What The Intelligence Community Doesn't Get: Backdoor For 'The Good Guys' Is Always A Backdoor For The 'Bad Guys' As Well

from the get-with-the-program dept

Max Eddy, over at PC Mag, has a very interesting article about the experience of Nico Sell, of the company Wickr, talking about how an FBI agent casually approached her to ask if she'd install backdoors in her software allowing the FBI to retrieve information. As the article notes, this is how the FBI (much more so than the NSA) has acted towards many tech companies ever since attempts to mandate such backdoors by law failed (though, they're still trying). Some companies -- stupidly -- agree to this, while many do not. Those that do may think they're helping fight for "good," but the reality is different. They're opening up a huge liability on themselves, should the news of the backdoors ever get out, and at the same time, they're making their own product invariably weaker. As Sell pointed out to the FBI guy, she'd seen hackers piggyback on "lawful intercept" machines and learned:

"It was very clear that a backdoor for the good guys is always a backdoor for the bad guys."

Bruce Schneier, over at the Atlantic, recently made nearly the same point in talking about the massive costs of all of this NSA surveillance (as well as talking about the near total lack of benefits). There's the cost of running these programs that are massive. There is the fact that these programs will be abused (they always are). There are the costs of destroying trust in various tech businesses (especially from foreign users and customers). But just as important is the fact that the NSA, FBI and others in the intelligence community are flat out weakening our national security by installing backdoors that malicious users can and will find and exploit:

The more we choose to eavesdrop on the Internet and other communications technologies, the less we are secure from eavesdropping by others. Our choice isn't between a digital world where the NSA can eavesdrop and one where the NSA is prevented from eavesdropping; it's between a digital world that is vulnerable to all attackers, and one that is secure for all users.

As Schneier points out, to fix this, we need to recognize that security is more important than surveillance. The surveillance apologists always claim that their goal is security. If so, they have a funny way of showing it. The "solution" they've drummed up hasn't made us any more secure... it's made us less secure.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, fbi, nsa, security, vulnerabilities