Security without Mandatory Backdoors

Carl Hewitt (1)

1 MOHC - Met Office Hadley Centre

Distributed Public Recording (DPR) is a system in which distributed public and private organizations (e.g., stores, restaurants, sports events, parks, theaters, etc.) keep electronic records (that can be accessed only with a court subpoena and otherwise must be completely erased after two years) of all activity that takes place in public places including tracking automobiles, cell phones, humans (using facial recognition), etc. and all financial transactions. Advanced Inconsistency Robust information technology can be a very powerful tool for catching criminals using DPR, which is a less risky to security than requiring mandatory backdoors for all Internet of Things (IoT) devices, e.g., cell phones, refrigerators, TVs, PCs, Internet LEDs, etc.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming pervasive in all aspects of life including personal, corporate, government, and social. Adopting mandatory backdoors for every IoT device ultimately means that security agencies of each country surveil citizens in their own country and perhaps swap surveillance information with other countries. Adopting the mandatory backdoor proposal that it must be possible for security agencies to secretly access and take control of any individual IoT device can make it very difficult to prevent security agencies from accessing and controlling large numbers of devices and abusing their surveillance capabilities. Also, adopting mandatory backdoors would be corrosive to civil liberties because any phone, tablet, computer, and other IoT device could be secretly accessed and controlled without any awareness by those present. Distributed Public Recording (DPR) is alternate system to mandatory backdoors in which distributed public and private organizations. keep electronic records (that can be accessed only with a court subpoena and otherwise becomes inaccessible after a set time enforced using cryptography) of all activity that takes place in public places including tracking automobiles, cell phones, humans (using facial recognition), etc. and all financial transactions. Advanced Inconsistency Robust information technology can be a very powerful tool for catching criminals using DPR, which is a less risky to security than requiring mandatory backdoors for all Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In any case, IoT requires much more powerful integrated security technology than the current patchwork that is currently available. Using mechanisms outlined in this article, the US can immediately launch a crash program to secure IoT devices (including corporate, citizen, utility, and government) thereby making them dramatically more secure.

Mots clés: mandatory backdoors; IoT; surveillance; distributed public recording

Domaines: Ingénierie, finance et science [cs.CE]

Carl Hewitt. Security without Mandatory Backdoors: Using Distributed Public Recording to Catch Criminals. 2015. ⟨hal-01152495v5⟩