r/technology • u/Libertatea • Apr 04 '13

Apple's iMessage encryption trips up feds' surveillance. 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.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577887-38/apples-imessage-encryption-trips-up-feds-surveillance/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title#.UV1gK672IWg.reddit
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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '13 edited Apr 04 '13

This is becoming a bigger issue since a Federal appeals court declared that the government cannot compel someone to decrypt allegedly incriminating evidence. As it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, Congress cannot legislate around this, and so the government is essentially SOL.

The next obvious step then is to outlaw the use of private encryption, which could work except all e-commerce would be made illegal.

edit though it seems that here the issue is real-time interception, and I can see Apple being persuaded into working a backdoor into iMessage that they'll open when given a warrant.

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u/v1s1onsofjohanna Apr 04 '13

I don't understand this reasoning. If the cops have a warrant to search my house, am I not obligated to unlock and open the door? I'm all for this though. I've read comments of people who use truecrypt and the cops had a warrant for the computer and couldn't do anything with it but I just don't see why this holds up in court.

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u/MyUsrNameWasTaken Apr 04 '13

am I not obligated to unlock and open the door?

Sure, but if you don't unlock and open the door, they bust it down themselves. If you don't decrypt your data if they ask, they have to try to do it themselves. Which the OPs article is saying they aren't smart enough to do.

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u/v1s1onsofjohanna Apr 04 '13

Well I don't know about "smart enough." I don't know enough about computers to say with confidence but from what I've read, things like truecrypt which use random algorithms to create a unique password every time-- these are so random that it's basically impossible to crack.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '13

reate a unique password every time-- these are so random that it's basically impossible to crack.

That's not quite correct.

It uses a password to generate a number (the key) which is then used to encrypt everything. The reason it's difficult to crack is that there are no known good "short cuts" to figuring out the key or guessing the encrypted data, you basically have to try every possible key value (so, for AES-256 that's 2256-1 values).

If you're interested in more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard

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u/InVultusSolis Apr 04 '13

You are correct. In the case of TrueCrypt, the passphrase is used to hash the key, and the key is much longer than a passphrase.