Encryption: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Encryption the best way to keep people from reading your email short of making a subject line forward forward forward forward hilarious joke from uncle Walter no one's reading that you may not think about encryption much but it is pretty fundamental to all our lives almost everything you do today uses a code every time you log on to an internet service like Twitter or Facebook and send your password every time you log into internet banking all of that information is protected using encryption code that's right encryption can protect the things most important to us our financial information health records dick pics trade secrets classified government records dick pics our physical location the physical location of our dicks credit card information dick pics and pictures of our dicks and and it's not just our data lots of things have computers in them now even cars and last year to hackers showed a writer from Wired how they could disable his car on the interstate do it kill the engine so we're killing the engine right now I turned on my hazard lights but I was still stuck in the right lane with no shoulder to escape onto he's panicking yeah no he's panicking you killed his engine on the freeway don't hackers seem like they've played so many video games they've forgotten that cars are actual objects carrying living people but while it can keep us safe it's important to note encryption also has a downside it's become so ubiquitous it's making it impossible for law enforcement to gain access to certain information or as FBI director James Comey puts it technology has become a tool of choice for some very dangerous people and unfortunately the law has not kept pace with technology and this disconnect has created the significant public safety problem we have long described as going dark yes going dark it's a deliberately ominous sounding term because you wouldn't get so scared if they just called it bad guy go bye-bye and you may have heard about this going dark problem recently related to one particular work iPhone belonging to Syed Farook the San Bernardino gunman who with his wife killed 14 people last December the FBI needs Apple's help because the security settings on the phone locked the device if a password is entered incorrectly too many times it may even erase all the data on the phone the FBI wants Apple to upload software that lets its analysts get around the security features and take as many shots at the passcode is necessary yes the FBI has a dead terrorist cell phone that they cannot get into it's running a newer version of Apple's operating system where the data is fully encrypted and can only be accessed by unlocking the passcode even Apple can't currently get into the phone so the government is essentially demanding that they come up with a cheat code for their top-selling iPhone game what's my passcode rated E for Everyone Apple is currently fighting that order in court arguing it shouldn't be forced to undermine the security features that protect its encryption an argument which some have found troubling I think Apple leadership risks having blood on their hands how would the hell you can't access a phone I just find baffling any system that would allow a terrorist to communicate with somebody in our country and we can't find out what they're saying is stupid wolf that is the angriest Lindsey Graham has been about a cell phone since his name got autocorrected to linty grandma stupid phone learn my name I am your boss stupid so dumb this this issue has even been brought up on the campaign trail with predictable results what I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time as they give that Security number how do you like I just thought it boy can't Apple oh I just love it give me another one Israel Palestine I make him wrestling those fake sumo costumes done done being president is easy but I will say this is a rare case where Donald Trump's outrage is almost understandable because Apple's refusal to help crack a terrorist phone can seem hard to defend especially when like John Miller of the NYPD you think about it incredibly simplistically there's no bang there's no safe company there's no fault there is no apartment there's no door that can't be penetrated with a lawful order from the US Court okay point taken but was penetrated to the best word choice there the government needs to be able to penetrate you at any time if we feel you need penetration we have to be able to penetrate you quickly and effectively here and now why is everyone getting so uptight about this but this is not simple it's a hugely complicated story with massive implications and once we get to the end of it you may not feel the same way that you do now because to that man's point an encrypted phone is not really like a bank or a safe if you penetrate a safe you've only penetrated that safe but a code to open a phone could be modified to open many many more phones a fact that does not escape Apple CEO Tim Cook no one I don't believe would want a master key built that would turn hundreds of millions of locks even if that key were in the possession of the person that you trust the most that key could be stolen the only way we know to get additional information is to write a piece of software that is the software equivalent of cancer okay now on one hand giving your phone cancer sounds bad but on the other hand The Fault in Our Stars would have been amazing if shailene woodley was playing a terminally-ill iPhone 6s no god damn it won't let you go hazel I'll hold down the power button and the home button simultaneously forever and to be clear Apple hasn't been completely uncooperative they've already given the FBI the information they could access including Farooq's iCloud backups from about six weeks before the attacks but they are refusing to create the cancerous program the FBI wants not because it can't be done they say it would take six to ten Engineers up to four weeks to do it or you know a standard Genius Bar appointment but but Apple worries that once