Cloud risk with BitLocker: Microsoft routinely hands over BitLocker keys to the FBI

[Redaktion]

While Apple and Google stress that they cannot unlock customer devices, the situation is different with Windows encryption: Microsoft routinely hands over BitLocker keys from the cloud to law enforcement agencies.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Cloud-risk-with-BitLocker-Microsoft-routinely-hands-over-BitLocker-keys-to-the-FBI.1211595.0.html

[Admiral Snackbar]

Yikes. I'd hate to think of all the things the FBI could be doing with that information.

"[Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is] the most notorious liar in the country"

-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is."

-FBI Letter to Dr. King

[jdrch]

Yikes. I'd hate to think of all the things the FBI could be doing with that information.

"[Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is] the most notorious liar in the country"

-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is."

-FBI Letter to Dr. King

The only thing you can do with a Bitlocker key is unlock a Bitlocker encrypted disk you already have physical access to. Which means that if the FBI are requesting your Bitlocker key, they've already seized your computer.

[jdrch]

This isn't new. Windows automatically backs up BitLocker keys to OneDrive unless you tell it not to, and OneDrive doesn't use client-side encryption. You can get around this by storing the key locally and backing it up to OneDrive using a client-side encryption client like Duplicati.

[Admiral Snackbar]

The only thing you can do with a Bitlocker key is unlock a Bitlocker encrypted disk you already have physical access to. Which means that if the FBI are requesting your Bitlocker key, they've already seized your computer.

It seems likely that the FBI director had a personal disagreement regarding the civil rights movement and clearly abused his power as director of the FBI to order surveillance of the civil rights leader as well as a campaign to harass and ridicule Dr. King.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader. The Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, found that "From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him as an effective civil rights leader."...

Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's telephone lines "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.

-Wikipedia (Martin Luther King Jr.)

"No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups ... to insure [sic] the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited."

-FBI Director J. Egar Hoover

I have to imagine, if Dr. King had a computer, FBI director Hoover would have considered it a high priority target. Dr. King was also being monitored by the NSA and the CIA.

Hoover conducted all of this under the pretense that Dr. King was a communist operative. He also had the SCLC listed as a "black nationalist hate group."

Nearly ten years after his death the FBI admitted that, despite the extensive surveillance, they had found no evidence Dr. King was working with communists.

Personally, and Dr. King felt the same way it would seem, J. Edgar Hoover along with many in the FBI, NSA, CIA and local law enforcement, all of which were monitoring Dr. King, were probably just super racist people. As was quite common at the time.

Not that so much has changed.