The Open Technology Institute (OTI) has responded to GCHQ/NCSC's article on 'Principles for a More Informed Exceptional Access Debate' with an 'Open Letter to GCHQ on the Threats Posed by the Ghost Proposal'.
'Exceptional access' is the law enforcement term for accessing encrypted messages -- the so-called government backdoor into end-to-end encryption services. 'Going dark' is the term law enforcement uses to describe its inability to access encrypted messages between subjects of interest that increasingly use encryption. 'Ghost proposal' is OTI's term for GCHQ's proposed method to prevent going dark.
Law enforcement in this instance combines both police services like the FBI and the Met, and intelligence services like the NSA and GCHQ/NCSC. Few people deny the benefit of law enforcement being able to access individual messages -- with a court order -- between specified persons of interest. The resistance of the security industry to a government backdoor into encryption is that it would break encryption for everyone -- guilty and innocent alike.
At the end of November 2018, Ian Levy (technical director of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre -- NCSC), and Crispin Robinson (technical director for cryptanalysis at GCHQ) published an article that "outlines how to enable the majority of the necessary lawful access without undermining the values we all hold dear."
The Levy/Robinson paper starts from what they call the 'Five Country' statement on access to evidence and encryption. The five countries are the Five Eyes (U.S.A., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- the world's largest single SigInt alliance). It describes three principles: access to encrypted messages is the mutual responsibility of both SigInt and v ..
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