Re: Tech firms “can and must” put ba ckdoors in encryption, AG Barr says

On Wed, 24 Jul 2019 09:41:21 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:

> 'US Attorney General William Barr today launched a new front in the
> feds' ongoing fight against consumer encryption, railing against the
> common security practice and lamenting the "victims" in its wake.'

Has he changed his mind
<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/08/attorney_genera.html>?

    If one already has an effective level of security say, by way of
    illustration, one that protects against 99 percent of foreseeable
    threats -- is it reasonable to incur massive further costs to move
    slightly closer to optimality and attain a 99.5 percent level of
    protection? A company would not make that expenditure; nor should
    society. Here, some argue that, to achieve at best a slight
    incremental improvement in security, it is worth imposing a massive
    cost on society in the form of degraded safety. This is untenable.

Schneier notes:

    The final thing I noticed about the speech is that it is not about
    iPhones and data at rest. It is about communications­ -- data in
    transit. The "going dark" debate has bounced back and forth between
    those two aspects for decades. It seems to be bouncing once again.
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