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Overview

Continuing along our “Ethics and current topics” thread

Last time: smart drugs!

This time: Apple vs FBI over encryption

Next time: gender and bias, Google Echo Chamber document

Overall goal: shorter during “lecture” period, more discussion

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Follow up items

Class extension is in place, haven’t heard back from the department so I’m assuming no

Quizzes: open book or closed book?

Started using canvas (seriously this time)

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Upcoming assignments

1/19: Choose a lecture to lead

Only pick one!
I’ll assign people randomly if you don’t select one

1/22: Create groups on Canvas, submit PDF with 1-2 sentence description about what you’d like to work on

Posted three Assigned Reading Reports (two summaries and one analysis). See website for more details

Added more details to the course website about the final project

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Historical perspective

Export law restricted products with encryption in the ‘90s

“As is so often the case, however, there is another aspect to the encryption issue that if left unaddressed will have severe public safety and national security ramifications. Law enforcement is in unanimous agreement that the widespread use of robust non-key recovery encryption ultimately will devastate our ability to fight crime and prevent terrorism. Uncrackable encryption will allow drug lords, spies, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate about their crimes and their conspiracies with impunity. We will lose one of the few remaining vulnerabilities of the worst criminals and terrorists upon which law enforcement depends to successfully investigate and often prevent the worst crimes.” --Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI

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90’s resulted in export ban of strong crypto

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NSA and government backdoors

Dual_EC_DRBG

Clipper chip: hardware to protect private communications

Had law enforcement backdoor but tons of vulnerabilities

Many other accusations, less proven

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End of historical perspective

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Whiteboard: the technology in question (at least my understanding of it)

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From the Wired article

FBI picked this case specifically because it was the strongest PR opportunity

FBI unlikely to persuade the public to allow backdoors into devices
Had already submitted 12 similar requests to Apple

Framing of just one device one time is unlikely to be true

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FBI asking Apple to create tools specifically to break into their own devices!

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Security is absolute: it either works or doesn’t

This is why I liked working on Anti-Spam and Fraud!

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Discussion question

Who’s right, the FBI or Apple?

Would you still use an iPhone if you knew that it had an FBI backdoor?

Is Privacy a human right in terms of the Principle of Freedom as defined by Weiner? Also, remember the Principle of minimum infringement of freedom.

Do you want companies to be the gatekeeper of your digital privacy and security?