path: root/paper.ms

.R1
short-label D.y
sort
.R2
.TL
Cryptography, crime, terror, and surveillance
.AU
\f[TI]Mohit Agarwal
.AI
February 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 entirely 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 technology to communicate. 
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.

In order to conduct the vast amounts of surveillance they did in the
GDR (German Democratic Republic) in support of the ruling party
{Jarausch}, the Stasi gathered information from a vast network of
informants who greatly outnumbered Stasi agents {Bruce 2014}. 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 {funder} of the GDR that one had to be
wary of an informant or agent listening in. 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, however, is that in societies such as the
UK, 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 - as was the case with the Gestapo and Stasi - descent.

As with any technology, regulation has followed behind technological
development. Just as automotive regulation
followed the increase in popularity of cars in areas such as the UK
and US, regulation will no doubt follow the newfound popularity of
The rate of change with modern
technology, particularly encryption, is far greater than has been seen
in the past. 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.
The vast majority (cite) of users in the foreseeable future
will continue to use the highly popular CPUs designed by Intel in the
personal computer space.

Concerns have already been expressed with regard to
the Intel Management Engine {Intel Management portnoy} that exists on
modern processors produced by Intel.
Arguemnts 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 there was potentially an ability for it to be
disabled 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}.

Regardless of the level of influence governments might or
might not hold over private corporations, the potential exists for
systems built into non-open hardware which most people, even those
using open software, 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) are
respectively showing. In light of potential issues with
hardware in a privacy sense, there have been developments in `open
hardware'.

RISC-V is an instruction set for processors from the University of
California at Berkeley; opposed to ARM, Intel, and AMD, RISC-V is an open
standard {case for RISC-V}. This allows for open source CPU
implementatios, 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 'Pixel 6' smartphone (cite). This attention and interest
in the technology potentially indicates a shift in attitude and want
for more open hardware and a general concern for the source of
computing equipment. Examples, such as a laptop created by the
manufacturer Frame Work Inc which aims to be more expandable,
serviceable and repairable then existing laptops, gaining significant
media coverage (cite) further show 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 clear adoption of standards such as RISC-V by
large institutions (cite) as well as the clear interest the public
have demonstrated in commercially available open solutions (research,
cite) demonstrate quite the opposite: that open hardware will continue
to become increasingly prevalent and that currently popular hardware
with its susceptibility to surveillance will possibly start to
disappear. 

A shift toward open standards 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 (cite?) 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}.

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 IRSA, which
is used for communications and digital signatures, no longer being
secure {lily chen quantum}. 
Significant research such as at IBM in recent years (cite) has shown
feasibility in current ideas surrounding quantum computing and
promising results in development towards quantum supremacy and in the
future the breakdown of current cryptographic methods.
Indeed, there have been recent claims to quantum supremacy,
suggesting that quantum computers will soon
become powerful enough to start making current encryption methods
obselete. 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 many have already started 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 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 a significant way.
The issue of regulation being insufficient may further be realised by
post-quantum cryptography due to its open nature: 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).
(reword last few sentences) 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 algorith with backdoor in its
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}.

Dual EC DRBG
    !! https://wikiless.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220
    https://web.archive.org/web/20131223121638/http://blogs.rsa.com/news-media-2/rsa-response/

Significant research is occurring as aforementioned in
the US and in China {quantum research in china}. Both in the US at
Google {google supremacy nature} and in China {china quantum
advantage}{science photons quantum advantage} at a university claims
of `quantum supremacy' have been made.

The question must be asked as to whether the discussion of encryption
and surveillance is necessary.

Individuals around the world have clearly expressed interest in
matters of privacy and encryption (cite) and open source software
allows those with the technical skills to become involved in the
development of technology that enables strong encryption and avoids
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 "Linus' law" that , "given enough eyeballs,
all bugs are shallow" (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, a significant
amount of the software and hardware 

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 (cite all). Thus, from recent
history, 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.
Furthermore, there are options available to authorities that are
regularly made use of. (Give example from Graham)

Modern cryptographic algorithms are theoretically secure; the
underlying concepts mean that breaking the encryption to
intercept a communication 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 sophistication that
cryptographic algorithms may have, and simply give away information
such as keys (research, cite).

The executive summary to the 9/11 Commission Report {#9/11 commission
report} describes the September 2001 terrorist attacks as 'a shock,
not a surprise'. 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.

.nr HY 0
.ad l
Intro
    Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008
	USA FREEDOM Act (2015)(HR 2048)

Cryptography
    https://wikiless.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle?lang=en
    Timing Attacks
        RSA

Spectre and Meltdown (disucss speculative execution)
    https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html
    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394
    https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-cpu-security-issue/
    https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact-processors-power-family/
     -- Speculative execution?

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

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo
    https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html
    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption
    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html


    https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/04/04/186902/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/
    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/technology/nso-group-how-spy-tech-firms-let-governments-see-everything-on-a-smartphone.html
    Leahy Law
    DeadHand and MonsterMind

Terror
    September 2001
    2001 Anthrax attacks

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

Quantum computing
    https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-3-540-88702-7_1
    https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.1891170
    https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8490169
    https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/senior_theses/23/
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361372317300519
    https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.00200

Surveillance
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/us/politics/cia-data-privacy.html
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/we-need-answers-about-cias-mass-surveillance

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://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/