path: root/paper.ms

.R1
short-label D.y
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Cryptography, crime, terror, and surveillance
.AU
\f[R]Mohit Agarwal
.AI
March 2022
.LP
Modern encryption methods allow a level of privacy in communication
that has not before been seen: information that is encrypted cannot be
decrypted without the necessary keys, such as with RSA where security
is ensured by the large primes involved and the current intractability
of prime factorisation. This allows for communication that is
practically guaranteed to be private: a relatively new phenomenon in
communications, seen with inventions such as the one-tme pad
{Rijmenants} which was cryptographically secure and used by the both
the KGB and NSA (cite), beyond the use of the Enigma and Lorentz
machines by the Nazis which were both of which were decrypted by
cryptanalysis methods during the Second World War. Today, secure
cryptographic methods are used not only by government backed agencies
in preventing or practising espionage, but by individual citizens who
are interested in their privacy, security, or are simply using a
program that happens to encrypt their communications. Naturally,
current availability of cryptography potentially allows malicious
actors such as criminals or terrorists to use encryption in order to
commit crimes or acts of terror. In response to the threats of
encryption and communications technology generally, governments have
engaged in signals intelligence (SIGINT) such as phone line tapping.
Modern SIGINT initiatives have become incredibly complex and
sophisticated and have grown greatly as popular adoption of technology
has grown. Part of government interest in SIGINT is a direct response
to perceived threads, such as the PATRIOT Act in the US which followed
the 2001 terrorist attacks with the objective of strengthening
national security (cite). Later, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008
further increased increased the powers of law enforcement to access
information, such as allowing the Attorney General and Director of
National Intelligence to gather information about individuals outside
the United States {H.R. FISA congress}. It was, however, the PATRIOT
Act and FISA Amendments Act that was the justification for large scale
surveillance including the government access of phone calls records of
customers of the Verizon network, including calls from the US to other
states as well as calls localised entirely within the US {guardian
greenwald verizon}{guardian NSA roberts}{times savage 2013}. State
sponsored SIGINT programs such as that in the US aims to respond to
encryption and other technological developments with the primary
interest of overcoming it in order to prevent terror and crime. These
measures have, however, had arguably limited effectiveness and have
violated the privacy of individuals who are not suspected of being a
threat to national security. Responses to encryption domestically and
internationally will have significant consequences, given the
potential importance of the information being communicated. Successful
SIGINT and cryptanalysis by government agencies can successfully
respond to modern threats of crime and terror. A failure of
responsible governance, however may not only threaten the privacy of
individuals unnecessarily, but also fail to respond to the ways in
which criminals and terrorists are using encryption existing thereby
only as a tool of authoritarian control.

An argument is often made against allowing widespread use of
encryption and generally against widespread effective operations
security (OPSEC) in the public sector in the interest of
national security, and the prevention of terror. With access to
communications and usage history governments can gather significant
information on terrorists and use this intelligence against
terrorists. It is clear that intelligence plays a significant role in
counterterrorism. The 9/11 terrorist attacks are seen potentially as a
phenomenal failure of intelligence as detailed in The 9/11 Commission
report {#9/11 commission report}. The report explores the fact that
there was potentially knowledge to indicate a terrorist attack before
September 2001 (chapter 8). The report detailed institutional failures
and also emphasised the difficulty and importance of intelligence in
counterterrorism {intelligence and national security}. Graham{#CTC
terrorists} explores the use of encryption by terrorists which is
often cited in a reason for giving governments access to unencrypted
Internet communications so that suspicious activity can be flagged and
investigated in order to prevent a terror attack or in order to better
respond in the case of an attack. Graham describes the extensive use
of end to end encryption used by terrorists in order to avoid
interception by the authorities. Due to U.S. usage of intercepted
communications to uncover and prevent a number of al-Qa'ida plots, the
terrorist organisation and other terrorist groups have increasingly
used encrypted communications (read citation from Graham). An
significant factor is the use of non-mainstreams software in early use
of encryption by terrorists, including a program that built a wrapper
around the popular, secure, and open source PGP called \fIMujahedeen
secrets\fR. Although now terrorists and criminals use widely
available, popular, and user-friendly software such as the Tails
operating system or Telegram (Graham citation 28), terrorists
organisations have shown an ability to make use of more obscure and
complicated systems, as well as use publicly available source code in
order to construct software for operatives to use.

