Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by law—CALEA—since 1994.
Refering to a story published by the Wall Street Journal, security expert Bruce Schneier writes “that the attack wasn’t against the broadband providers directly, but against one of the intermediary companies that sit between the government CALEA requests and the broadband providers”.
"For years, the security community has pushed back against these backdoors, pointing out that the technical capability cannot differentiate between good guys and bad guys. And here is one more example of a backdoor access mechanism being targeted by the “wrong” eavesdroppers."
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 weeks ago
Shocking. /s
No current technology can distinguish between good guys and bad guys. There’s like a pervasive ideological discomfort with that basic fact.
tardigrada@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
@CanadaPlus
I get what you mean by highlighting that no current technology can distinguish between good and bad guys, but I feel there will never be a technology that can do that. A backdoor can easily be used by your government/law enforcement to suppress people and eliminate freedoms, even if there may have been best initial intentions for such a backdoor. This is a fundamentally human -rather than a technological- issue.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 weeks ago
That’s my best guess too, but you could plausibly argue otherwise. I just went with something undisputable that still supports the main point.