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Telephone metadata can reveal surprisingly sensitive personal information
by Александр А. 19 May '16

19 May '16

*https://news.stanford.edu/2016/05/16/stanford-computer-scientists-show-telephone-metadata-can-reveal-surprisingly-sensitive-personal-information/ <https://news.stanford.edu/2016/05/16/stanford-computer-scientists-show-tele…>http://www.pnas.org/content/113/20/5536.full <http://www.pnas.org/content/113/20/5536.full>* Stanford computer scientists show telephone metadata can reveal surprisingly sensitive personal information Stanford researchers show that telephone metadata – information about calls and text messages, such as time and length – can alone reveal a surprising amount of personal detail. The work could help inform future policies for government surveillance and consumer data privacy. Most people might not give telephone metadata – the numbers you dial, the length of your calls – a second thought. Some government officials probably view it as similarly trivial, which is why this information can be obtained without a warrant. A new Stanford study of information gathered by the National Security Agency shows that warrantless surveillance can reveal a surprising amount of personal information about individual Americans. (Image credit: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock <http://www.shutterstock.com/>) But a new analysis <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/05/10/1508081113.full?sid=ddfe42c7-3…> by Stanford computer scientists shows that it is possible to identify a person’s private information – such as health details – from metadata alone. Additionally, following metadata “hops” from one person’s communications can involve thousands of other people. The researchers set out to fill knowledge gaps within the National Security Agency’s current phone metadata program, which has drawn conflicting assertions about its privacy impacts. The law currently treats call content and metadata separately and makes it easier for government agencies to obtain metadata, in part because it assumes that it shouldn’t be possible to infer specific sensitive details about people based on metadata alone. The findings, reported today in the *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, provide the first empirical data on the privacy properties of telephone metadata. Preliminary versions of the work, previously made available online, have already played a role in federal surveillance policy and have been cited in litigation filings and letters to legislators in both the United States and abroad. The final work could be used to help make more informed policy decisions about government surveillance and consumer data privacy. The computer scientists built a smartphone application that retrieved the previous call and text message metadata – the numbers, times and lengths of communications – from more than 800 volunteers’ smartphone logs. In total, participants provided records of more than 250,000 calls and 1.2 million texts. The researchers then used a combination of inexpensive automated and manual processes to illustrate both the extent of the reach – how many people would be involved in a scan of a single person – and the level of sensitive information that can be gleaned about each user. >From a small selection of the users, the Stanford researchers were able to infer, for instance, that a person who placed several calls to a cardiologist, a local drugstore and a cardiac arrhythmia monitoring device hotline likely suffers from cardiac arrhythmia. Another study participant likely owns an AR semiautomatic rifle, based on frequent calls to a local firearms dealer that prominently advertises AR semiautomatic rifles and to the customer support hotline of a major firearm manufacturer that produces these rifles. One of the government’s justifications for allowing law enforcement and national security agencies to access metadata without warrants is the underlying belief that it’s not sensitive information. This work shows that assumption is not true. “I was somewhat surprised by how successfully we inferred sensitive details about individuals,” said study co-author Patrick Mutchler, a graduate student at Stanford. “It feels intuitive that the businesses you call say something about yourself. But when you look at how effectively we were able to identify that a person likely had a medical condition, which we consider intensely private, that was interesting.” They also found that a large number of people could get caught up in a single surveillance sweep. When the National Security Agency examines metadata associated with a suspect’s phone, it is allowed to examine a “two-hop” net around the suspect. Suspect A calls person B is one hop; person B calls person C is the second hop. Analysts can then comb the metadata of anyone within two hops of the suspect. By extrapolating participant data, the researchers estimated that the NSA’s current authorities could allow for surveilling roughly 25,000 individuals – and possibly more – starting from just one “seed” phone user. Although the results are not surprising, the researchers said that the raw, empirical data provide a better-informed starting point for future conversations between privacy interest groups and policymakers. For instance, the authors point to the recent shift to reduce the metadata retrieval window from five years to 18 months. By drawing accurate and sensitive inferences about participants from roughly six months-worth of calls and texts, the study suggests that metadata are more revealing than previously thought. Similarly, the government’s two-hop call sweep was previously three hops; that reduction was implemented to reduce the number of people caught in a sweep. Shortening the time window could reduce that number further, Mutchler said. “If we’re going to pick a sweet spot as society, where we want the privacy vs. security tradeoff to lie, it’s important to understand the implications of the polices that we have,” Mutchler said. “In this paper, we have empirical data, which I think will help people make informed decisions.” The study, “Evaluating the privacy properties of telephone metadata,” was coauthored by John C. Mitchell <https://profiles.stanford.edu/john-mitchell>, the Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor in the School of Engineering, and Jonathan Mayer, a scholar in the Stanford School of Engineering and the Stanford Law School. Mayer is currently detailed from Stanford to the Federal Communications Commission, where he is serving as Chief Technologist for the Enforcement Bureau. The project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology Research Center.

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IBM Quantum Computing
by Александр 18 May '16

18 May '16

Well, we have been hearing about this Quantum technology for years... It's not mature yet, but.... potentially... when it will be mature... it will be able to break any crypto-system. (oh, maybe it is already mature in the Catacombs of the NSA). _______ https://www.research.ibm.com/quantum/#start https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/49661.wss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7D8snlsnQ http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibm-puts-a-quantum-pr… IBM scientists have built a quantum processor that users can access through a first-of-a-kind quantum computing platform delivered via the IBM Cloud <http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/> onto any desktop or mobile device. IBM believes quantum computing is the future of computing and has the potential to solve certain problems that are impossible to solve on today’s supercomputers. The cloud-enabled quantum computing platform, called IBM Quantum Experience <http://www.ibm.com/quantumcomputing>, will allow users to run algorithms and experiments on IBM’s quantum processor, work with the individual quantum bits (qubits), and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing. The quantum processor is composed of five superconducting qubits and is housed at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. The five-qubit processor represents the latest advancement in IBM’s quantum architecture that can scale to larger quantum systems. It is the leading approach towards building a universal quantum computer <https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/48259.wss>. A universal quantum computer can be programmed to perform any computing task and will be exponentially faster than classical computers for a number of important applications for science and business. A universal quantum computer does not exist today, but IBM envisions medium-sized quantum processors of 50-100 qubits to be possible in the next decade. With a quantum computer built of just 50 qubits, none of today’s TOP500 supercomputers could successfully emulate it, reflecting the tremendous potential of this technology. The community of quantum computer scientists and theorists is working to harness this power, and applications in optimization and chemistry will likely be the first to demonstrate quantum speed-up. “Quantum computers are very different from today’s computers, not only in what they look like and are made of, but more importantly in what they can do. Quantum computing is becoming a reality and it will extend computation far beyond what is imaginable with today’s computers,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director, IBM Research. “This moment represents the birth of quantum cloud computing. By giving hands-on access to IBM’s experimental quantum systems, the IBM Quantum Experience will make it easier for researchers and the scientific community to accelerate innovations in the quantum field, and help discover new applications for this technology.” With Moore’s Law running out of steam, quantum computing will be among the technologies that could usher in a new era of innovation across industries. This leap forward in computing could lead to the discovery of new pharmaceutical drugs and completely safeguard cloud computing systems. It could also unlock new facets of artificial intelligence (which could lead to future, more powerful Watson <http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/> technologies), develop new materials science to transform industries, and search large volumes of big data <http://www.ibm.com/big-data/us/en/>. *IBM Quantum Experience* Quantum information is very fragile and needs to be protected from any errors that can result from heat and electromagnetic radiation. Signals are sent in and out of a cryogenic dilution refrigerator to measure operations on the quantum processor. The IBM team has made a number of robust engineering advances both at the device level and in the electronic controls to give IBM Quantum Experience users unprecedented and reliably high-quality performance in this five-qubit processor. Coupled with software expertise from the IBM Research ecosystem, the team has built a dynamic user interface on the IBM Cloud <http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/> platform that allows users to easily connect to the quantum hardware via the cloud. The team sees the introduction to the public of this complete quantum computing framework as just the start of a new user community, which embraces the quantum world and how it works. In the future, users will have the opportunity to contribute and review their results in the community hosted on the IBM Quantum Experience and IBM scientists will be directly engaged to offer more research and insights on new advances. IBM plans to add more qubits and different processor arrangements to the IBM Quantum Experience over time, so users can expand their experiments and help uncover new applications for the technology. *Quantum computing – a different way of thinking* We live in a world where classical physics defines our experiences and our intuition, and ultimately how we process information. However, nature at the atomic level is governed by a different set of rules known as quantum mechanics. It is beyond the reach of classical computers to solve problems that exist in nature in which quantum mechanics plays a role, for example, understanding how molecules behave. To overcome this, in 1981, Richard Feynman proposed to build computers based on the laws of quantum mechanics. Over three decades later, IBM is helping to make this a reality. Quantum computing works fundamentally differently from today’s computers. A classical computer makes use of bits to process information, where each bit represents either a one or a zero. In contrast, a qubit can represent a one, a zero, or both at once, which is known as superposition. This property along with other quantum effects enable quantum computers to perform certain calculations vastly faster than is possible with classical computers. Most of today’s quantum computing research in academia and industry is focused on building a universal quantum computer. The major challenges include creating qubits of high quality and packaging them together in a scalable way, so they can perform complex calculations in a controllable way. IBM employs superconducting qubits that are made with superconducting metals on a silicon chip and can be designed and manufactured using standard silicon fabrication techniques. Last year, IBM scientists demonstrated critical breakthroughs <https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/46725.wss> to detect quantum errors by combining superconducting qubits in latticed arrangements, and whose quantum circuit design is the only physical architecture that can scale to larger dimensions. Now, IBM scientists have achieved a further advance by combining five qubits in the lattice architecture, which demonstrates a key operation known as a parity measurement – the basis of many quantum error correction protocols. The road towards universal quantum computing hinges upon the achievement of quantum error correction, and the IBM team has taken another important step down this challenging path. *New frontiers for quantum computing* There has been tremendous progress and interest in the field of quantum of computing in recent years. By giving users access to the IBM Quantum Experience, it will help businesses and organizations begin to understand the technology’s potential, for universities to grow their teaching programs in quantum computing and related subjects, and for students to become aware of promising new career paths. “It is a beautiful challenge to pursue the path to build the first universal quantum computer, but it requires us to change how we think about the world. Access to early quantum computing prototypes will be key in imagining and developing future applications,” said Dario Gil, vice president of science and solutions, IBM Research. “If you want to understand what a true quantum computer will do for you and how it works, this is the place to do it. You won’t experience it anywhere else.” IBM’s quantum computing platform is a core initiative within the newly formed IBM Research Frontiers Institute <http://www.ibm.com/frontiers>. The Frontiers Institute is a consortium that develops and shares ground-breaking computing technologies to spur world-changing innovations. Companies from diverse industries can leverage IBM’s research talent and cutting-edge infrastructure to explore what the future of quantum computing may mean for their organization and business. Founding members of the Frontiers Institute include Samsung, JSR, and Honda. To access the IBM Quantum Experience and for more information on IBM’s quantum computing research, please visit www.ibm.com/quantumcomputing. To learn more about the IBM Research Frontiers Institute, please visit www.ibm.com/frontiers. Note to journalists and bloggers: You can view and download b-roll on IBM’s quantum computing efforts at http://www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm. The video is available in HD, standard definition broadcast and streaming quality.