Although the issue of popular messaging technologies and their support
for 'end-to-end encryption' is often discussed, the argument that the
introduction of end-to-end encryption by large companies such as
Facebook gives an advantage to criminals {conversation Facebook}{home
office} is arguably an invalid one. By preventing the usage of true
end-to-end encryption in industry, we will not be able to prevent
those attempting to evade the law from doing so, as shown in the case
of terrorist organisations who have used more obscure software in the
past and also in the case of the abundance of illegal activity that
occurs on the so called dark web in the form of the trade of drugs and
child pornography among others {gulati deep web}. Instead the
limitation of use of encryption on popular software will only decrease
the privacy of those uninterested in criminal activity and instead
using more popular software without regard for its security features
or lack thereof. The information exposed by Edward
Snowden in 2013 demonstrates that the US government has processed and
collected vast amounts of unencrypted data (cite) and possibly
continues to do so. In the case of unencrypted communication the
problem remains and preventing end to end encryption will simply allow
governments to maintain the status quo of being able to intercept and
read all communications between its citizens and individuals outside
of their jurisdictions. Indeed, should end-to-end encryption continue,
perchance, to be opposed by governments both in the West and in
countries like China, it will arguably a method of allowing a
government to practise surveillance and of perpetuating a surveillance
state.

In the GDR (German Democratic Republic, also known as \[oq]East
Germany\[cq]), in order to conduct surveillance on behalf of the
rulling party {Jarausch}, the Stasi (\fIMinisterium für
Staatssicherheit\fR, or \[lq]Ministry for State Security\[rq]) relied
on a sprawling network of informants and agents. In particular,
informants \[en] who greatly outnumbered agents {Bruce 2014} \[en]
formed large parts of this network by integration into the fabric of
society. This contributed to a far more complete surveillance state
and an atmosphere of terror amongst the people. Whilst in Nazi Germany
there may have been around one Gestapo agent for every 2300 citizens,
in the GDR it was closer to one informant or officer for every 63
citizens. Those living in the GDR often had experiences involving
investigation by the Stasi and there was clearly an understanding
amongst citizens that one had to be wary of an
informant or agent listening in {funder}. In modern western society
there is a similar collective understanding that governments
attempting to carry out surveillance on a massive scale on their own
citizens. A key distinction today, however, is that 
this work is not carried out by a vast network of informants,
there are no gargantuan gargantuan stores of paper, and there are no
hundreds of miles of film (cite all) documenting and aiding the
surveillance of the authorities. Instead, the level of surveillance
that large, secretive groups of individuals once had to carry out in
order to enable a surveillance state can be performed instead through
bureaucracies and technological methods. In modern times, governments
can operate with a very limited number of operatives 'on the ground',
and instead focus attention on the giant amounts of data they have for
processing in order to make the findings they intend to: be it crime,
terrorism, or \[en] as was the case with the Gestapo and Stasi - descent.

.HLINE

.LP
As has occurred with technological developments in the past,
legislation will continue to follow developments relating to
information technology, such as the General Data Protection Regulation
in the European Union which has had significant influence in the
technology industry. Yet encryption presents unique challenges to
lawmakers. Not only will encryption be difficult to regulate due to
its rapid development, but perhaps moreso due to its decentralised
nature, where a government cannot prevent the existence of software
that enables encryption which is open source and reproducible
internationally. Just as media piracy through torrents and access to
hidden services over Tor are able to evade regulation, regulation of
encryption may prove impossible. An arguably useful tool to the
authorities does exist in the hardware and infrastructure that users
of the Internet rely on. In the West a small number of companies (such
as Intel, Nvidia, Arm and Apple) design and produce the majority of
hardware in a proprietary and closed source manner.

Concerns have already been expressed with regard to
the Intel Management Engine {Intel Management portnoy} that exists on
modern processors produced by Intel.
Arguments have been made that the Intel Management Engine already acts
as a backdoor for government agencies (cite), and the potential is
clearly there for US government interests in mass data collection and
SIGINT following 9/11 to lead to the introduction of backdoors in
popular technology. We are aware that in the case of the Intel
Management a switch for disabling functionality is present for use by
US government authorities such as the NSA, demonstrating a level of
leverage the US government potentially has over organisations
including but not limited to Intel {register kill switch}{intel me
bleepingcomputer}. The potential exists for such systems to be built
into non-open hardware which most people \[en] even those using open
software \[en] use, leaving them more open to exploitation from either
state or private actors. Furthermore, there is a visible interest in
increasing the presence of technologies on the hardware level,
including the aforementioned Intel Management Engine, the Trusted
Platform Module (cite), and recently Microsoft's Pluton (cite)
subsystem, which will be present on hardware sold in the future. This
variety of hardware within a single computer is a rather interesting
and potentially worrying development, particularly with the clear
level influence, interest, and competitiveness both the US {US House
chip manufacturing bill} and Chinese governments (cite) have in the
chip manufacturing industry. In light of potential issues with
hardware, there have been developments in \[oq]open hardware\[cq].

