NSA Chief: Arguing Against Encryption Is a Waste of Time (theintercept.com)

An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, NSA director Mike Rogers said, "encryption is foundational to the future." He added that it was a waste of time to argue that encryption is bad or that we ought to do away with it. Rogers is taking a stance in opposition to many other government officials, like FBI director James Comey. Rogers further said that neither security nor privacy should be the imperative that drives everything else. He said, "We've got to meet these two imperatives. We've got some challenging times ahead of us, folks."

Comments

Translation

[NotDrWho]

The NSA has backdoors.

Re:Translation

[sinij]

The NSA has backdoors.

Cloak and dagger backdoor is preferable to legislated backdoor. With NSA-style backdoors you could find and fix them and having them is not certainty. Also, totalitarian government won't have much success demanding NSA allow them to use these.

While I'd rather not have any backdoors, to choose between two evils I'd take my chances with NSA.

Re:Translation

[shawn2772]

The NSA has backdoors.

Some, I'm sure. But the NSA cannot count on always having back doors, and this argument wouldn't make sense from that perspective unless Rogers could be certain that it always will.

No, hard as it may be to believe, I think the real situation here is that the NSA director is not an idiot, and does actually care at least a little about the "secure US communications" part of the NSA's two-fold mission. He realizes that strong encryption is absolutely essential to the future, even though it creates some obstacles for the "break everyone else's communications" side of the NSA's mission.

Though I also have no doubt that the obstacles it creates aren't nearly as large as we'd all like them to be, because there will always be lots of vulnerabilities.

Re:Translation

[myowntrueself]

Hey you fucking idiot.

Enemies are different than citizens.

You clearly don't work for a government

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

See as a tax paying American citizen I say they can, to paraphrase Star Wars, pass a law to a standing ovation that blatantly violates key elements of previously written law (while being silent as if it does not), but that doesn't mean its 'legal'.

In fact, regardless of what the un-elected justices have to say about the matter, as a citizen as far as I'm concerned the FISA/Patriot act/whatevers are themselves illegal.

And they DO need to abide by the 4th amendment.

And if they DONT want to abide by the 4th amendment then they'd better hurry up and collect all the guns because the fact that the 2nd amendment comes before the 4th amendment and after the 1st amendment seems to be no coincidence to me.

Amendments 1 through 5 are very clear:

1) I can say what I want
2) I can exercise self defense
3) keep your soldiers out of my life
4) keep your spies out of my life
5) keep your lawyers out of my life

Given the historical context they can be summed up as:
"Get off my lawn, government"

So if tyrants wish to violate previously written law, even if they do it unanimously in fashion of standing ovation, it is still illegal. It goes against the nature of the foundations of this nation and its basic laws. It goes against the very context and reasoning of why the constitution was written and why it was written the way it is.

Also since I'm at it, our president may be an expert on the constitution, but I do not think he is using that expert knowledge to enforce it. I think he is using that expert knowledge to subvert it. That is the fallacy behind 'I'm a constitutional professor' or whatever he has claimed and his crones have peddled.

Re:Job is forfeit.

[bluelip]

Nah, they just have all methods of encryption broken.

Refreshing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's refreshing to hear someone address this issue with a little sanity. However, I still don't trust any three letter agency.

Re:Job is forfeit.

[Ravaldy]

Neither, he's a smart individual that took the time to look at the landscape and him speaking about it in the public tells me he's already convinced the people above him.

Re:Please ignore what they say.

[fustakrakich]

Liar's paradox

"We have some challenging times ahead of us"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Crime rates have never been lower. The chance of being injured or killed by terrorism is vanishingly small and comparable to a lightning strike. The advantages of secure communication far outweigh any potential aid it gives to criminals. The only challenge here: a government organisation trying desperately to preserve itself and its budget in the face of increasing scruitny and irrelevance.

Re:Please ignore what they say.

[gurps_npc]

So true. Guy stands up and says something we agree with and we all yell at him "He must be UP TO SOMETHING!"

People need to shut up and say thank you when you win - even if it's just a small battle of your opponent saying "It's not worth arguing against them"

Re:Dose of common sense.

[Jason Levine]

We"re also living in a global market. Let's say the US banned strong encryption tomorrow. What's to stop someone in another country from posting the source code to a strong encryption scheme? How would you prevent people from downloading and using this? You'd need to implement a "Great US Firewall" and filter all encryption-related sites. Even if you were able to do this, all you'd wind up doing is making US businesses less secure than foreign businesses. More US business hackings would leave the (valid) impression that you should trust foreign companies over US-based ones and the economy would suffer.

Encryption opponents like to pretend like they can just have Congress pass a law and all that pesky encryption will vanish with no consequences. In reality, banning encryption would create a horrible mess for businesses and consumers.

Re:Job is forfeit.

[JoeMerchant]

It's a realist approach: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." kind of logic, and it's perfectly sound.

They can try to keep it out of mainstream consumer electronics, but there's too much "DIY" capability in the world to keep strong cryptography contained.

It reminds me of the early mp3.com days - the genie has long since left the bottle, doesn't matter if you saw it coming or not, it has happened. Now, you'll have to deal with it. Attempting to recapture the genie is a fool's errand.