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Re: How long before compulsory microchipping of cattle, I mean, 'citizens'?
by Cari Machet 18 May '16

18 May '16

Yes the little talks of whats his name @ioerror limited hang out tor guy He takes out the battery from his phone and presents that as effective for disabling tracking Sim cards are detectible without power I really dislike these kinds of performances for show that lie On May 18, 2016 8:37 AM, "grarpamp" <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: On 5/17/16, juan <juan.g71(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'll hazard : 20 years. Nope, sorry, you're already effectively chipped. And considered cattle. Best you can do now is try to cast off your chains.

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Subpoenaed Tor developer dodges FBI, leaves US
by Rayzer 18 May '16

18 May '16

Money.Cnn. See article for links n shit: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi/index.html "The FBI's attempts to break into Tor are starting to manifest in strange ways. FBI agents are currently trying to subpoena one of Tor's core software developers to testify in a criminal hacking investigation, CNNMoney has learned. But the developer, who goes by the name Isis Agora Lovecruft, fears that federal agents will coerce her to undermine the Tor system -- and expose Tor users around the world to potential spying. That's why, when FBI agents approached her and her family over Thanksgiving break last year, she immediately packed her suitcase and left the United States for Germany. "I was worried they'd ask me to do something that hurts innocent people -- and prevent me from telling people it's happening," she said in an exclusive interview with CNNMoney. The FBI declined to comment on the matter, citing a policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of ongoing investigations. However, according to an FBI agent familiar with the case, FBI agents in Atlanta and Los Angeles are seeking Lovecruft's help to investigate a hacking case in which she, in their eyes, is "connected." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for Internet freedom, has now taken up her cause. "Her primary goal is to make sure she can come back to the United States when she wants to do that," said Nate Cardozo, a senior staff attorney at EFF. "And to have threats of subpoenas explained or go away." "Please call me" It started when FBI Special Agent Mark W. Burnett stopped by Lovecruft's parents' home in Los Angeles while the family was on vacation in Hawaii. He left his card, on which he wrote, "Please call me." Her mother immediately called Ben Rosenfeld, an attorney in San Francisco who specializes in technology and surveillance law. On Dec. 2, he called Agent Burnett and presented himself as Lovecruft's lawyer. Lovecruft told CNNMoney she had been willing to meet the FBI with her attorney present. But Rosenfeld was told by agents that they would circumvent him and approach Lovecruft directly. At the time, the FBI wouldn't say why it sought her. There were clues, though. In late 2015, it was becoming apparent that the FBI was aggressively trying to pierce Tor's veil of anonymity. Tor hides someone's physical location by bouncing computer signals throughout its worldwide network. And while it's run by a U.S. government-backed nonprofit to protect free speech, Tor is also a preferred tool for hackers, drug traffickers, and child pornographers. The FBI has managed to hack Tor users in the past. To pull this off, the FBI has also compelled institutions, like Carnegie Mellon University, to pitch in. Lovecruft, one of the few people intimately familiar with Tor's inner workings, feared she would be pressured to assist as well. "That would undermine all the work that we do to protect human rights activists, women researching birth control... all these people need privacy. They need what Tor provides," she said. "I would not undermine that." Lovecruft thought she'd get caught up in the FBI's perceived war on hackers. The Department of Justice has come down hard on digital dissidents like Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide when facing federal charges in 2013. Fearing a similar fight, Lovecruft refused to leave her San Francisco apartment for a week. "There was this feeling the air had changed, and that I couldn't breathe," she said. "I'd look at my bike and think, I'm not supposed to go outside. Maybe some agents will pick me up off the street if I ride my bike. I'm just going to stay here, and not respond to anyone when they knock." Flight to Berlin Lovecruft had intended to move to Germany someday, but she put those plans on overdrive. She booked a flight to Berlin that weekend, including a return flight she had no intention of taking -- just to avoid raising suspicions. On Dec. 7, without seeing family or friends, she took a taxi to San Francisco International Airport. She nervously made her way past TSA agents wearing a $1 pair of blue-green aviator sunglasses, unsure if she was breaking any laws by leaving the country. When the plane lifted from the tarmac, Lovecruft sent a message on Twitter, letting loved ones know she slipped away. But it's not over. In April, FBI Special Agent Kelvin Porter in Atlanta called her lawyer. This time, he wanted to know where to send a subpoena for Lovecruft to help testify in a criminal hacking case. Cardozo at the EFF is adamant that Lovecruft hasn't violated the law by dodging the FBI. He and Lovecruft acknowledge that the FBI might have a legitimate reason to seek her help. But they just want to figure out what that is. Lovecruft, speaking from Berlin by phone on an encrypted app, still sounds worried: "I don't know what they want. I don't know what happens to me if I go back." CNNMoney (New York) First published May 17, 2016: 8:44 AM ET

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NSA Crypto Breakthrough Bamford [was: WhatsApp keying...]
by grarpamp 18 May '16

