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Credit to Author: Steven Levy| Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n On December 2, <\/span>2015, a man named Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on employees of the Department of Public Health in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and injuring 22<\/a> during what was supposed to be a staff meeting and holiday celebration. The shooters were tracked down and killed later in the day, and FBI agents wasted no time trying to understand the motivations of Farook and to get the fullest possible sense of his contacts and his network. But there was a problem: Farook\u2019s iPhone 5c was protected by Apple\u2019s<\/a> default encryption system. Even when served with a warrant, Apple did not have the ability to extract the information from its own product.<\/p>\n The government filed a court order, demanding, essentially, that Apple create a new version of the operating system that would enable it to unlock that single iPhone. Apple defended itself, with CEO Tim Cook framing the request as a threat to individual liberty<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy,\u201d he said in a press conference. Then-FBI chief James Comey reportedly warned that Cook\u2019s attitude could cost lives. \u201cI just don\u2019t want to get to a day where people look at us with tears in their eyes and say, \u2018My daughter is missing and you have her cell phone\u2014what do you mean you can\u2019t tell me who she was \u00adtexting before she disappeared?\u2019\u2009\u201d The controversy over Farook\u2019s iPhone reignited a debate that was known in the 1990s as the Crypto Wars<\/a>, when the government feared the world was \u201cgoing dark\u201d and tried\u2014and ultimately failed\u2014to impede the adoption of technologies that could encode people\u2019s information. Only this time, with super\u00adcomputers in everybody\u2019s pockets and the endless war on terror, the stakes were higher than ever.<\/p>\n A few months after the San Bernardino shooting, President Obama sat for an interview<\/a> at the South by Southwest conference and argued that government officials must be given some kind of shortcut\u2014or what\u2019s known as exceptional access\u2014to encrypted content during criminal and antiterrorism investigations. \u201cMy conclusion so far is that you cannot take an absolutist view on this,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the tech community says, \u2018Either we have strong, perfect encryption or else it\u2019s Big Brother and an Orwellian world\u2019\u2014what you\u2019ll find is that after something really bad happens, the politics of this will swing and it will become sloppy and rushed, and it will go through Congress in ways that have not been thought through. And then you really will have dangers to our civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n In typical Obama fashion, the president was leaning toward a compromise, a grand bargain between those who insist that the NSA and FBI need all the information they can get to monitor potential terrorists or zero in on child abusers and those who believe building any sort of exceptional access into our phones would be a fast track to a totalitarian surveillance state. And like so many of Obama\u2019s proposed compromises, this one went nowhere. To many cryptographers, there was simply no way that companies like Apple and Google could provide the government with legal access to customer data without compromising personal privacy and even national security. Exceptional access was a form of technology, after all, and any of its inevitable glitches, flaws, or bugs could be exploited to catastrophic ends. To suggest otherwise, they argued, was flat wrong. Flat-Earth<\/em> wrong. Which was, as any good engineer or designer knows, an open invitation for someone to prove them wrong.<\/p>\n This past January, <\/span>Ray Ozzie took a train from his home in Massachusetts to New York City for a meeting in a conference room of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. The 14th-\u00adfloor aerie was ringed by wide windows and looked out on a clear but chilly day. About 15 people sat around the conference table, most of them middle-\u00adaged academics\u2014people from the law school, scholars in government policy, and computer scientists, including cryptographers and security specialists\u2014nibbling on a light lunch while waiting for Ozzie\u2019s presentation to begin.<\/p>\n Jeannette Wing\u2014the host of the meeting and a former corporate VP of Microsoft Research who now heads the Data Science Institute\u2014introduced Ozzie to the group. In the invitation to this \u201cprivate, informal session,\u201d she\u2019d referenced his background, albeit briefly. Ozzie was once chief technical officer at Microsoft as well as its chief software architect, posts he had assumed after leaving IBM, where he\u2019d gone to work after the company had purchased a product he created, Lotus Notes. Packed in that sentence was the stuff of legend: Notes was a groundbreaking product that rocketed businesses into internet-style communications when the internet was barely a thing. The only other person who ever held the chief software architect post at Microsoft was Bill Gates, and Ozzie had also helped create the company\u2019s cloud business.