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Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption By 7 Years (theintercept.com)

Posted by msmash on from the snowden-effect dept.

An anonymous reader cites an article on The Intercept: The director of national intelligence on Monday blamed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for advancing the development of user-friendly, widely available strong encryption. "As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years," James Clapper said. The shortened timeline has had "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists," he said. When pressed by The Intercept to explain his figure, Clapper said it came from the National Security Agency. "The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption -- what they had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks." Asked if that was a good thing, leading to better protection for American consumers from the arms race of hackers constantly trying to penetrate software worldwide, Clapper answered no. "From our standpoint, it's not ⦠it's not a good thing," he said."Of all the things I've been accused of," Snowden said, "this is the one of which I am most proud."

5 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. The free spread of information giveth... by Irick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The inconvenient thing about everyone's life becoming infinitely more visible in our little digital village is that everyone's life is infinitely more visible. Those who have the inclination can know as much as any expert in any field is willing to share, and those who have the inclination can use that expertise as they see fit.

    Tread lightly, you weary giants of flesh and steel. Wading head first into /dev/null is sure to fill the bitbucket in inconvenient ways.

  2. Give Snowden the job, then. by king+neckbeard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    By making encryption more widespread, