A pact of five nation states dedicated to a global “collect it all” surveillance mission has issued a memo calling on their governments to demand tech companies build backdoor access to their users’ encrypted data — or face measures to force companies to comply.
The international pact — the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations — quietly issued the memo last week demanding that providers “create customized solutions, tailored to their individual system architectures that are capable of meeting lawful access requirements.”
This kind of backdoor access would allow each government access to encrypted call and message data on their citizens. If the companies don’t voluntarily allow access, the nations threatened to push through new legislation that would compel their help.
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WNU Editor: I am surprised that these intelligence agencies do not have this access already. The rise of the surveillance is unfortunately a given, and private communications will inevitably be the casualty from this rise. I lived through it in the Soviet Union, and I probably will live through it in the West, albeit in a more sanitized manner.
After the tour de force of Obama’s criminal usage of intelligence to further his party’s fortunes, I hope the techies show some balls and say no.
ReplyDeleteNo chance of that of course.
They have done so covertly years ago, then stopped (at least that was the public statement) ...I would always assume electronic communications - regardless of encryption used - to not be safe until we use electron spin/quantum technology to rule out intercept and/or manipulation in transit. Just as enigma could be cracked in the 40s, so can modern cryptologies. .backdoors are just nice to have so the computational power can be focused on those communications that you don't have keys for.
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