18 May '16

On 4/29/16, Ray Dillinger <bear(a)sonic.net> wrote: > > On 04/28/2016 05:41 PM, grarpamp wrote: >> On 4/28/16, david wong <davidwong.crypto(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> so as long as we don't discover a crazy breakthrough. >> >> This "breakthrough" hasn't yet been further identified / described... >> https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter > > > I keep hearing rumors about this "breakthrough." I don't > know how seriously to take them, but I suspect that if it > exists it's more likely to be deliberate sabotage at the > hardware/software/firmware level than it is to be the > often-implicated Quantum Supercomputer or major mathematical > insight. > But I keep hearing noises about a fundamental breakthrough > in cryptology, with the strong implication that it's some > kind of new cryptanalytic technique, mathematical insight, > or design principle for special-purpose custom hardware. If you actually read and reassemble all the references in the article (which I won't do herein), they all refer to a 'cryptanalytic' breakthrough over modern crypto, further assisted with compute power, and deployed. That is obviously not just academic powers of two yielding moot partial solutions over limited rounds. And not sabotage, exploits, etc. Of course those are widespread, but they are not part of the 'cryptanalytic breakthrough' subthread of the article. > Assuming they can get four orders of magnitude of hardware > efficiency for purpose-built AES cracking silicon, and back > it up with scores of billions of dollars per year investment > in constantly updating overwhelming volumes of this custom > hardware -- I still don't see anybody cracking AES-128 any > time soon without either a mathematical insight so profound > as to be completely unexpected Maths and crackpots love a nice quiet life with everything taken care of so they can spend decades working their hard problems and crazy angles. The NSA provides that, and protects it and its results as their crown jewels. Do not underestimate it. > or a fundamentally new > computing technology like large scale Quantum Computers. This begins to matter when basic research yields a point where a secret investment of say $100B or less pays off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects http://www.visualcapitalist.com/death-taxes-2015-visual-guide-tax-dollars-g… > If the fundamental mathematical breakthrough is real, it's > very surprising that it hasn't leaked See crown jewels... > or been duplicated yet See Maths... > but in that case it's only a matter of time before one or the > other or both occur. Leaks can occur until time forgotten. Math occurs randomly. Snowden did not have access to the crypto compartments. No leaker seems to have had relavent access to post-WWII modern crypto. > Speculating about the effect of a > fundamental mathematical breakthrough is at best hard to do > meaningfully Those subject to the dark must speculate, those with knowledge of it can execute. > Physicists: > "A large-scale quantum supercomputer is very doubtful." > > Mathematicians: > "A mathematical insight of such magnitude is very doubtful." Wagering against physics is one thing, against the human mind... that may not be a wise investment. "...the ability to crack current public encryption." Some investigative journalist should be all over following up the crypto part of Bamford's piece as the scoop of a lifetime. For that matter, where is Bamford's own followup? Details of such a breakthrough are likely to serve and advance public knowledge and application by providing solution to some long desirable hard problem or going off somewhere new that we've never gone before. Keeping those kind of secrets for yourself is an affront to Humankind. Till then, everyone, including the keepers, rots in the Dark Ages.

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Re: What Omidyar's been up to...
by Cari Machet 18 May '16

