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News.com: Crypto Doesn't Kill - People Do
McSpew writes: "Bravo to News.com for telling the truth about cryptography. They even cited /.'s coverage of Phil Zimmerman's real views on PGP and its possible role in any terrorist acts." On a per-word basis, this may be the best summary of why calls to ban or restrict encryption technology (as with government key escrow, or constrained key sizes) has little to do with enhancing national or world security.
It's quite a valid observation that terorists can write their own software. I managed to write an implementation of RSA in about a day from descriptions only, and that included writing my own big integers library.
A good article that could be made better by emphasizing the one-time pad cipher.
The one-time pad is a very easy cipher to explain to lay people. They need no understanding of math, not even arithmetic.
Anybody, anywhere can create a one-time pad by simply flipping a coin or rolling the dice, and use the resulting information to encrypt a message that is impervious to all manners of cryptoanalysis, even techniques made possible by the much-feared though yet-to-be-stocked quantum computer.
In other words, you can create a encrypted message without encryption software or even a computer, and yet be assured that the message is unreadable by any computer devisable today or anytime in the future.
There should be no debate here. Military-grade cryptography is available to anyone with a penny in their pocket and a sheet of paper and pencil.
We need to stop wasting time talking about this.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Re read that article, but swap every occurrence of "crypto" with "guns".
Now you know what all the gun nuts were talking about.
It's already been done wth handguns - I figured all guns were next, but looks like crypto is next.
(This coming from a geek trying to put it in a language that many marketers, politicians, economists, etc could understand, who actually dislikes most businesses today.)
The simple fact of the matter is that the latest calls for key escrow/backdoors to encryption, just like the ban on exporting 'strong encryption' during the 90's, will in the end only hurt the US.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
What about the priority of preserving through logic and appeals to legitimate and justified self-interest the freedoms terrorists would like to destroy with their intimidation attacks? That one suits me.
The security agencies are already checking through most or a statistical useful percentage of the bytes that flow over the US internet, and are characterising it all. Their actions only make sense if they are doing that.
Anyone using encryption stands out; so they write a file on them.
Where they find encrypted data they can't characterise it any further; so they hit a brick wall. But its not common right now, so they can make a file. However, if everyone on the internet routinely uses uncrackable encryption they can't build a file on everyone.
On the other hand, if they have key escrow they can blow away the encryption on all the legitimate data and they are left with 'illegal' encryption; except presumably terrorists and other malcontents; a much smaller group that they can write files on.
Of course this 'monitor all the traffic on the internet idea' falls down in several other ways. As an example, suppose somebody creates a Quake III server that has some sort of low bandwidth messaging in it perhaps the player steps left at careful timed moments or something, the characterisation by the NSA would be, oh its just another Quake player, when really its sending an encrypted message as well. [I just made that Quake idea up- its called 'steganography' in general, hiding encrypted messages in something else.]
Anyway, that's really what's going on. The security agencies are using the WTC disaster as a chance to get their legislation through whilst the going is good. Of course anyone with any sense can evade it, but not every terrorist has sense.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"One thing I find interesting is that these terrorists could have just as easily used cleartext email to distribute their logistic plans. Couldn't they have just have a predetermined language and the actual emails would have looked as innocuous as someone writing their friend to meet somewhere.
Let's meet at 7:45 in front of the Arthur Anderson school on the 11th
Translation: You will overtake American Airlines flight 745 on the 11th
That would look totally benign, yet be the actual trigger to the event. No crypto needed!
Considering Usama can get trained pilots to kill themselves willingly on planes, you have to assume he can recruit someone over there with good programming knowledge.
(Sheesh! You'd think 11-SEP would have taught people this!)
Though I agree with everything you said, the fundamental problem goes a bit deeper than privacy.
The full underlying cause of this is nationalism and the belief that the State is an almost divine entity that will protect you from all ills provided you play by its rules.
History shows that this is a fool's bargain. Any state--and yes, flag-wavers, that includes the US--is *designed* to limit your freedoms for the "greater good". While this works for a great many people indoctrinated to accept the definitions the State provides for "freedom" and "democracy", it is not, nor has it ever been, a complete solution for people in the world, and *much* has been done in the name of the State--like much was done in the name of God before it--that is simply hateful and evil.
Allegiance to the State, a belief that the State is all, that you should be proud to be part of the State, happened in Germany in the 1930s, and it appears to be happening here. Based on some of the troll posts here, you just have to substitute Arab for Jew, and you have the basic plank of the Nazi party flying in full colors.
How does this relate to crypto? It doesn't really at all--that's the point. But, if we're really trying to make a connection, then there's the tenuous observation that crypto is math, and knows no allegiance to State, which has no allegiance to you, meaning that Crypto is like the State in that it is an abstract concept without any feeling or allegiance to anyone or anything. The major difference between Crypto and the State is that the State is established, has full access to social control mechanisms, and panders to people's senses of belonging while Crypto is simply math that individuals can use to keep pieces of themselves from the State and unto themselves.
It is natural that the State--which *fully* seeks the totality of National Socialism, and now has the capacity to make _1984_ look like a Disneyland ride--would seek to abolish the one tool that can put an individual on equal footing with it. It's up to *us* to drop our allegiance to one abstract concept and rally our efforts around the other.
I'll leave it up to you to decide which way the wind appears to be blowing.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
As far as I can see, *email* encryption really is what the general media and the politicians do think the argument is all about. Because so far only a small fringe minority use encrypted email, the pols think it will hardly be missed; and besides, the obsessive secrecy probably indicates that the users are up to no good anyway.
The idea of *channel* encryption probably doesn't even cross their radar. But 'alienmole' is absolutely right: the most widespread and important use of encryption at the moment is *not* email; it is the use of ssh and friends to secure public channels. And the reason these are so important is obvious -- and probably much easier to explain to the public -- in these days of crackers and virus writers: you really don't want anyone to be able to break into your channel, and interfere with your remotely-controlled telescope or heart operation or hack into your corporate network or whatever.
The case for SSH is much easier to make than the case for PGP, because of its demonstrable real-world importance. If we can move the debate towards channel security, away from email security, it will be much easier to win.
But of course as soon as two people can ssh into the same box and talk to each other, the banning of any other uses of encryption starts to look pretty irrelevant.