I believe everyone can relate to this scenario while growing up; in school, one friend made a mistake or broke school's law and all other friends were also held accountable for one's misdeeds. Apple Vs FBI case from last year feels the same way. One bad guy happens to own an iPhone and commits a crime, and now, FBI wants a backdoor to the iOS operating system so that they can unlock any iPhone for investigation and save bad actors from doing bad things. Apple fulfilling FBI’s request will put hundreds of millions of people at security risk, and it will open the door for massive surveillance which is essentially contradicted the idea of right to privacy and First amendment right to expression. FBI seemed to undermine everything in the name of
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But, is it the first time law enforcement agencies asked for help or backdoor in the system? No, this is not the first time and not the last time for sure. From the beginning of computing and Internet, Government has kept pushing such technologies that will allow them to do data mining about people, and the tech companies should cooperate with the law enforcement. In 1993, Clinton administration mandated that hardware manufactured in the USA will have embedded security chip call “Clipper Chip”. The Clipper Chip is a cryptographic device that supposes to protect private communication and at the same time give access to the Government and law enforcement officials using master key pairs upon the presentation of legal authorization. The master keys will be divided into two pieces and will be distributed to different Government agencies as a protection against the potential Government abuse and spying. The underlying security implementation and the cryptographic algorithm known as “Skipjack” were developed by the NSA, and it was secure enough to be considered as “Type 1” NSA product which can be used by the Government and the military officials for private and sensitive communication. The goal of that technology was to make it easier for the law enforcement officials to investigate something when needed and provide adequate protection from unwanted intruders. A New York Times article “Of Privacy and Security: The Clipper Chip Debate” from 1994 described the Clipper chip works this way,
“When two people decide they want to secure their communications, they activate their encryption devices. The devices exchange "secret" numerical keys and use the Clipper chip to encode and decode the voice message or data stream, making them gibberish to outsiders. Using current technology, an eavesdropper would be unable to crack the code without having access to the right
But, is it the first time law enforcement agencies asked for help or backdoor in the system? No, this is not the first time and not the last time for sure. From the beginning of computing and Internet, Government has kept pushing such technologies that will allow them to do data mining about people, and the tech companies should cooperate with the law enforcement. In 1993, Clinton administration mandated that hardware manufactured in the USA will have embedded security chip call “Clipper Chip”. The Clipper Chip is a cryptographic device that supposes to protect private communication and at the same time give access to the Government and law enforcement officials using master key pairs upon the presentation of legal authorization. The master keys will be divided into two pieces and will be distributed to different Government agencies as a protection against the potential Government abuse and spying. The underlying security implementation and the cryptographic algorithm known as “Skipjack” were developed by the NSA, and it was secure enough to be considered as “Type 1” NSA product which can be used by the Government and the military officials for private and sensitive communication. The goal of that technology was to make it easier for the law enforcement officials to investigate something when needed and provide adequate protection from unwanted intruders. A New York Times article “Of Privacy and Security: The Clipper Chip Debate” from 1994 described the Clipper chip works this way,
“When two people decide they want to secure their communications, they activate their encryption devices. The devices exchange "secret" numerical keys and use the Clipper chip to encode and decode the voice message or data stream, making them gibberish to outsiders. Using current technology, an eavesdropper would be unable to crack the code without having access to the right