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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."
New appointment for NSA Chief in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
The NSA has backdoors.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It doesn't matter if you use any variety of encrypted messaging products (imessage, cyph, silent phone, signal, etc.), we've got a backdoor for it already.
The only challenge is in justifying using it after the fact.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
"We've already cracked everything, any encrypted data is clear as water for us; let's not make a big fuss so people just stay with what they've been doing. Keep cool, people."
The fact that software can be made (and made well) by amateurs. So such regulations saying that software shouldn't have encryption means outside sources will still make it. This will only put the big companies into a disadvantage as they wouldn't be able to make secure solutions to their system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's refreshing to hear someone address this issue with a little sanity. However, I still don't trust any three letter agency.
He's a genius, he's pulling the classic Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck Hunting Season trick on us.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Liar's paradox
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...civil liberties, freedom, the 4th Amendment, and the 5th Amendment is a waste of time.
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.
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"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
encrypt stuff with every possible key, look for some kind of common signature or order in the data and make an algorithm to break it using the possible keys
Someone in the Government who has a clue... AND is speaking out.
I think I may faint.
--Hired Net Grunt
Not if I'm being paid to make the argument, it isn't. Probably the best argument against encryption is that against the NSA/CIA it is snake oil, like defending yourself from a nuclear bomb with a .22
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It is possible. But there is no need to do all that. Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc all HAPPILY handed over access to their databases. Emails, messages, sites visited, profiles, etc. It is too much trouble to mass tap traffic. Just go to the endpoint datastores and search through those. You cannot mass monitor all the traffic on the Internet. You can selectively monitor a subset of it, and ALL the endpoint datastores. People should be mad that Apple, Google, etc are happy to hand over all the data they collected on you. But those companies are making more and more money every quarter so obviously people don't care.
Someone like that is the last person I'd expect to bust out with a public statement like that, but at least on the surface it makes me feel a little better that not everyone in the government is as dumb as a doorknob.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
For the people advocating for backdoors/key-escrow/etc, I always wondered what they would say about their own communications. Would they themselves be willing to escrow the keys to their own communications? All of them, including top secret ones? If not, then why?
Given e-mail is for the most part sent in the clear, thus equivalent to a postcard, what amount of encryption would make it letter post equivalent (indicating privacy, rather than sensitivity)? Does 256-bit sound reasonable (thinking low effort of encryption/decryption, but easily openable by an agency, using resources they already have using a court order, if it came to it)?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Didn't we just yesterday have someone from some TLA ranting and raving about how we must accept not having encryption anymore? What happened? Found a critical flaw in all encryption schemes in the past 24 hours?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We are continually moving towards more and more peaceful times. We are coming to the end, though it may still take 100s or 1000s of years, of the primitive aggressive parts of our brains running our society. We are still a primitive, young society, but we are so much better than any generation in the past.
Many young people have said this MANY times over the years, they have all been wrong.
But don't worry, I'm sure it must be right THIS time.
Human nature hasn't really changed, we still use violence to resolve our disputes.
Norman, correlate.
#DeleteChrome
Encryption is bad only if you presume that either the only, or at least the far most likely reason anyone might want something to be hidden from others is because they are doing or have done something wrong.
Except that this is *FAR* from true. Insisting that people shouldn't try and hide things from people who might claim to mean well is equivalent suggesting that people really shouldn't have privacy at all, and it is nothing less than absurd to suggest that nobody should have any rights to any privacy, ever, unless you do things like outlaw clothing (which may hide a person's body from public view), for example. With a flawed premise, the entire argument for suggesting that strong encryption should be outlawed falls apart.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thank you! I get this all the time from people. No matter what someone says, they get the classic ad hominem attack thrown at them. Do I like the NSA? Not particularly, after everything I've seen. Do I believe anything the government has to say about most topics? Generally, no. But this man is correct, and his message is correct: "Arguing against encryption is a waste of time."
We can wax intellectual all day long about whether we think he has ulterior motives for coming out with that message, or whether the organizations he's associated with can ultimately be trusted, but the message is correct and we need to champion it. So others can see it, read it, hear it, reference it; get the message out there to the non-believers. In the end, whether they have broken all known forms of encryption or not, arguing against it is indeed a waste of time.
Blindly disagreeing with someone because they're "the NSA" means, in this case, that you have to make the argument that "Arguing against encryption is a worthwhile endeavor", and that's just stupid.
I doubt there are any backdoors in RSA keys, but most https traffic uses 256-bit symmetric keys. Let's say the NSA or whoever has a bank of computers that can crack that key in a day. With today's CPUs, you could encrypt your traffic with 10,000 keys relatively quickly. Then they would have to decrypt each one at a time. Of course, exchanging those keys may be complicated. Maybe to accomplish that you need a 4096-bit key.
The biggest problem with this theory is if they can crack a key, how long does it take? 0.001 second, 1 second, 1 day, 1 year, etc? A 10,000 key deep encryption would be fine if it takes a day to break but obviously not if the process can be completed in 2 seconds.
I've really thought about starting a service that writes OTPs to a 2TB drive, sends them to customers, and they use that to connect back to offshore servers that act as a proxy for them. Then, unless someone tampered with the drives intransit all communications would be secure.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Admiral Rogers also made that point too - that 80% of the government's cybersecurity problems would be solved if he could get military personnel to treat "cyber hygiene" the same way that they manage rifles, artillery and other kinetic weapons.
For those interested, here is a link to the video for the full presentation which was made at the Atlantic Council on Thursday.
Is it because privacy and security are only threats to tyrants? The fact that even raising the issue isn't political suicide for any politician or civil servant who dares suggest it is, frankly, embarrassing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The reputation precedes them. It's simply impossible to tell when they are lying. So the safest bet is to assume the worst.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The safest bet would be to ignore everything they said completely. But you don't want to play safe, you want to complain.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Taking into context a certain presidential candidate's use of private email server to do government work which will not be an exceptional case but a common past and future problem for national security does the government want a back door to itself?
Since the root problem here is human individuals, bad guys, good guys, public, etc how to you prevent your own gun being turned on you.
I suspect that's part of the issue from Rogers stand point.
Of course he may not have got the memo about "2+2=5" and the other one reminding him that "The heresy of heresies is common sense"
He could just be looking for a good Retirement Package in time for the Ski season.
We are coming to the end, though it may still take 100s or 1000s of years, of the primitive aggressive parts of our brains running our society.
Aggressive parts are there to give you a chance at natural selection. It cannot be abolished. Just because we stopped spearing people we don't like does not mean we stopped reaping benefits of sometimes being aggressive.