Jimmy Wales and Former NSA Chief Ridicule Government Plans To Ban Encryption

Mickeycaskill writes: Jimmy Wales has said government leaders are "too late" to ban encryption which authorities say is thwarting attempts to protect the public from terrorism and other threats. The Wikipedia founder said any attempt would be "a moronic, very stupid thing to do" and predicted all major web traffic would be encrypted soon. Wikipedia itself has moved towards SSL encryption so all of its users' browsing habits cannot be spied on by intelligence agencies or governments. Indeed, he said the efforts by the likes of the NSA and GCHQ to spy on individuals have actually made it harder to implement mass-surveillance programs because of the public backlash against Edward Snowden's revelations and increased awareness of privacy. Wales also reiterated that his site would never co-operate with the Chinese government on the censorship of Wikipedia. "We've taken a strong stand that access to knowledge is a principle human right," he said. derekmead writes with news that Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and the NSA, thinks the US government should stop railing against encryption and should support strong crypto rather than asking for backdoors. The US is "better served by stronger encryption, rather than baking in weaker encryption," he said during a panel on Tuesday.

Comments

The money quote

[squiggleslash]

Hayden said that losing the first Crypto War on the Clipper Chip did not stop the US government from obtaining the information it needed.

âoeIn retrospect, we mastered the problem we created by the lack of the Clipper Chip,â he said. âoeWe were able to do a whole bunch of other things. Some of the other things were metadata, and bulk collection and so on.â

So... "don't ban encryption, we don't need to!"

Re:The money quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The members of government that want to ban encryption simply do not understand the information enterprise. They were born and raised in a world where that was not a part of their day-to-day mindspace, so they fundamentally don't get it. They especially don't understand how important it is for ordinary commerce, and the economy as a whole.

Government is always about a decade or two behind current technological trends, and often passes laws that do great harm and no good because of this. Eventually (10-20 years too late) those laws usually get corrected. But in an age where technology progresses as fast as it does today, a 10-20 year lag can be extremely painful.

same as guns

[slashmydots]

So making encryption illegal will stop terrorists from using encryption? You know, the same way that making terrorism illegal stops terrorism. What a joke. It's the same as guns. If you make guns illegal, criminals will still have them. That's why they're criminals. They don't follow laws.

Re: same as guns

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we should just do away with all laws. Criminals will be dealt with efficiently by citizens' guns -- no more need for police. Just like in the good old West.

The point is that laws should be focused on the harmful activity rather than on banning the tools that criminals happen to use. If you make the tools illegal then you are just making good people who might use the tools for legitimate purposes criminals. Making it illegal to use encryption is like saying that it is illegal to lock on your door because it makes it harder to police to search your home.

Re:same as guns

[Anonymous Coward]

If encrypted communications were illegal, then everyone who ever buys anything online would be instantly hacked and their bank accounts drained. All internet-facing businesses would basically have to go offline because it would be too easy for people to hack them and steal all the info they have on their customers, including payment information, etc.

The first world, as we know it today, can no longer function without encryption.

Incidentally, computer hacking is already illegal, and we cannot today just find and arrest anyone who does it. It won't be so easy as you think to just locate and arrest any person who uses encryption. So apart from the economic catastrophe it would cause, the criminals would merrily encrypt with impunity.

The very ideal of an encryption-free world is ludicrous.
 

Banning encryption?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Banning encryption seems like the War On Drugs...destined to be an utter failure.

I hate the way most media portrays users of encryption as probable criminals or as being "up to no good". They rarely see that encryption can be a good thing (and usually is, frankly).

But lets not get all "facty" and let reality get in the way of scaring the goobers. Besides, they're too busy posting every detail of their life on Facebook to worry about stuff like that.

That'll be popular

[omnichad]

Break all ability to make payments or move money online.

At the very least, any cryptography with known security vulnerabilities (such as the NSA wants) would not be PCI compliant. But it's unlikely that any bank would use an older version of TLS or SSL for online banking either.

Re:Please add this to the FAQ

[Jason Levine]

The thing is most government security agencies aren't saying "ban all encryption" but are saying "just give us 'law enforcement only' backdoors into all encryption." They try to present this as some kind of reasonable compromise, but they ignore the giant, gaping hole they'd create. No backdoor can be totally secured as "law enforcement only." At some point, someone will figure out how to spoof their way in. And then that "wonderful-encryption-with-government-backdoors" will be worthless. Except the politicians prefer to ignore this problem and just shout "TERRORISTS COULD USE ENCRYPTION" louder and louder as if that's an argument against it. (Terrorists also breathe air. We should ban all air!)

But UK gov isn't any smarter

[Lead Butthead]

Government has done a lot of retarded things over the years. This will just be another one.

Re:This is in the UK

[alex67500]

"Hello, My name is David Cameron, MP, and I'm the Prime Minister of the UK. Today I would like to put forward a bill to ban all forms of mathematical science and studies, because they are an essential building block of encryption, and that fuels unacceptable behaviours that we can't snoop on. Pretty Please."