[Dailydave] RSA Email 3: The Feds

[Dave Aitel]

<img> <img>

Mike Rogers, Michael Daniel (seen above with Natalie Black his
counterpart from the UK), and John Carlin
<https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/590958031736741888>all offered
slightly different views of what the Government would like to see when
it comes to security, and in specific cryptographic policy, at RSA 2015.
Of all of them, John Carlin was the most forward in his views, which
mirror the FBI director's pro-key-escrow position and talking points
exactly (to the point of being boring). For him, like many of these
people, the goal is to connect with tame reporters (David Sanger was
there and particularly chummy). My discussions with one of the head CNN
reporters in the space who was there indicated that the Administration's
push for crypto control is falling a bit flat. Partially because you
cannot on one hand say "We know nothing about technology" and then on
the other hand say "Why can't we have this? We want it! Why can't we
have WHAT WE WANT!" Violet Blue called it "infantile
<http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-dhs-brings-its-infantile-cyber-fantasy-world-to-rsa-2015/>"
and that's the perfect word to describe it, as someone who has a three
year old and carefully stalked all the Government panels and keynotes at
RSAC. This year's USG message SHOULD have been "/We are going to regain
your trust/". It wasn't and that makes everything harder.

Michael Daniel, who sits most closely to the President on these things,
offered a wide array of scripted feel good platitudes about training and
cooperation with Natalie Black, who said that of course she "concurred"
with all of them, but in a much nicer accent. On this list, you may
probably most remember Michael Rogers for his Heartbleed blog post on
whitehouse.gov, but he's a good bellwether for what the White House is
thinking on this issues. I pressed him on it after the talk and he
indicated that they're not looking for rush through a forced solution
here, just because the DoJ has their panties in a twist.

The most fireworks came during the Google vs Congressman Mike Rogers
panel (see above). Richard Salgado pointed out some things about the
SCOTUS cases which the FBI are relying on to do their metadata
collection in the first place: i.e. that there's nothing in the case to
say that the content of your email is not covered by the same ruling.
Frankly, he is a ridiculously good lawyer and was in fine form and
clearly has been directed to yield not an inch of space
<http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/02/android-lollipop-automatic-encryption/>
to the Government when it comes to crypto policy. I hope they put that
panel online because it was the best entertainment at the whole RSAC .

-dave



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/attachments/20150430/6921cc7c/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_20150423_130447.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1885449 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/attachments/20150430/6921cc7c/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_20150423_101900.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1925105 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/attachments/20150430/6921cc7c/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 181 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/attachments/20150430/6921cc7c/attachment-0001.sig>