they make that program they can't keep it a hundred percent safe and the FBI and its supporters can be weirdly dismissive of that issue in ways that indicate they either don't fully understand how technology works or are pretending not to what the government is asking Tim Cook is you designed it you can design your way out of it for this one time if you figure out the formula and crack open this phone to the point that we can then try codes against it you can tear that formula up lots of cross it in the fireplace and throw it away oh come on you know Apple is not writing its code on paper next to a fireplace they're a cutting-edge technology company not Lord Grantham and and as for the notion Apple can throw the formula away after the FBI uses it once nobody seriously thinks that is going to happen Apple says if it complies requests from law enforcement could come for another phone an hour later opening a Pandora's box Apple officials pointed to the Manhattan district attorney who says he has 175 iPhones with potential evidence from serious crimes including murder that he cannot open exactly there are over 175 other phones in line just in New York so this is bound to set a precedent think of the government as your dad if he asks you to help him with his iPhone be careful because if you do it once you're gonna be doing it 14 times a day and whatever happens in this case will have ramifications because the FBI ultimately wants Apple and the entire tech industry to have its encryption always be weak enough that the company can access customer's data if law enforcement needs it so it might be the iPhone today an Android phone tomorrow and to blackberry the day after that assuming that the day after that is in 1998 and and you might be wondering but look if there's a warrant do these companies really have a choice to which the answer surprisingly might be yes they do the government is currently citing the all writs Act of 1789 which essentially mandates you must cooperate with investigators if they ask you to do something but courts are split over whether it applies in cases like these and there's not really any more recent law covering this area which is not entirely an accident because we have been down this road before the government grappled with encryption two decades ago and in the early 90s they even came up with what they thought would be the ideal solution the government will press private companies to use a so called Clipper Chip in their computers which would allow authorities to monitor coded messages now that clipper chip was theoretically perfect your information could be encrypted but the government would have an access point when it needed it it was like giving your house key to a trusted neighbor you can trust Mike he's only gonna try on your underwear if it's absolutely necessary there was just one problem with that chip a computer scientist and hacker named Matt Blais figured out a way to disable the government access feature of the chip and the whole project was eventually abandoned and by the way is there a more ninety series of words than a hacker named Matt Blais it's gotta be right up there with talk to the hand Furby and Grammy Award winners milli vanilli but thanks to the Clipper Chip Fiasco and strong pressure from tech companies the government backed off eventually abandoning the push for a perfect backdoor but decades later they seem to have convinced themselves that it can be done I believe that Apple's capabilities are remarkable when it is their desire I think Silicon Valley is full of great people who when they were younger we're told your dreams are too hard they were standing in a garage someplace they were told can't be done thank goodness they didn't listen I hate to hear talk like that cannot be done I mean think about if Jack Kennedy said we can't go to the moon that cannot be done he said something else we're gonna get there in the next decade okay listen I love that optimism but for the record there are lots of things we can't do even though we've been to the moon for example we are yet to master time travel or figure out why Hulk Hogan dresses for court like he's a pallbearer at a boa constrictors view those still elude human understanding and to some extent the government's faith in Apple's magic powers is the company's own fault after all their ads have linked them to Einstein and Gandhi and they sell the most mundane aspects of their products as world changes this is iPhone 6s not much has changed except it responds to the pressure of your finger now you can change apps like this pay up more places like this and blue color looks like this it's rose gold it's awesome oh no it is not rose gold looks like someone vomited a salmon dinner onto a pair of dirty ballet shoes but ads like those obscure the real truth about Apple which is that beneath their shiny rose gold surface they like any other software company are incredibly susceptible to hackers who are constantly finding flaws in their security features right now you can buy boxes like this one on eBay that can hack you into an iphone running some versions of iOS 8 or lower just watch this YouTube video showing you how they work you just attach the wire to the screen adjust a few settings let it cycle through pass codes and eventually you are in an Apple understandably do not want us thinking too much about that scary security flaws is one of those three word phrases they absolutely hate to be associated with like corporate tax avoidance or Factory suicide Nets also when Apple argues that if it's forced to have access to all its customers encrypted data it can't 100% guarantee its safety most computer scientists agree or as matt blazed the guy who hacks the Clipper Chip put it when I hear the it if we can put a man on the moon we can do this I'm hearing an analogy almost as if we're saying if we can put a man on the moon well surely we can put a man on the Sun and that is a rational scientific view just because a man can walk on the moon does not mean he might as well be walking on the Sun appoint sunrise recently in the