Hillary Tells Tech Companies to Turn Over Encrypted Data
RUSH: Now, have you heard what Mrs. Clinton has said? Hillary Clinton has begged -- stop and think of this, now. Here is the presumed Democrat front-runner. She called on Silicon Valley, high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, to work at disrupting ISIS. She said this in a speech yesterday. So here is Mrs. Clinton hoping to achieve the job of most powerful leader in the world asking Silicon Valley high-tech companies to disrupt ISIS. Does anybody know what she really means? Do you know what she's actually advocating here?
Well, ever since Edward Snowden, pressure has been brought to bear on the NSA to eliminate the scooping up of all this telephone metadata. Law enforcement is leaning on the government to lean on Apple to relax all of their encryption. Apple will not. Apple has been, for a number of years now, and is only increasing this, by the way, as a sales weapon, as ammo in their sales, they are touting the degree of user privacy they build into their devices. And they routinely explain it in support documents on their website, if you care to find out.
For example, the Apple messaging system, called iMessage, it's the blue bubbles on your iPhone. Those are encrypted, user and sender. The only people who can read those messages are you and the person you send them to. You don't see all the encryption taking place, but it's deep. And if you happen to be a criminal and law enforcement gets hold of your phone, they can't decrypt your iMesssages. They have asked Apple to create a back door that would allow law enforcement to decrypt those things so that they could find out if criminal activity has been discussed, has been conducted, or whatever. And it's not just the messaging app. The entire Apple iOS system is highly secure. And Apple is refusing to participate because they have been so public in sales literature in sales promotion in the security of their devices and their operating system.
I don't think I told you this. Way back in the nineties when Jim Kallstrom was running the New York office of the FBI, he called and asked for my support in the premise that law enforcement needs to be able to read e-mails. Back then that's all it was. There was no instant messaging. AIM, instant messaging was still a ways off, e-mail was all there was. It was new and it was frightening the FBI. There was no way to tap it like they could tap phone calls. And the FBI, even back in the nineties, was making an effort for legislation to be able to tap e-mail traffic and so forth. And he called me and asked me if I could get his support, on the air for something like that.
Nothing ever really came of it, as far as I know, but the point is it's only gotten more intense now. There's an actual story, an actual event of a crime taking place, and the perp has an iPhone. And nobody will decrypt it for law enforcement. Apple won't, and the government won't force them to, and law enforcement is at its wits' end over it. So Hillary was actually trying to put pressure on Silicon Valley companies here to do less encryption to enable the government to more easily spy on you, is what she's advocating here. Hillary Clinton's plea for Silicon Valley to disrupt ISIS basically means, would you free up the encryption or at least give us the keys so that we can spy and read the messages of people we think are engaging in criminal activity? And whoever else, yes, whoever else we want to.
This is not a commercial for Apple. Don't misunderstand. Law enforcement, NSA -- do you know NSA as of four days ago is no longer able to collect metadata? Do you know what metadata is? Metadata is everything but the content of the call. The metadata is your number, the number that you called, or the number that called you, and in some cases the geographical location, and the length of the call. That's it. That's what the NSA was swooping up left and right. By itself it's worthless and it's not usable in a predictive way. The value of metadata was to be able to put together the chain of events after an event had happened.
But since Snowden came along, all the pressure has been brought to bear, and the NSA -- supposedly as of four days ago -- is no longer collecting metadata because they can't. It's actually longer than four days ago. I think... The crux of the story is that the NSA is not permitted now to go get the metadata of the phone activity of the San Bernardino Two. They're not legally empowered to get it from whoever their cell carriers were. (interruption)
The FISA court? No. Apparently not. Such is the story. Apparently they're frozen. They can't go get this data because it's now illegal to have it, since it wasn't renewed by Congress. Now, a lot of people don't believe it was just the metadata. People think that. I have friends who think, "You're just crazy, Rush! They're listening in. They're listening in on everybody!" I got friends who turn the Location Services off on their phones.
I tell all my friends, "Do you realize the government doesn't know you exist? They couldn't care less what you're doing. Turn on your Location Services! Don't you care where your pictures were taken in the past?"
"I know where they were taken! I don't need any phone to tell me."
You know, I tried to sell them on the virtues of Location Services, what all the phone can do for you.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't want 'em to know what I'm doing! I don't want 'em where I am, where I'm going, and where I've been."
I said, "Do you really think they care?"
"Well, yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I'm important. I'm an American citizen. They're spying on everybody."
"They don't care." And I said, "Besides, they know anyway, you dolt! Your phone's got a GPS chip in it. They know where you are whether you've got your Location Services on or not. So you may as well enjoy it."
"No! I do not want them to know where I am."
So everybody thinks they're being spied on. Everybody thinks the government cares deeply about who they're having sex with, what they're eating, how many people they're having sex with, where they're having sex with how many. They're just obsessed with it, and they don't want anybody to know what's going on. So Snowden came along and basically confirmed that, in people's minds. So Apple is capitalizing on this. "We will protect your data. Nobody is gonna be allowed in."