RISC-V is an instruction set for processors from the University of
California at Berkeley; opposed to ARM, Intel, and AMD processors,
RISC-V is an open standard for CPU design {case for RISC-V}. This allows for open
source CPU implementations, such as those designed at UC Berkeley, as
well as those from other parties, such as Alibaba Group {chen risc}. A
significant amount of existing software has been ported to the RISC-V
platform (cite) and alongisde the Alibaba implementation for data
centres, the standard has been used by Google for a security module in
the \[oq]Pixel 6\[cq] smartphone (cite).
This attention and interest potentially signals a shift towards
increased demand for and utility in open hardware for privacy,
security or economic reasons. 
Another poignant example of open hardware is the laptop created by the
manufacturer Framework Computer Inc, which is designed to be more
more expandable, serviceable and repairable than other laptops
available on the market.
The company and laptop gained significant media coverage
(cite) showing an interest from the public in open hardware. An
argument can be made that such projects are for niche interest groups
only, and that such solutions will never see the commercial success
seen by the larger, non-open manufacturers such as Intel and ARM.
However, the clear adoption of standards such as RISC-V by large
institutions demonstrates quite the opposite:
that open hardware will continue to
become increasingly prevalent and that currently popular hardware with
its susceptibility to surveillance will possibly have a reduced
presence in the future.

Movement towards open standards in both hardware and software
reveals a problem for law enforcement
agencies and counterterrorism forces. The tools of mass surveillance
that once enabled investigation into crime or terror such as reading
messages/emails, listening to calls, tracking location, or analysing
metadata may no longer be effective, thereby potentially
preventing such investigation to occur. For governments, this is
arguably the result of such heavy surveillance in the first place.
It is clear that knowledge such as the 2013 Snowden leaks had an impact
on the public (cite), and people are therby more interested in
their privacy and preventing surveillance. Around the world
individuals use tools to increase their privacy and anonymity when
using the Internet, as well as to overcome censorship of information
by governments. A major exception to the availability of the free
Internet has been
China, where the government has unparalleled control over the
flow of information over the Internet. This has allowed the filtering
of content, prevention from accessing sites, and the blocking of the
anonymity network Tor which would allow users to circumvent measures
put in place by the government {firewall}{talbot tor china}{winter
china tor}. Measures in China have enabled the government to tightly
control and monitor the flow of information via the Internet; ensuring
that citizens can only access that which the ruling part should allow.
Whether such draconian measures could even be implemented
in the more democratic West is questionable, but the opportunity
clearly exists for governments to undermine the digital privacy of its
citizens. Any such measures, however, will face scrutiny from the
media and public in Western society and thereby open software such as
Tor is used to share significant amounts of information away from the
observation of law enforcement, allowing illegal activity to occur
{gulati}. The reduced ability for law enforcement to investigate crime
will clearly have an impact by allowing criminals to act with
additional impunity. In particular, the sharing child sexual abuse
material, trafficking and other such crimes that are enabled by the
Internet present reason for concern.

It is however clear that the methods available to law enforcement are
not all exhausted due to technological change. Social engineering
methods; communications traffic analysis such as phone records;
metadata analysis from the underlying infrastructure of the Internet,
including public blockchains and Internet Service Provider data; and
traditional methods such as searching for contraband goods are all
available to law enforcement despite measures used by criminals or
terrorists such as encryption. Indeed, one could argue that the
limitations on law enforcement investigations due to technology have a
limited impact on the efficacy of investigation, as other sources of
evidence have been effectively explored when encryption has been used,
particularly in the prevention of terror {Graham}. Thus, encryption
might only have a limited impact on law enforcement investigations
whilst having a serious impact on user privacy. Although encryption
can prevent some investigation the compromise is arguably acceptable
due to the net benefit encryption offers to society.