<\/p>\n He had come to Columbia with a proposal to address the impasse over exceptional access, and the host invited the group to \u201ccritique it in a constructive way.\u201d Ozzie, trim and vigorous at 62, acknowledged off the bat that he was dealing with a polarizing issue. The cryptographic and civil liberties community argued that solving the problem was virtually impossible, which \u201ckind of bothers me,\u201d he said. \u201cIn engineering if you think hard enough, you can come up with a solution.\u201d He believed he had one.<\/p>\n He started his presentation, outlining a scheme that would give law enforcement access to encrypted data without significantly increasing security risks for the billions of people who use encrypted devices. He\u2019d named his idea Clear.<\/p>\n Obtain warrant for locked, encrypted phone that is evidence in a criminal investigation.\b<\/p>\n Access special screen that generates a QR code containing an encrypted PIN.<\/p>\n Send picture of QR code to the phone\u2019s manufacturer, which confirms the warrant is legal.<\/p>\n Manufacturer transmits decrypted PIN to investigators, who use it to unlock the phone.<\/p>\n It works this way: The vendor\u2014say it\u2019s Apple in this case, but it could be Google or any other tech company\u2014starts by generating a pair of complementary keys. One, called the vendor\u2019s \u201cpublic key,\u201d is stored in every iPhone and iPad. The other vendor key is its \u201cprivate key.\u201d That one is stored with Apple, protected with the same maniacal care that Apple uses to protect the secret keys that certify its operating system updates. These safety measures typically involve a tamper-\u00adproof machine (known as an HSM or hardware security module) that lives in a vault in a specially protected building under biometric lock and smartcard key.<\/p>\n That public and private key pair can be used to encrypt and decrypt a secret PIN that each user\u2019s device automatically generates upon activation. Think of it as an extra password to unlock the device. This secret PIN is stored on the device, and it\u2019s protected by encrypting it with the vendor\u2019s public key. Once this is done, no one can decode it and use the PIN to unlock the phone except the vendor, using that highly protected private key.<\/p>\n So, say the FBI needs the contents of an iPhone. First the Feds have to actually get the device and the proper court authorization to access the information it contains\u2014Ozzie\u2019s system does not allow the authorities to remotely snatch information. With the phone in its possession, they could then access, through the lock screen, the encrypted PIN and send it to Apple. Armed with that information, Apple would send highly trusted employees into the vault where they could use the private key to unlock the PIN. Apple could then send that no-longer-secret PIN back to the government, who can use it to unlock the device.<\/p>\n Ozzie designed other features meant to \u00adreassure skeptics. Clear works on only one device at a time: Obtaining one phone\u2019s PIN would not give the authorities the means to crack anyone else\u2019s phone. Also, when a phone is unlocked with Clear, a special chip inside the phone blows itself up, freezing the contents of the phone thereafter. This prevents any tampering with the contents of the phone. Clear can\u2019t be used for ongoing surveillance, Ozzie told the Columbia group, because once it is employed, the phone would no longer be able to be used.<\/p>\n He waited for the questions, and for the next two hours, there were plenty of them. The word risk<\/em> came up. The most dramatic comment came from computer science professor and cryptographer Eran Tromer. With the flair of Hercule Poirot revealing the murderer, he announced that he\u2019d discovered a weakness. He spun a wild scenario involving a stolen phone, a second hacked phone, and a bank robbery. Ozzie conceded that Tromer found a flaw, but not one that couldn\u2019t be fixed.<\/p>\n At the end of the meeting, Ozzie felt he\u2019d gotten some good feedback. He might not have changed anyone\u2019s position, but he also knew that unlocking minds can be harder than unlocking an encrypted iPhone. Still, he\u2019d taken another baby step in what is now a two-years-and-counting quest. By focusing on the engineering problem, he\u2019d started to change the debate about how best to balance privacy and law enforcement access. \u201cI do not want us to hide behind a technological smoke screen,\u201d he said that day at Columbia. \u201cLet\u2019s debate it. Don\u2019t hide the fact that it might be possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The first, \band most famous, exceptional-access scheme was codenamed Nirvana. Its creator was an NSA assistant deputy director named Clinton Brooks, who realized in the late 1980s that newly discovered advances in cryptography could be a disaster for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. After initial despair, Brooks came up with an idea that he envisioned would protect people\u2019s privacy while preserving government\u2019s ability to get vital information. It involved generating a set of encryption keys, unique to each device, that would be held by government in heavily protected escrow. Only with legal warrants could the keys be retrieved and then used to decode encrypted data. Everyone would get what they wanted. Thus \u2026 Nirvana.