Brazil Announces Secure Email To Counter US Spying

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Phys Org reports that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has announced her government is creating a secure email system to try and shield official communications from spying by the United States and other countries. 'We need more security on our messages to prevent possible espionage,' Rousseff said on Twitter, ordering the Federal Data Processing Service, or SERPRO, to implement a safe email system throughout the federal government. The move came after Rousseff publicly condemned spying against Brazilian government agencies attributed to the United States and Canada. 'This is the first step toward extending the privacy and inviolability of official posts,' Rousseff said. After bringing her complaints against U.S. intelligence agencies to the United Nations General Assembly last month and canceling a state visit to Washington, Rousseff announced that the country will host an international conference on Internet governance in April."

Comments

Who wants email hosted by Federal Government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me, no matter which government it is.

Re:Who wants email hosted by Federal Government?

[the_B0fh]

You may want to re-read it again. She wants to create a secure email system *FOR THE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES* not for home users.

They have to use it, by law, once it is set up.

Re:Who wants email hosted by Federal Government?

[ewibble]

Budget is not everything, Lets assume it actually takes the NSA (there is no back door) a reasonable amount of resource to decrypt each message, if every message is encrypted then it will may make it significantly harder spy on Brasil. You will not just be able to look at a message and say that's encrypted lets decode it, all messages are encrypted.

Brazil should be able to implement an encryption algorithm with no back door (as long as there is no US agent creating it)

Also the US is spying on many countries not just Brazil.

I am not saying that it will make it impossible to spy, just harder, and that is enough, no security is 100%. If the US really wanted information they could always send a team of spies to apply advanced integration techniques on the right people.

If every person encrypted every email as standard, it would severely impact on the NSAs ability to spy.

Good Luck With That

[seven of five]

Unless they can invent their own crypto hardware and software from scratch guaranteed to have no backdoors, I am skeptical about the prospects for success.

Re:Good Luck With That

[jbolden]

Algorithms for crypto are well known the math is public and not very complex. Brazil does have programmers and number theorists. Why can't they do this?

Re:Good Luck With That

[wiggles]

Depends on whether or not you believe the NSA has proven P=nP

The irony

[sl4shd0rk]

If this trend continues the only people which the NSA will be able to spy on will be Americans. Precisely the populace it said it would not be spying on in the first place.

Re: brace yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not "a foreign nations efforts against us".

This is "a foreign nations efforts to counter our efforts against them"

See the difference?

Re:brace yourselves

[CanHasDIY]

here come the liberal whiners to support Brazil and oppose the USA's effort to protect its own rational self interests.

here come the conservative whiners to support the USA and oppose Brazil's effort to protect its own rational self interests.

Hey, you know what? Fuck both of you for being part of the problem.

Re:Good luck with that.

[swillden]

with a secret signature that only the library knows for which crypto algorithm was used

Heh. Typical amateur security protocol design... can't even make it to the end of the second sentence of the description without handwaving some security through obscurity.

More importantly, your proposal addresses the part of the problem that isn't a problem -- the ciphers -- and ignores all of the rest, which is where the cracks show up: key management, protocol design, implementation quality and personnel. Much better to pick a small number of well-respected ciphers and then focus on all of the rest. You're still likely to fail against an adversary like the NSA, assuming they really care to put the effort in to read your mail, but you can make them work for it, and you can limit the amount of data they can get.

Re: brace yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not all about you (or in this case it's not all about USA). I don't have to support my country just because it's my country, particularly if it's in the wrong. Patriotism is not about supporting your country right or wrong. A true patriot will criticise their own country, because a true patriot wants their country to be the best and therefore demands better of it when it isn't.

Re:Nah, they're right, must be something else

[higuita]

right, everybody knowns that all resources you will ever need is oil, gas and coal !!!! let me guess... you are from the USA, right!?!

and by the way, having less production doesn't mean that they are at the max production, actually mean that they had little investment on the past. Only in the last few years they have invested more in prospecting new reserves and extracting then. For sure there is still many places not even tested that can be full of oil and gas... can you say the same thing on the USA?