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NSA Director Wants Legal Right To Snoop On Encrypted Data
jfruh writes: This may not come as a huge shock, but the director of the NSA doesn't believe that you have the right to encrypt your data in a way that the government can't access it. At a cybersecurity policy event, Michael Rogers said that the U.S. should be able to craft a policy that allows the NSA and law enforcement agencies to read encrypted data when they need to.
Okay, if we receive the legal right to snoop on the NSA. Fair trade.
There are multiple problems with your statement. Lets look at them all, shall we:
No. The trigger for this isn't that companies are holding data...it's that users have data, and the NSA wants to force the companies to keep/get access their users data even if the company doesn't want to, so that the NSA can access it also. This is a *very* different proposition. If Apple doesn't want to hold its user's data, why should the NSA force them to just so that the NSA can read it? That seems to be the NSA's problem, not Apple's.
Saying "encryption" does not make the data magical, but it also doesn't entitle the NSA to special treatment. If they can break it, fine. If they can't, there is no valid reason for me to make it easy for them.
Attacking RSA/DSA/AES/etc is the NSA's job. If they can do that, fine. Deliberately weakening an existing system to make it *easier* for them to do those attacks isn't our job, or our problem. If they want to beat their heads against AES, go for it. But that's not a valid reason for country-wide key escrow.
Lastly, on the specialness of America: Do we really believe that the US is the only one who has the "right" to access any backdoor/golden-key/whatever? That's absolute nonsense. If the US forces Apple, Google, MS, etc to build key escrow into their devices so that the NSA can read the data on them, then that key will be used by every government on the earth. If you really believe that the NSA will manage to keep exclusive control of a master key for all encryption for a given major vendor, then I'm going to call you delusional.
Talk about a strawman. I never said domestic spying in general. I'm talking about the NSA surveillance program that was started under Bush that the Obama administration chose to continue. GP threw in the non sequitur about all kinds of things that happened long before Congress passed the Patriot Act (which overrode Reagan's EO BTW) that Bush used to start the whole domestic surveillance program.
I also find it interesting that you take his quote out of context and completely ignore the fact that he said "The issues you bring up did not first appear under Bush". In fact, the Patriot Act was pushed through by Bush. It opened the floodgates for domestic spying and was the justification for the NSA's surveillance program. So the issues I brought up were initiated under specific direction by Bush. Not just under his watch. By his direct order. It's pretty obvious that GP is entirely wrong in his defense of Bush.
I'm taking both parties to task. Why are people trying to defend one or the other? I guess people are hung up on the "if you're attacking the side I like you must be defending the side I don't like" strawman. When in reality, I'm attacking BOTH sides for being equally complicit.
Every person has some data that should be secret, like credit card details. If your devices have a backdoor for government then criminals can use it too. Just matter of time before the way to use it leaks into criminal underground. Requiring mandatory backdoors for storage is as absurd as requiring a single mandatory government usable master key for all locks. You may be 100% sure that actual use it to catch criminals will be dwarfed by abuse by government officials for their own petty ends.