<\/p>\n The plan was spectacularly botched. Brooks\u2019 intent was to slowly cook up an impervious technical framework and carefully introduce it in the context of a broad and serious national discussion about encryption policy, where all stakeholders would hash out the relative trade-offs of law enforcement access to information and privacy. But in 1992, AT&T developed the Telephone Security Device 3600, which could scramble phone conversations. Its strong encryption and relatively low price unleashed a crypto panic in the NSA, the FBI, and even the tech-friendly officials in the new Clinton administration. Then the idea came up of using Brooks\u2019 key escrow technology, which by that time was being implemented with a specialized component called the Clipper Chip<\/a>, to combat these enhanced encryption systems. After a few weeks, the president himself agreed to the plan, announcing it on April 16, 1993.<\/p>\n All hell broke loose as technologists and civil libertarians warned of an Orwellian future in which the government possessed a backdoor to all our information. Suddenly the obscure field of cryptography became a hot button. (I still have a T-shirt with the rallying cry \u201cDon\u2019t Give Big Brother a Master Key.\u201d) And very good questions were raised: How could tech companies sell their wares overseas if foreign customers knew the US could get into their stuff? Wouldn\u2019t actual criminals use other alternatives to encrypt data? Would Clipper Chip technology, moving at government speed, hobble the fast-moving tech world?<\/p>\n Ultimately, Clipper\u2019s death came not from policy, but science. A young Bell Labs cryptographer named Matt Blaze<\/a> discovered a fatal vulnerability, undoubtedly an artifact of the system\u2019s rushed implementation. Blaze\u2019s hack led the front page of The New York Times<\/em>. The fiasco tainted all subsequent attempts at installing government backdoors, and by 1999, most government efforts to regulate cryptography had been abandoned, with barely a murmur from the FBI or the NSA.<\/p>\n For the next dozen or so years, there seemed to be a Pax Cryptographa. You seldom heard the government complain about not having enough access to people\u2019s personal information. But that was in large part because the government already had a frightening abundance of access, a fact made clear in 2013 by Edward Snowden<\/a>. When the NSA contractor revealed the extent of his employer\u2019s surveillance capabilities, people were shocked at the breadth of its activities. Massive snooping programs were sweeping up our \u201cmetadata\u201d\u2014who we talk to, where we go\u2014while court orders allowed investigators to scour what we stored in the cloud. The revelations were also a visceral blow to the leaders of the big tech companies, who discovered that their customers\u2019 data had essentially been plundered at the source. They vowed to protect that data more assiduously, this time regarding the US government as one of their attackers. Their solution: encryption that even the companies themselves could not decode. The best example was the iPhone, which encrypted users\u2019 data by default with iOS 8 in 2014.<\/p>\n Law enforcement officials, most notably Comey of the FBI, grew alarmed that these heightened encryption schemes would create a safe haven for crooks and terrorists. He directed his staff to look at the potential dangers of increasing encryption and began giving speeches that called for that blast from the past, lingering like a nasty chord from \u201990s grunge: exceptional access.<\/p>\n The response from the cryptographic community was swift and simple: Can\u2019t. Be. Done. In a landmark 2015 paper called \u201cKeys Under Doormats,<\/a>\u201d a group of 15 cryptographers and computer security experts argued that, while law enforcement has reasons to argue for access to encrypted data, \u201ca careful scientific analysis of the likely impact of such demands must distinguish what might be desirable from what is technically possible.\u201d Their analysis claimed that there was no foreseeable way to do this. If the government tried to implement exceptional access, they wrote, it would \u201copen doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1990s Crypto Wars were back on, and Ray Ozzie didn\u2019t like what he was hearing. The debate was becoming increasingly politicized. Experts in cryptography, he says, \u201cwere starting to pat themselves on the back, taking extreme positions about truisms that weren\u2019t so obvious to me.