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.

Re:The money quote

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I was under the impression the Supreme Court had already ruled you can encrypt as the encrypted message is protected speech, too.

That should be the case if not, but I do remember reading that. This was also why the government could get away wth banning export of encryption devices, but not the speech itself.

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

[Coren22]

Sure, before abortions were legal, desperate women would use coat hangers, or go to the local witch doctor.

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

[Chris Mattern]

Gee, when I went to the local witch doctor, he just told me, "Ooh ee ooh aah aah, ting tang walla walla bing bang."

Re:same as guns

[fred911]

Um... tell that to Phil Zimmerman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .

Re: same as guns

[Darinbob]

Did it work?

Re:same as guns

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

They'd have to arrest everyone pretty quickly, because without any encryption the entire planet's financial system would be compromised and collapse with maybe six months. Russian criminal gangs would OWN the banks overnight, it would be mass chaos. We wouldn't need Tyler Durden, with all financial transactions in the clear.

Re:same as guns

[kbg]

No you are confused. Guns, drugs and encryption are not the same things. Guns are objects designed to kill people, drug is a material designed to give you euphoria and are physically addictive, encryption is a mathematical concept. It is possible to ban or limit guns, it is very hard to ban drugs because once people get addicted their only purpose in life is to get more drugs, encryption is extremely hard to ban because it is a mathematical concept.

What is so hard to understand?

More people have been killed by their own government than by any other cause

And so what? It just means you have a bad government. If the government is trying to kill, you should move somewhere else. Trying to inflict more death by guns isn't the answer. If you are afraid the government will kill you, there is something wrong with your system or you.

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.
 

Re:same as guns

[rtb61]

One thing about guns that is very similar to drugs, legal varieties of course. Want to reduce their use, then ensure the taxes on them reflect the harm they cause. User pays means the group that users those items, drugs or guns should pay for all the damages caused by those items, no more privatising the profits and socialising the losses. There should be sufficient tax placed upon guns and bullets to ensure that all the damage caused by their illicit, ignorant, clumsy, foolish use is paid for and not by people who do not have or use them. So somewhere upwards of 100% tax and this should apply to used guns as well.

Encryption of course is directly tied to the principle of freedom. A free person owns there privacy, a slave's privacy is owned by someone else. The more privacy you lose, the more a slave you become. Loss of privacy extends to physical sexual assaults (body search), where you are no longer private to your person but others are allowed to molest you, strip you naked and, sexually assault you and you whole family at will, exactly as they would for any other group of slaves.

Only a free person has privacy and a slave never does and that is a core social principle since time immemorial. So slave or free person, you decide who owns your private life, you or some one else, not just information but also your physical person.

Re: same as guns

[Runaway1956]

LOL - I can't tell you where to find them. They're all around you. To experience that kind of thing, you've got to be in the right place, at the right time, and willing to play along with whatever her needs are. Halifax, Nova Scotia was memorable. I walked off the ship, gawking around. Someone walked up behind me, grabbed my elbow, and told me that I was coming home with her. Nice looking gal - 6 ft tall - lovely but unusual color from her African-Irish-Iroquois ancestry. Beauty. I told her that i wanted to hit the bars and get a few drinks first. She said that she had all the liquor I could want at her place. I let her drag me home, and holy SHIT, that woman was demanding!

Right place, at the right time. But, I swear, there's one near you right now!

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.

Banning encryption

[Dunbal]

Wait - so if they ban encryption, presumably it means I won't be able to secure my Wifi because after all that uses encryption, so dear government, how do you expect to force me to be responsible for anything that originates from my IP? Surely I must enjoy the same protections as my ISP.

Re:Jimmy Wales wails whether web will wreck wanker

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia won't wait for Washington waterboarders

Give me some scissors

[FudRucker]

i got some credit cards i want to snip before that info bounces around the internets in the clear

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:Please add this to the FAQ

[Zontar The Mindless]

I can't believe anybody is able to suggest "government-only backdoors" while keeping a straight face, in the wake of this recent epic FAIL based on exactly the same premise.

"wikipedia is not censored" is a conceit

[caviare]

Quoting directly from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "Content will be removed if it is judged to violate Wikipedia policies (especially those on biographies of living persons and neutral point of view) or the laws of the United States".

In fact wikipedia is not censored according to the laws of China, but it is censored according to the laws of United States. Naturally this doesn't appeal to the Chinese government when it's available to Chinese citizens. No doubt if it wasn't censored according to the laws of United States then this wouldn't appeal to the United States government (or other governments with similar views to the US).

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."