When Politicians Pretend They Know Anything About High Tech...

Things don't go well when people who struggled with high school math make laws about cryptography and computer security. The 30-year-old internet backdoor law that came back to bite | TechCrunch

You are not allowed to have privacy. The government has MANDATED that they have a backdoor into all (or most) of your communications. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just ask the hackers.

News broke this weekend that China-backed hackers have compromised the wiretap systems of several U.S. telecom and internet providers, likely in an effort to gather intelligence on Americans.

The wiretap systems, as mandated under a 30-year-old U.S. federal law, are some of the most sensitive in a telecom or internet provider’s network, typically granting a select few employees nearly unfettered access to information about their customers, including their internet traffic and browsing histories.

I know that you won't do this, but here goes. Use end-to-end encryption for your text messages. (This is easier now that Apple has decided to play be the rules, but still not perfect.) As for voice communications, use Signal, but very few people do, because it requires 3 brain cells to be functioning. Oh, and use a VPN for your web browsing. It keeps your cell provider or your ISP from knowing everything that you do. Anyway...

The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday that a Chinese government hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon broke into three of the largest U.S. internet providers, including AT&T, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), and Verizon, to access systems they use for facilitating customer data to law enforcement and governments. The hacks reportedly may have resulted in the “vast collection of internet traffic” from the telecom and internet giants.

This is not the first law, passed by those idiots in Washington, that has jeopardized OR destroyed your security. The restrictions they placed on cryptographic research in the 1980s is why some of the best cryptographers were outside of the US, in places like Israel and the Warsaw Pact. I was going to say it took decades to recover, but I'm not sure we have recovered. What those fossils in Washington don't understand CAN (and does) hurt YOU.

The security community has long advocated against backdoors, arguing that it is technologically impossible to have a “secure backdoor” that cannot also be exploited or abused by malicious actors.

“The law says your telecom must make your calls wiretappable (unless it encrypts them), creating a system that was always a target for bad actors,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford academic and encryption policy expert, in a thread on Bluesky. “This hack exposes the lie that the U.S. [government] needs to be able to read every message you send and listen to every call you make, for your own protection. This system is jeopardizing you, not protecting you.”

“The only solution is more encryption,” said Pfefferkorn. [My emphasis. Z-Deb]

There is MUCH more. click thru.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 8 October 2024: Take Me Out At The Ball Game Edition

Yeah, who could have ever predicted that mandating back doors would lead to adversaries focusing their attention on those back doors?