\u201d He knew that great achievements of cryptography had come from brilliant scientists using encryption protocols to perform a kind of magic: sharing secrets between two people who had never met, or creating digital currency that can\u2019t be duplicated for the purposes of fraud. Could a secure system of exceptional access be so much harder? So Ozzie set out to crack the problem. He had the time to do it. He\u2019d recently sold a company he founded in 2012, Talko, to Microsoft. And he was, to quote a friend, \u201cpost-economic,\u201d having made enough money to free him from financial concerns. Working out of his home north of Boston, he began to fool around with some ideas. About two weeks later, he came up with Clear.<\/p>\n Inside Ray Ozzie's home office in Manchester, Massachusetts. Ozzie bought this 128k Mac in 1984 so he could access the floppy disk that contained the original UI designs for Lotus Notes.<\/span><\/p>\n A Japanese "For Idiots"-style guide to databases that was given to Ozzie as a joke.<\/span><\/p>\n From left: Ozzie loves the design of this ADM-3A terminal, an IBM PC 5150 with a 512K memory upgrade that he uses to demo Lotus 1-2-3, and a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III—his first job in the PC industry was to port VisiCalc and other software to the TRS-80.<\/span><\/p>\n The reason Ozzie keeps this chemistry set around is to show young people that in his youth there was nobody looking over your shoulder telling you about safety or constraining you in any way. "Want to play with radioactive materials or see what happens when you play with mercury? Go for it."<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the many devices that Ozzie has worked with over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n Being a lifetime subscriber to 2600<\/em> is one of the ways Ozzie stays in touch with hacker culture.<\/span><\/p>\n The strength of <\/span>Ozzie\u2019s system lies in its simplicity. Unlike Clinton Brooks, who relied on the government to safeguard the Clipper Chip\u2019s encrypted keys, Ozzie is putting his trust in corporations, a decision that came from his experience in working for big companies like Lotus, IBM, and Microsoft. He was intimately familiar with the way that tech giants managed their keys. (You could even argue that he helped invent that structure, since Lotus Notes was the first software product to get a license to export strong encryption overseas and thus was able to build it into its products.) He argues that the security of the entire mobile universe already relies on the protection of keys\u2014those vital keys used to verify operating system updates, whose compromise could put billions of users at risk. (Every time you do an OS update, Apple certifies it by adding a unique ID and \u201csigning\u201d it to let your device know it\u2019s really Apple that is rewriting your iPhone\u2019s code.) Using that same system to provide exceptional access, he says, introduces no new security weaknesses that vendors don\u2019t already deal with.<\/p>\n Ozzie knew that his proposal danced on the third rail of the crypto debate\u2014many before him who had hinted at a technical solution to exceptional access have been greeted with social media pitchforks. So he decided to roll out his proposal quietly, showing Clear to small audiences under an informal nondisclosure agreement. The purpose was to get feedback on his system, and, if he was lucky, to jar some people out of the mindset that regarded exceptional access as a crime against science. His first stop, in September 2016, was in Seattle, where he met with his former colleagues at Microsoft. Bill Gates greeted the idea enthusiastically. Another former colleague, Butler Lampson\u2014a winner of the Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computer science\u2014calls the approach \u201ccompletely reasonable \u2026 The idea that there\u2019s no way to engineer a secure way of access is ridiculous.\u201d (Microsoft has no formal comment.)<\/p>\n Ozzie went on to show Clear to representatives from several of the biggest tech companies\u2014Apple, Google, Facebook\u2014none of whom had any interest whatsoever in voluntarily implementing any sort of exceptional access. Their focus was to serve their customers, and their customers want security. (Or, as Facebook put it in a statement to WIRED: \u201cWe have yet to hear of a technical solution to this challenge that would not risk weakening security for all users.\u201d) At one company, Ozzie squared off against a technical person who found the proposal offensive. \u201cI\u2019ve seen this happen to engineers a million times when they get backed into a corner,\u201d Ozzie says. \u201cI told him \u2018I\u2019m not saying you should<\/em> do this. I\u2019m trying to refute the argument that it can\u2019t be done.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Ozzie got an enthusiastic reception from the law enforcement and intelligence communities. \u201cIt\u2019s not just whether his scheme is workable,\u201d says Rich Littlehale, a special agent in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. \u201cIt\u2019s the fact that someone with his experience and understanding is presenting it.