Thursday, April 4, 2013

Apple's iMessage encryption trips up feds' surveillance

Via Bill

 Apple’s iMessage suffering from widespread outage

How sweet it is!:)

Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple's encrypted chat service are "impossible to intercept," even with a warrant.

Encryption used in Apple's iMessage chat service has stymied attempts by federal drug enforcement agents to eavesdrop on suspects' conversations, an internal government document reveals. 

An internal Drug Enforcement Administration document seen by CNET discusses a February 2013 criminal investigation and warns that because of the use of encryption, "it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices" even with a court order approved by a federal judge.

The DEA's warning, marked "law enforcement sensitive," is the most detailed example to date of the technological obstacles -- FBI director Robert Mueller has called it the "Going Dark" problem -- that police face when attempting to conduct court-authorized surveillance on non-traditional forms of communication.

When Apple's iMessage was announced in mid-2011, Cupertino said it would use "secure end-to-end encryption." It quickly became the most popular encrypted chat program in history: Apple CEO Tim Cook said last fall that 300 billion messages have been sent so far, which are transmitted through the Internet rather than as more costly SMS messages carried by wireless providers.

A spokeswoman for the DEA declined to comment on iMessage and encryption. Apple also declined to comment.

More @ Yahoo

7 comments:

  1. Now, if you wanted an easy way to isolate suspect encrypted traffic, wouldn't it be smart to advertise that a particular format was "unhackable", thus guaranteeing that people with something to hide would flock to said format to pursue their evil clandestine machinations in supposed safety?

    Remember what they say about things that are too good to be true...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Remember what they say about things that are too good to be true...

      Good point.:)

      Delete
  2. My thoughts exactly. Classic example of disinformation.
    It tells me they just broke the cipher.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Charles Carroll Society had a post about "secure" internet communication that basically agreed with 1911A1.

    http://charlescarrollsociety.com/2013/03/26/tor-and-all-electronic-privacy-tool-warning/

    I would add hushmail, also.
    Of course, we're all completely paranoid!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, brilliant minds and all that.......:)

      http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2013/03/tor-and-all-electronic-privacy-tool.html

      Delete
  4. Stick to the One Time Pad.

    It's slow, but unbreakable unless you have the "private key" of random numbers. Once you use the sheet (pad) of secure random numbers, destroy the pad. Don't swallow the sheet of numbers, the bastards will gut you.

    Stalinist commies everywhere.

    ReplyDelete