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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."
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.
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"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."
Nah, they just have all methods of encryption broken.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
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
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.
Liar's paradox
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Could be a good time to invest in companies that make $5 wrenches.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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!
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.
It's the triple back burner reverse reverse psychology gambit. It goes like this:
a) Only a fool will believe that anything about breaking encryption is "challenging" for the NSA. (That, and get involved in a land war in Asia.)
b) A savvy skeptic will take this whole "yeah you should use encryption but gee it makes things difficult" charade as a sign that NSA has encryption pwned six ways from Sunday, resigning themselves to using whatever's good enough to at least prevent parties != NSA from sniffing their bits.
c) The NSA doesn't actually have encryption pwned, but is counting on b)'s resignation and a)'s inexperience/disinterest to keep the status quo, which really is challenging but not as bad as it would be if encryption became both stronger and more widely adopted.
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