\u201d In an informal meeting with NSA employees at its Maryland headquarters, Ozzie was startled to hear that the agency had come up with something almost identical at some point. They\u2019d even given it a codename.<\/p>\n During the course of his meetings, Ozzie learned he was not alone in grappling with this issue. The names of three other scientists working on exceptional access popped up\u2014Ernie Brickell, Stefan Savage, and Robert Thibadeau\u2014and he thought it might be a good idea if they all met in private. Last August the four scientists gathered in Meg Whitman\u2019s boardroom at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Palo Alto. (Ozzie is a board member, and she let him borrow the space.) Though Thibadeau\u2019s work pursued a different course, Ozzie found that the other two were pursuing solutions similar to his. What\u2019s more, Savage has bona fides to rival Ozzie\u2019s. He\u2019s a world-\u00adrenowned expert on security research, and he and Ozzie share the same motivations. \u201cWe say we are scientists, and we let the data take us where they will, but not on this issue,\u201d Savage says. \u201cPeople I very much respect are saying this can\u2019t be done. That\u2019s not why I got into this business.\u201d<\/p>\n Ozzie\u2019s efforts come as the government is getting increasingly desperate to gain access to encrypted information. In a speech earlier this year, FBI director Christopher Wray said the agency was locked out of 7,775 devices in 2017. He declared the situation intolerable. \u201cI reject this notion that there could be such a place that no matter what kind of lawful authority you have, it\u2019s utterly beyond reach to protect innocent citizens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, in a speech at the Naval Academy late last year, was even more strident. \u201cWarrant-proof encryption defeats the constitutional balance by elevating privacy above public safety,\u201d he said. What\u2019s needed, he said, is \u201cresponsible encryption \u2026 secure encryption that allows access only with judicial authorization.\u201d<\/p>\n Scientists introduce public key cryptography, in which private and public complementary keys are used to encrypt and unlock data.<\/p>\n RSA becomes one of the first companies to market encryption to the business and consumer world.<\/p>\n Lotus Notes becomes the first software to obtain a license to export strong encryption overseas.<\/p>\n The Clinton administration announces a plan to use the so-called Clipper Chip.<\/p>\n A computer scientist finds a critical vulnerability in theClipper Chip. The US abandons the program within two years.<\/p>\n The Clinton administration removes nearly all restrictions on the export of encryption products.<\/p>\n Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveals classified information about government surveillance programs.<\/p>\n Apple introduces default encryption in iOS\u00a08.<\/p>\n After a mass shooting in California, the Feds file a court order against Apple to access the contents of a shooter\u2019s phone.<\/p>\n Since Apple, Google, Facebook, and the rest don\u2019t see much upside in changing their systems, only a legislative demand could grant law enforcement exceptional access. But there doesn\u2019t seem to be much appetite in Congress to require tech companies to tailor their software to serve the needs of law enforcement agencies. That might change in the wake of some major incident, especially if it were discovered that advance notice might have been gleaned from an encrypted mobile device.<\/p>\n As an alternative to exceptional access, cryptographers and civil libertarians have begun promoting an approach known as lawful hacking. It turns out that there is a growing industry of private contractors who are skilled in identifying flaws in the systems that lock up information. In the San Bernardino case, the FBI paid a reported $900,000 to an unnamed contractor to help them access the data on Farook\u2019s iPhone. Many had suspected that the mysterious contractor was an Israeli company called Cellebrite, which has a thriving business in extracting data from iPhones for law enforcement agencies. (Cellebrite has refused to confirm or deny its involvement in the case, and its representatives declined to comment for this story.) A report by a think tank called the EastWest Institute concluded that other than exceptional access, lawful hacking is the only workable alternative.