In addition, the rate of development in unconventional computing
methods is increasing rapidly. Effective quantum computing will
result in existing popular cryptographic algorithms such as RSA, which
is used for communications and digital signatures, no longer being
secure {Lily Chen quantum}. 
Significant research in recent years has shown
feasibility in current ideas surrounding quantum computing and
promising results in development towards quantum supremacy and the
future the breakdown of current cryptographic methods.
Indeed, both in the US at Google {google supremacy nature} and in China
at a major university
{china quantum advantage}{science photons quantum advantage},
claims of \[oq]quantum supremacy\[cq] have been made,
suggesting that quantum computers will soon
become powerful enough to start making current encryption methods
obsolete.
Although this will not be an overnight transformation, changes
will be made by those implementing cryptography, both in the open
source space and in industry, as well as in government where
government agencies must act in order to protect their data. This
change will take place naturally and some have begun to
consider methods for post-quantum cryptography {nist alagic}. 
Regulatory considerations about post-quantum cryptography are already
being made and arguments can be made that regulation should soon be written
that institutes standards and requirements in order to prepare for a
future with effective quantum computing {bruno post quantum}. Once
more, however, an issue reveals itself with the speed of regulatory
change and the progress of technology. Changes will likely be made by
open software in order to maintain secure encryption, such as those
used by the open source web servers to encrypt Interet traffic, as
well as by large corporations such as Microsoft which provides
software used by many businesses and individuals. An issue may exist
in software that is less popular and legacy software which may not be
open to the scrutiny of open software and may lead to
vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the usage of post-quantum cryptography
by the public and the potential that it may help terrorists and
criminals to communicate might not be addressed in any meaningful way.
This lack of high level interest, initiative or funding from
governments has arguable prompted more independent development in the
public sphere:
the US National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made a public request for
nominations of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms (cite), leading
to standards that will clearly influence future lawmaking (cite).
This adoption of open processes and the
open auditing and implementation of future cryptographic standards is
most striking when compared with the \fIDual_EC_DRBG\fR algorithm.
This algorithm, which contained a vulnerability, was included in NIST
standards. This vulnerability allowed the NSA to potentially decrypt
Internet traffic such as emails (cite). The NSA also allegedly paid
the firm RSA Security in order to implement the algorithm with its
backdoor in their
popular security products {menn nsa contract} and although the NSA
denies wrongdoing there was clearly NSA involvement with the company
that remains significant in the enterprise security space {goodin rsa
denial}{perlroth government}.

Individuals around the world have clearly expressed interest in
matters of privacy and encryption and open source software
allows those with the technical skills to become involved in the
development of technology that enables strong encryption and overcomes
state surveillance. Measures taken by governments to prevent this
development will doubtless be limited unless extreme actions such as
those seen in China are taken. Otherwise, development will continue to
occur in both free and non free societies in support of individual
freedoms. The assertion of \[oq]Linus' law\[cq] that , \[lq]given enough eyeballs,
all bugs are shallow\[rq] (cite - CathBaz) creates a serious inability
for actors such as governments to engineer backdoors into software as
the NSA previously has (cite) or to prevent the development of
software altogether (find example). On the other hand, the vast
majority of the software and hardware used by the general public is
proprietary. For many, this will continue to be the norm. Yet, the
pressure from increasing popular open source software will continue to
mount. The open source messaging platform \[oq]Signal\[cq] offers a
security oriented product and publishes requests they receive from
courts and law enforcement alongside their replies online (cite).
Demonstrating their respect for user privacy and that they are unable
to release data as they do not collect it is perhaps something that
users are finding more appealing. Indeed, when Apple refused to unlock
a phone for the FBI following a terrorist attack (cite) it gained
significant media attention and demonstrated that the defence of users
privacy was a virtue for modern businesses, regardless of the fact
that the FBI was able to unlock the phone independently which is
rather overlooked.

The discussion of encryption and related technologies has arguably
limited impact. State actors such as the NSA will continue to act
against individual freedoms and attempt to find or introduce backdoors
in technology that is widely used as part of its actions purportedly
in the interest of national security. Although public reactions to
information such as the 2013 Edward Snowden releases have been very
strong, they have not had significant effects on legislature, the
funding received by the NSA, and quite possibly the level of
surveillance carried out by the NSA. Thus, 
discussions in public or private spheres are unlikely to
influence decisions made inside already secretive agencies where
governments are ready to except that sacrifices must be made for the
greater good. Of course, the issue arises when surveillance exists
that does not exist simply to protect a nation, but instead mass,
indiscriminate surveillance is carried out on citizens not suspected
of any criminal or terrorist activity such as the Optic Nerve
program in the United Kingdom (cite), however governments nonetheless
prove willing to fund the activities of surveillance agencies.