Apple is saying, "We don't even have the ability to decrypt iMessage traffic between our users. We did not build in the ability for us to follow it." That's what they maintain. "There is no way to decrypt that traffic." So Hillary is imploring them to do it. Hillary is imploring them to change it. Obama and others in government asking for Silicon Valley to help.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/us/politics/hillary-clinton-islamic-state-saban-forum.html
RUSH: Now, have you heard what Mrs. Clinton has said? Hillary Clinton has begged -- stop and think of this, now. Here is the presumed Democrat front-runner. She called on Silicon Valley, high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, to work at disrupting ISIS. She said this in a speech yesterday. So here is Mrs. Clinton hoping to achieve the job of most powerful leader in the world asking Silicon Valley high-tech companies to disrupt ISIS. Does anybody know what she really means? Do you know what she's actually advocating here?
Well, ever since Edward Snowden, pressure has been brought to bear on the NSA to eliminate the scooping up of all this telephone metadata. Law enforcement is leaning on the government to lean on Apple to relax all of their encryption. Apple will not. Apple has been, for a number of years now, and is only increasing this, by the way, as a sales weapon, as ammo in their sales, they are touting the degree of user privacy they build into their devices. And they routinely explain it in support documents on their website, if you care to find out.
For example, the Apple messaging system, called iMessage, it's the blue bubbles on your iPhone. Those are encrypted, user and sender. The only people who can read those messages are you and the person you send them to. You don't see all the encryption taking place, but it's deep. And if you happen to be a criminal and law enforcement gets hold of your phone, they can't decrypt your iMesssages. They have asked Apple to create a back door that would allow law enforcement to decrypt those things so that they could find out if criminal activity has been discussed, has been conducted, or whatever. And it's not just the messaging app. The entire Apple iOS system is highly secure. And Apple is refusing to participate because they have been so public in sales literature in sales promotion in the security of their devices and their operating system.
I don't think I told you this. Way back in the nineties when Jim Kallstrom was running the New York office of the FBI, he called and asked for my support in the premise that law enforcement needs to be able to read e-mails. Back then that's all it was. There was no instant messaging. AIM, instant messaging was still a ways off, e-mail was all there was. It was new and it was frightening the FBI. There was no way to tap it like they could tap phone calls. And the FBI, even back in the nineties, was making an effort for legislation to be able to tap e-mail traffic and so forth. And he called me and asked me if I could get his support, on the air for something like that.
Nothing ever really came of it, as far as I know, but the point is it's only gotten more intense now. There's an actual story, an actual event of a crime taking place, and the perp has an iPhone. And nobody will decrypt it for law enforcement. Apple won't, and the government won't force them to, and law enforcement is at its wits' end over it. So Hillary was actually trying to put pressure on Silicon Valley companies here to do less encryption to enable the government to more easily spy on you, is what she's advocating here. Hillary Clinton's plea for Silicon Valley to disrupt ISIS basically means, would you free up the encryption or at least give us the keys so that we can spy and read the messages of people we think are engaging in criminal activity? And whoever else, yes, whoever else we want to.
This is not a commercial for Apple. Don't misunderstand. Law enforcement, NSA -- do you know NSA as of four days ago is no longer able to collect metadata? Do you know what metadata is? Metadata is everything but the content of the call. The metadata is your number, the number that you called, or the number that called you, and in some cases the geographical location, and the length of the call. That's it. That's what the NSA was swooping up left and right. By itself it's worthless and it's not usable in a predictive way. The value of metadata was to be able to put together the chain of events after an event had happened.
But since Snowden came along, all the pressure has been brought to bear, and the NSA -- supposedly as of four days ago -- is no longer collecting metadata because they can't. It's actually longer than four days ago. I think... The crux of the story is that the NSA is not permitted now to go get the metadata of the phone activity of the San Bernardino Two. They're not legally empowered to get it from whoever their cell carriers were. (interruption)
The FISA court? No. Apparently not. Such is the story. Apparently they're frozen. They can't go get this data because it's now illegal to have it, since it wasn't renewed by Congress. Now, a lot of people don't believe it was just the metadata. People think that. I have friends who think, "You're just crazy, Rush! They're listening in. They're listening in on everybody!" I got friends who turn the Location Services off on their phones.
I tell all my friends, "Do you realize the government doesn't know you exist? They couldn't care less what you're doing. Turn on your Location Services! Don't you care where your pictures were taken in the past?"
"I know where they were taken! I don't need any phone to tell me."
You know, I tried to sell them on the virtues of Location Services, what all the phone can do for you.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't want 'em to know what I'm doing! I don't want 'em where I am, where I'm going, and where I've been."
I said, "Do you really think they care?"
"Well, yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I'm important. I'm an American citizen. They're spying on everybody."
"They don't care." And I said, "Besides, they know anyway, you dolt! Your phone's got a GPS chip in it. They know where you are whether you've got your Location Services on or not. So you may as well enjoy it."
"No! I do not want them to know where I am."
So everybody thinks they're being spied on. Everybody thinks the government cares deeply about who they're having sex with, what they're eating, how many people they're having sex with, where they're having sex with how many. They're just obsessed with it, and they don't want anybody to know what's going on. So Snowden came along and basically confirmed that, in people's minds. So Apple is capitalizing on this. "We will protect your data. Nobody is gonna be allowed in."
Apple is saying, "We don't even have the ability to decrypt iMessage traffic between our users. We did not build in the ability for us to follow it." That's what they maintain. "There is no way to decrypt that traffic." So Hillary is imploring them to do it. Hillary is imploring them to change it. Obama and others in government asking for Silicon Valley to help.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/us/politics/hillary-clinton-islamic-state-saban-forum.html