18 May '16

Thank you rayzor for your ignorant ego ways otherwise we wouldnt get to read juans brilliance as often On May 17, 2016 11:20 PM, "juan" <juan.g71(a)gmail.com> wrote: On Tue, 17 May 2016 08:13:44 -0700 Rayzer <rayzer(a)riseup.net> wrote: > > > On 05/16/2016 10:36 PM, juan wrote: > > On Mon, 16 May 2016 08:35:28 -0700 > > Rayzer <rayzer(a)riseup.net> wrote: > > > >> > >> Fomenting media about indigenous land rights... > >> > >> > > > > omidyar and the reuters mafia babbling about 'land rights' make as > > much sense as jack the ripper lecturing on morality. > > > > > > I sense you, like many fanatics, don't see the value of the 'small > cracks' these sorts of things make in 'systems'. Oh, I do see the value of what your master omidyar does. I know qute well how propaganda works. The 'cracks' in the system are useful to keep the fake opposition happy. "Controlled opposition" Look it up. In wikipedia. > Let's talk conspiracy Juan, cause I KNOW you're bound to be one of > those 'conspiracy nutjobs'. Ok. So I'm a 'fanatic nutjob'. I'd rather be that instead of an omidyar lapdog. > > "Power Elite Conspiracies" exist but they are NOT overarching, cast > in stone things with some 'plan' that made them happen. Conspiracies > muddle through by hedging all bets. Any way the cards fall you win > SOMETHING, and over time that something is at least additive if not > geometrically or logarithmically enhanced. Handwaving and bullshit. > > It's up to the proles to take advantage of the hedges that work for > them. Because no one else is going to do it. Even the most perverse > skewed reporting on an issue is better than none at all for too many > reasons to enumerate here. Sure, sure, sure. How could I have missed the invaluable value of establishment propaganda? Silly me. > > If the proles can't figure out the media trap their ensnared in > educate them. You'd just scoff. Hella solution. > > "I think people have the capacities to see through the deceit in which > they're ensnared, but you've got to make the effort" ~Noam Chomsky > > He says so right here > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsZwGbi9g8 > (snigger, that's Tom Morello's mama announcing.) > > Ah but you think Chomsky's a CIA 'operator' don't you Juan? I know chomsky is a sick piece of shit. I aldready provided the data. Here it goes again. http://www.hoover.org/research/noam-chomsky-closet-capitalist http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/authors/noam-chomsky-n… > And Tom Morello, and Zack De La Rocha, and Abbie Hoffman Karl Marx, > Groucho Marx, and Trotsky too. lol rayzer - you are a cheap marxist - you can't get more totalitarian than that. go kill people who don't obey The State's Traffic Laws. > > I guess everyone should just give up and not do anything at all. > > BTW, USAID is on the list of foundation donors. The skew is EASY to > see, and EASY to work around just by those agency's visibility in the > organization. > > Rr > > >

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Anonymous Teaching Hacktivism and Hacking via OnionIRC
by grarpamp 16 May '16

16 May '16

https://twitter.com/onionirc irc://onionirchubx5363.onion:6667 ircs://onionirchubx5363.onion:6697

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Cypherpunks: Renegades, Risk Takers - Smart, Provocative Entertainment
by John Young 15 May '16

15 May '16

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160419006752/en/Laura-Poitras%C2%A0… Risk is a fresh take on the renegades, the cypherpunks, the risk takers. First Look Media announced today that Laura Poitras' new feature film Risk will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival's 48th Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs). This dramatic documentary with a cypherpunk spirit reveals the stakes and opportunities of truth-telling and finds Poitras embedded with Julian Assange over the past five years. Risk is her highly anticipated follow-up to Citizenfour, Academy Award® winner for Best Documentary. Risk is produced by Praxis Films in association with First Look Media and Field of Vision. World sales will be handled by Josh Braun of Submarine. First Look Media is a new-model media company devoted to supporting independent voices across all platforms, from investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to smart, provocative entertainment. eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar launched First Look in 2013 with the belief that independent perspectives are vital to a vibrant culture and thriving democracy. First Look operates as both a studio and digital media company.

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XnSpy
by Yush Bhardwaj 15 May '16

15 May '16

anyone have any idea about XnSpy android spy software? *Yush Bhardwaj*

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The Hullabaloo over Encryption
by Ryan Carboni 15 May '16

15 May '16

Why is the FBI against encryption? Why did the former NSA and CIA chiefs come in favor of encryption? Their statements are hard to decipher on the subject, but not hard to figure out. It is usually easier to make everything but the cipher weak. Protocols and programs commonly used are either not done properly or non standardized, and best practices have been slow in coming. Furthermore, the FBI has not been clear on this, but apparently they want data in motion to be decrypted and encrypted by a central point, and for data at rest to not be encrypted. (I seriously doubt Marcy Wheeler's claims of Comey's charisma if he has not even been able to say in one sentence about what the FBI wants, unless she's flirting with him) For groups to organize they need to communicate. Criminals use off the shelf encryption tools, and their devices are not continuously connected, and even less likely to be able to run root code on each other's devices (although social engineering does work). What the NSA and the CIA does is harder to guess, but it becomes somewhat obvious that no nation-state has publicly explained how to design a proper protocol (AFAIK). Furthermore, you do hear in the news about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_cyberattack_on_United_States . Essentially, common criminals have a small attack surface. Nationstates have a larger attack surface, so encryption is less significant.

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