Modern cryptographic algorithms are theoretically secure; the
underlying concepts mean that breaking the encryption to
intercept a communication is not possible in a reasonable amount of time
with current computational limits
and is therefore, due to the nature of the algorithm, secure. This
however, does not consider implementational flaws. Indeed,
implementational flaws are the ways in which modern breaks of
algorithms such as RSA (cite) occur, and methods such as timing
attacks (cite) and voltage level analysis attacks, as well as memory
attacks (cold boot, rubber hose ...) (do some light explaining) (cite
all) have the potential to overcome any level of theoretical sophistication that
cryptographic algorithms may have, and simply give away information
such as keys (research, cite). In addition to this, there can be
implementational issues in hardware, such as the recent Spectre
vulnerability which was discovered in 2018; revealing data to
an attacker due to speculative execution which speeds up processing in
modern processors. The vulnerability allowed for the attack of
cryptographic implementations such as GPG. This is potentially even
more concerning given that processor implementations are proprietary.
This flaw affects practically every modern processor and
indicates the vulnerability in computer hardware, which could be
exploited by any party with sufficient resources. Intel has released
multiple patches for Spectre, however, there remain concerns that
there is a potential for attacks in modern processors including new
processors made after 2018, and are therefore potentially a real
threat to security {kocher spectre}.

.HLINE

The executive summary to the 9/11 Commission Report {#9/11 commission
report} describes the September 2001 terrorist attacks as \[oq]a shock,
not a surprise\[cq]. In a similar light, the release of information
relating to mass surveillance and mishandling of data such as the 2013
Edward Snowden releases ought to also be potentially considered a
shock, not a surprise given the level of data that both governments
and private organisations have access to and responsibility for.
Encryption enables people to trust that their data that they wish to
be private truly is and allows companies to handle communications
such as e-mails without having to consider secure storage or giving
data to law enforcement due to the fact the company itself is unable
to read the data if it is end-to-end encrypted. The free market
arguably has moved itself towards encrypted standards. Open source
initiatives have pioneered free implementations of secure
cryptographic standards, allowing any user to use these tools directly
in order to send information, as occurs with the popular PGP
implementation GPG. Additionaly the open implementation of
cryptographic tools enables developers to integrate secure versions of
these tools into new programs, allowing for the easy development of
programs that allow encrypted communications. The demand for
cryptography in less popular open source applications is arguably
expected, yet there is nonetheless widespread adoption in more popular
software and proprietry software. Companies such as Facebook have
pushed for end to end encryption in their products and the software
industry at large has adopted encrypted standards such as
\f[C]HTTPS\fR. There
are seemingly two sources of resistance to fully encryted
communications. The first of these is the largest, which is government
intervention. Government positions around the world which are opposed
to encryption seemingly have double standards. Just as the Enigma and
Lorentz machines were critical to the Nazi war effort in order to
conduct critical communications and the breaking of those ciphers were
critical to the Allies, encryption remains critical to government
communications and state sponsored espionage. Governments maintain up
to date cryptographic systems in order to keep their own
communications secure, yet fight hard against encryption in the name
of national security and to fight crime. In some ways this is a valid
argument: wide availability to cryptography arguably lowers the
barrier to entry for terror or cime and reduces the ability law
enforcement has to deal with it. Nonetheless, it seems that reducing
the availability of encryption to the pubic would not decrease the
opportunity for criminals or terrorists to do harm (todo - discuss
earlier).

.nr HY 0
.ad l
IME/Pluton -- backdoors
    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-the-intel-management-engine-a-backdoor/
    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-nsa-may-not-need-backdoors/
    Disabled on new ThinkPads: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/20/microsoft_amd_pluton_lenovo/

Heatbleed (2014) (occured in open source software)

Government
    https://rules.house.gov/bill/117/hr-4521 .

Privacy
    Apple and App Tracking Transparency
    https://www.flurry.com/blog/ios-14-5-opt-in-rate-att-restricted-app-tracking-transparency-worldwide-us-daily-latest-update/
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-14/facebook-fb-advertisers-impacted-by-apple-aapl-privacy-ios-14-changes .

crowd supply boosts open hardware: linux magazine

https://ooni.org/post/2021-italy-blocks-gutenberg-book-publishing-website/#findings
https://ooni.org/post/2021-how-signal-private-messenger-blocked-around-the-world/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/04/04/186902/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/
https://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/ .

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/

TODO : recite bulletin
https://www.ghi-dc.org/publication/stasi-at-home-and-abroad-domestic-order-and-foreign-intelligence .