There is No ‘Going Dark:’ Law Enforcement Spent Months Intercepting, Reading Encrypted Message
upstart writes:
To hear consecutive FBI directors tell it, unless legislators are willing to mandate encryption backdoors, the criminals (including terrorists!) will win. That's the only option - at least according to Jim Comey and Chris Wray - given that the FBI, with its billions in funding and wealth of brainpower, is apparently unable to decrypt files and devices simply by waving a warrant at them.
All evidence points to the contrary. What FBI directors refer to as "going dark" is actually just the temporary blindness that results from staring directly at the Golden Age of Surveillance sun. While FBI directors waste their time making everyone stupider, law enforcement agencies around the world (including the one represented by these particular misguided loudmouths) are putting plans into action.
Twice in 2021 alone, investigators around the world announced the end results of long investigations that involved taking over message servers or otherwise compromising encrypted communication services that were allegedly marketed almost exclusively to criminals. The FBI, in conjunction with Australian law enforcement, subverted and ran an encrypted messaging server for three years, intercepting millions of messages - something that led to hundreds of arrests around the world. A second investigation targeted a Canadian encrypted service provider, resulting in a number of charges being brought against its CEO.
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