalitarian must be socialist/communist. That's like saying every attack comes in through the back door so leave the front door open.

I support your point if you say it is anti-toltalitarian, but find it rediculous that you do not see anything "rightist" about heavily pro-corporate anti-public elitists who want to manipulate the laws and use police control to shore up absolute control by an already powerful few. That is the very defintion of right-wing toltalitarian movements, which is actually quite different in approach than left-wing totalitarians, even though they end up in approximately the same place.

Your point about "people arrested for dissenting" is true in the core sense (human rights violations) but ignores the difference in the charges that were levvied. For example, a right-wing regime that picks you to be part of the selected elite would not treat you as a dissenter, and vice-versa, so there are very real differences about who ends up where on the pecking-order and what they do to stop the slide towards totality, etc.

Maybe I just should have said: apples and bananas are both fruit but they have some differences too.