Adding to the debate, we have to question why the FBI does not ask the NSA to break into the terrorist’s phone. The NSA has massive and very expensive supercomputers that can crack codes/encryption very quickly. No form of encryption technology can stand up against the infinite computing power of the NSA. However, if, and that is a BIG IF, information on the phone led to a criminal court case, the NSA may have to describe the method it used to crack the phone, which they want to avoid at all costs.
Therefore, in February 2016, the FBI asked for $38 million in funding to counter the growing use of encryption technology employed. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $52.6 billion dollar BLACK BUDGET. The U.S. BLACK BUDGET spans over a dozen agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program. The top five agencies, by spending:
The above information was taken from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget.
Looking at the chart above, the requested FBI budget for 2016 is $8.48 billion. Some of the breakdown of that budget is as follows as taken from https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-request-for-fiscal-year-2016, “The request includes a total of $8.4 billion for salaries and expenses, supporting 35,037 permanent positions (13,074 special agents, 3,083 intelligence analysts, and 18,880 professional staff), and $68.9 million for construction. Two program enhancements totaling $20 million are proposed: $10.3 million to increase cyber investigative capabilities, and $9.7 million to leverage Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE) components and services within the FBI.
The FY 2016 request includes the cancellation of $120 million from Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) excess surcharge balances and $91.4 million in non-recurred spending ($50.4 million in the salaries and expenses account and $41 million in the construction account).
Overall, the FY 2016 request represents a net increase of $47 million over the FY 2015 enacted levels, representing an increase of $88 million for salaries and expenses and a decrease of $41 million for construction.”
As you can see from the above numbers most of the FBI budget supports their 35,037 employees. Comparing their $8.4 billion dollar budget to the $52.6 billion dollar black budget leaves the FBI very limited resources to spend on cyber security and breaking encryption. Something U.S. taxpayers have to ask themselves is, with such a well-funded cyber security and encryption breaking BLACK BUDGET, why does the FBI need such underfunded and redundant cyber security expenditures?
Therefore, how does the FBI get around their lack of ability to break encryption when they are blocked from using the unlimited BLACK BUDGET cyber security/encryption breaking capabilities? They do so by asking U.S. companies to put in easy backdoors nullifying the encryption techniques being employed to protect data. Once those backdoors are leaked, the Russians, Chinese, criminals, and back hat hackers now have an easy path to get at the data stored on those devices. This results in a HUGE loss of intellectual property in the United States to other countries.
Ironically, the FBI states that preventing intellectual property theft is a priority for them. However, these engineered backdoors may have enabled the biggest theft of trade secrets and infringements on products that impact consumers’ data, health and safety, such as counterfeit aircraft, car, and electronic parts in U.S. history. The FBI even admits that much of theft takes place overseas, and costs U.S. businesses billions of dollars a year as well as robs the nation of jobs and lost tax revenues. In Fiscal Year 2011, federal agencies only made 24,792 intellectual property rights seizures valued at $178.3 million. (See: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/ipr, https://www.dhs.gov/topic/intellectual-property-rights)
Compare that trivial number to the 2013 report documented by the Huffington Post, which concluded that hacking costs the overall U.S. economy as much as 100 billion each year. That means we are countering 0.1783% of all intellectual property being stolen in the U.S. and to counter that threat, “U.S. companies are spending millions of dollars securing their networks, buying insurance and repairing their reputations after getting hacked.” (See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/hackers-jobs_n_3652893.html)
How much of those numbers that can be traced back to encryption backdoors is unknown. For example, a stolen cell phone of a corporate executive or integral employee may have given up a treasure trove of information such as corporate accounts and passwords that hackers exploited later. Another example is perhaps the personal information on a hacked phone gave a criminal the ability to blackmail a knowledgeable corporate employee. The possibilities for the invasion and exploitation of easy FBI backdoors to iPhones are endless and this is a rabbit hole that should not be opened when there are U.S. BLACK BUDGET options that can achieve the same results.
The Internet is stalking you. It is useful but it can become your worst enemy. As you now know, governments and corporations around the world expend vast resources and expense to spy upon your Internet use, phone conversations, email, GPS location and much more. Almost every facet of our daily lives are being scrutinized. Thousands of identity thieves, hackers, and criminal organizations are watching your Internet activity and installing malware on your Internet devices. You need my writing!
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