New England Journal of smashmouth but look but look for the sake of argument let's assume Apple could have access to your encrypted data repeatedly help law enforcement and always keep the bad guys out which again is widely thought by experts to be impossible that still won't solve the FBI's going dark problem because if you really want to keep your communication secret there's an app for that the encryption debate is proven to be good business for one startup telegram a messaging app that encrypts messages end-to-end has surpassed 100 million users and that's the point people who want encryption will always be able to find it if it's not telegram or whatsapp it could be one of the more than 800 other encryption products out there almost two-thirds of which are made by companies not easily covered by US law like silent phone or three myrrh or snicker tea snack or mail grub now granted those last two aren't real but the point is they will be in five minutes if the government forces the other ones to weaken their encryption and that might not be the only unintended consequence of the FBI's actions many countries around the world including Russia and China are watching this debate and will presumably expect similar access because as you know Russia and China have as much respect for privacy as horny teenagers in 80s comedies and when you consider all this the legal tenuous nathie FBI's case the security risks of creating a key the borderline impossibility of perfectly securing the key the International fallout of creating a precedent and the fact that the terrorists could circumvent all of this by downloading whatever the freemar is it's enough to sway the most strident opinion case-in-point remember Lindsey Graham mr. this is stupid just this week three months after he said that he was in a hearing with the Attorney General Loretta Lynch about this subject and this happened I think that for us the issue is about a criminal investigation into a terrorist act and the need to obtain evidence and but it's just not so simple and I'll end with this I thought it was that simple I was all with you until I actually started getting briefed by people in the Intel community and I will say I'm a person who's been moved by the arguments of the president we said and the damage we may be doing to our own national security it's a miracle Lindsey Graham has met the concept of nuance and this is a man who once warned the world is literally about to blow up so you're not dealing with someone who likes to dabble with gray areas and look there is no easy side to be on in this debate strong encryption has its costs from protecting terrorists to drug dealers to child pornographers but I happen to feel that the risks of weakening encryption even a little bit even just for the government are potentially much worse and even though I'm on Apple side in this case I do think they would help both their customers and the government understand this a lot better if they were a little more honest regarding security in their ads hi we're Apple this is an Apple iPhone it comes in rose gold it's awesome this is an Apple customer hey Siri find vegan sushi mmm sounds good and these are the engineers who make our products hey hey guys we can help you communicate celebrate pay for stuff everything but here's something you should know we're barely one step ahead of hackers at all times that when you idiots lose your phone your information doesn't wind up the hands of guys like Gary hey I'm Gary thanks for losing your phone hey Gary because if Gary can get in he has access to pictures of your food your bank account pretty much everything now I can masturbate to photos of your family okay Gary and when we find out there's a security flaw this is how we react yeah that's about right so when the FBI comes to us and asks if we can undermine our encryption without compromising everyone else's emails texts and skateboarding videos this is our response are you kidding me we're engineers not wizards you sure you're not wizards yeah pretty sure okay listen Apple's not perfect you need proof we made the Newton we made that one Mac that looks like a toaster we actually thought the Apple watch was cool wait this isn't cool oh we put a u2 album on your phones you know the one you've been struggling to delete that thing keeps coming back huh and you can't even make our battery less more than like a day why is that exactly have you tried turning off location services and push emails and adjusting your screen brightness so that you can okay forget we asked the point is best-case scenario we can keep hackers out of your stuff for about six months before this happens again I'm back I see someone's been to the beach so please keep enjoying our products just know this shaky edifice could crumble at any moment Apple join us as we dance madly in the lip of the volcano you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 13,009,843

Rating: 4.9064221 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight, last week tonight with john oliver, encryption, apple, san bernardino iphone, privacy, security, hackers, fbi, john oliver, hbo

Id: zsjZ2r9Ygzw

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Pugway]

I watched this last night and was really afraid he was about to take the FBI's side on this case. What I don't understand is, when nearly everyone who knows anything about technology says this is a bad idea, why do politicians and law enforcement officials think it's still good to go.

I mean, if the entire scientific community had reached a general consensus on a major threat to the planet, the entirety of Government would rally behind them to do someth... Oh wait, I guess that's why.

[u/linksus]

Link to one the rest of the world can watch?

[u/atlasbound]

I love this line "We're engineers, not wizards."

[u/fuzzynyanko]

As someone that generally hates Apple's stuff and attitudes: their small computers are actually neat, including the toaster Mac.

[u/t4nt4lus]

John Oliver, awesome as always.

[u/qwkredfox]

lol @ vegan sushi.

[u/bokan]

oh god the ending lol