Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2021 10:05 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

The topic is “Decrypting the encryption debate: How to ensure public safety with a privacy-preserving and secure Internet?”

I hope you tell them it has bern proved without doubt that,

1, Criminals and others can communicate securely and obliviously to authorities using normal plaintext. Via subliminal channels that are always available as long as communications is available, even if 100% monitored (See Gustavious Simmons 1984 work on the “prisoners problem” and the “perfect secrecy” “true random” offers.

2, Thus it does not matter from that perspective if the Internet is secure or not.

However what does matter is the Ordinary individual. Traditional crime is moving from the tangible world of physical objects with value you can hold, to the intangible world of information objects that have rather more value than any physical counterpart.

Whilst physical objects apply significant constraints on criminals, that is not true of information objects.

That is an information criminal,

1, Is not constrained to one location.
2, Is not constrained to one job at a time.
3, Is not constrained with hiding the proceeds of a crime.
4, Is not constrained by movment of payment for the proceads of a crime.

The implications of this are still not making it through Poliricians or many Law Enforcments Personnels heads. They are constrained by their inability to think beyond the physical box they chose to live in, thus they are hopelessly out of date not just in their thinking but reasoning.

Thus they are easy prey to those with alyernative agenders who realy should not be alowed to be in the positions of trust they hold because their agendas make them untrustworthy.

What the citizen needs is protection from,

1, The criminals.
2, Those with what are untrustworthy agenders.

Especially the latter because after a moments thought most should realise what those with unyrustworthy agendas want, actually dignificsntly favours and makes easier life for the slightly smarter criminals who will grab all be it cautiously any oportunity they get given.

Thus the way to avoid giving them opportunities is to ensure very strong privacy which rests on the back of very strong security. Anything less just will not work.

The way to catch criminals even the smartest of those who cannot pay politicians to put there activities above the law, is by traditional policing methods.

That is you have to gather evidence, of which there is little or none in careful communications, that smart criminals will be practicing within a year or two at the most. Osama Bin Laden learnt very quickly that his use of electronic communications was a considerable liability thus he “wised up” as quickly. Where terrorists have learned criminals will almost certainly adopt or do similar. In fact readers of this blog know now that criminals can do a lot better than terrorists have so far done.

What caught Osama Bin Laden was not his communications, but other evidence to do with the flow of resources and the ability of followers to betray.

Whilst the betrayal can be stopped with careful control, the flow of resources follow the principle of physical objects in contact which even on the sub atomic level gives rise to what is considered “Time Arrow” which is also tracable by thermodynamic entropy when work is carried out.

Not only do objects show when they are moved, they result is they actually leave “contact information” or evidence as outlined in Locard’s exchange principle (since extended).

Back in the end of the Victorian era Dr. Edmond Locard (1877-1966) speculated that every time you make contact with another person, place, or thing, it results in an exchange of what we now call “trace evidence”.

The Dr went on to turn the speculation into a hypothosis, then a theory, that has resulted in what is now Locard’s exchange principle which forms a fundemental principle of the real science behind forensics. That is these days it is treated as axiomatic that contact either directly as physical parts, via meta-data such as physical inpression, or via meta-meta data by the non tangible effects such as, unexplained behaviour, wealth, status etc or just plain simple accounting and balancing of books has on those involved with the contact. More importantlt it provides “gold standard” actionable inteligence and court presentable evidence that will lead to sound convictions.

So why is it not used more often?

The simple answer is,

Politicians talk a good game for voters, but allocate the tax take to those who give them money, power, or status.

That is the Politicians care not a jot about crimals and the effect they have on the citizens, it’s just “lip service”, “sound bites” and “Spin” to ensure they remain sufficiently popular with the voters. Oh and of course the real agender is to get the resources to “saturation bomb” propaganda about how “wonderful they are” so those that do not look behind the curtain will vote for them.

So the politicians need to be held up in public and told beyond any doubt that nothing less than the best privacy and security for the citizens will limit the spread of crime. But the only thing that will stop crime is “Gold Standard” evidence gathering, and whilst that does not come cheaply will fairly quickly pay for it’s self in the improving economy that the best privacy and security will cause by limiting the spread of crime. Further that turning a blind eye or pandering to those with untrustworthy agendas will only hasten the spread of crime.

Any other argument would actually be dishonest.