<\/p>\n But is it ethical? It seems odd to have security specialists promoting a system that depends on a reliable stream of vulnerabilities for hired hackers to exploit. Think about it: Apple can\u2019t access its customers\u2019 data\u2014but some random company in Israel can fetch it for its paying customers? And with even the NSA unable to protect its own hacking tools, isn\u2019t it inevitable that the break-in secrets of these private companies will eventually fall into the hands of criminals and other bad actors? There is also a danger that forces within the big tech companies could enrich themselves through lawful hacking. As one law enforcement official pointed out to me, lawful hacking creates a marketplace for so-called zero-day flaws\u2014vulnerabilities discovered by outsiders that the manufacturers don\u2019t know about\u2014and thus can be exploited by legal and nonlegal attackers. So we shouldn\u2019t be surprised if malefactors inside tech companies create and bury these trapdoors in products, with hopes of selling them later to the \u201clawful hackers.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawful hacking is techno-capitalism at its shadiest, and, in terms of security alone, it makes the mechanisms underlying Clear (court orders, tamper\u00ad-proof contents) look that much more appealing. No matter where you stand in the crypto debate, it makes sense that a carefully considered means of implementing exceptional access would be far superior to a scheme that\u2019s hastily concocted in the aftermath of a disaster. (See Clipper.) But such an approach goes nowhere unless people believe that it doesn\u2019t violate math, physics, and Tim Cook\u2019s vows to his customers. That is the bar that Ozzie hopes he can clear.<\/p>\n The \u201cKeys Under Doormats\u201d gang has raised some good criticisms of Clear, and for the record, they resent Ozzie\u2019s implication that their minds are closed. \u201cThe answer is always, show me a proposal that doesn\u2019t harm security,\u201d says Dan Boneh, a celebrated cryptographer who teaches at Stanford. \u201cHow do we balance that against the legitimate need of security to unlock phones? I wish I could tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most salient objections goes to the heart of Ozzie\u2019s claim that his system doesn\u2019t really increase risk to a user\u2019s privacy, because manufacturers like Apple already employ intricate protocols to protect the keys that verify its operating system updates. Ozzie\u2019s detractors reject the equivalence. \u201cThe exceptional access key is different from the signing key,\u201d says Susan Landau, a computer scientist who was also a \u00adcoauthor of the \u201cDoormat\u201d paper. \u201cA signing key is used rarely, but the exceptional access key will be used a lot.\u201d The implication is that setting up a system to protect the PINs of billions of phones, and process thousands of requests from law enforcement, will inevitably have huge gaps in security. Ozzie says this really isn\u2019t a problem. Invoking his experience as a top executive at major tech firms, he says that they already have frameworks that can securely handle keys at scale. Apple, for example, uses a key system so that thousands of developers can be verified as genuine\u2014the iOS ecosystem couldn\u2019t work otherwise.<\/p>\n Ozzie has fewer answers to address criticisms about how his system\u2014or any that uses exceptional access\u2014would work internationally. Would every country, even those with authoritarian governments, be able to compel Apple or Google to cough up the key to unlock the contents of any device within its jurisdiction? Ozzie concedes that\u2019s a legitimate concern, and it\u2019s part of the larger ongoing debate about how we regulate the flow of information and intellectual property across borders. He is also the first to point out that he doesn\u2019t have all the answers about exceptional access, and he isn\u2019t trying to create a full legal and technological framework. He is merely trying to prove that something could work.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s where Ozzie\u2019s plan plunges into the choppiest waters. Proving something is nigh impossible in the world of crypto and security. Time and again, supposedly impervious systems, created by the most brilliant cryptographers and security specialists, get undermined by clever attackers, and sometimes just idiots who stumble on unforeseen weaknesses. \u201cSecurity is not perfect,\u201d says Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins. \u201cWe\u2019re really bad at it.\u201d<\/p>\n But as bad as security can be, we rely on it anyway. What\u2019s the alternative? We trust it to protect our phone updates, our personal information, and now even cryptocurrencies. All too often, it fails. What Ozzie is saying is that exceptional access is no different. It isn\u2019t a special case singled out by the math gods. If we agree that a relatively benign scheme is possible, then we can debate whether we should do it on the grounds of policy.<\/p>\n Maybe we\u2019d even decide that we don\u2019t want exceptional access, given all the other tools government has to snoop on us. Ozzie could return to his post-economic retirement, and law enforcement and civil libertarians would return to their respective corners, ready to slug it out another day. Let the Crypto Wars continue.<\/p>\n Steven Levy<\/strong> (@stevenlevy<\/a>) wrote about the new Apple headquarters<\/a> in issue 25.06.<\/p>\n This article appears in the May issue. Subscribe now<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n