Poll Says Most Americans Favor Crypto Backdoors

Sideways The Dog writes: "According to this MSNBC article, "72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption laws would be 'somewhat' or 'very' helpful in preventing a repeat of last week's terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C." I realize that I'm preaching to the choir here, but it is scary how many people do not realize that the bad guys are not going to play fair here. Even granted that people may not realize the tools are already out there for the bad guys to use, I wonder what the polls will say when the backdoor gets compromised and 72% of people get their bank accounts wiped." Update: 09/19 19:26 PM GMT by T : Declan McCullagh adds a link to "the actual text of the question asked by the pollsters, which Princeton Survey Research Associates describes here." Note the numbers on this page as well.

Comments

Poll: 72%of Americans want anything anti-terrorist

[carl@mindless.com]

Right now, you could ask Americans if we should paint all tall buildings blue so terrorists would have trouble hitting them with a plane.

Re:Most people agreed when...

[Copperhead]

Then Joe Script Kiddie figures out how to get into the backdoor and then anybody can read everything you ever encrypted.. wonderful.

It can't happen, cause the DMCA made that illegal, too. Those legislators think of everything. ;-)

What they'll say

[Syberghost]

I wonder what those 72% of people will say when the other 28% of us are in jail for refusing to give up our crypto keys, and they need their servers fixed or their ISP connections troubleshot, and all us geeks are unavailable.

72% of people get their identities stolen..

[josepha48]

.. spawning Microsofts new slogan.. who do you want to be today?

Tungsten is the heaviest metal, poll reveals!

[glitch!]

In a surprising turnaround, tungsten was found to be the heaviest metal. In a recent survey, tungsten was found to be heavier than both gold and iridium, which were traditionally thought to be heavier than tungsten.

Physicists and metalurgists are surprised by the recent outcome, but in a spirit of democracy, have announced that they will honor the will of the people, and make the neccessary adjustments to the periodic table of elements.

Poll says 72% of Americans technologically illiterate. Yup. Ten-four, good buddy :-)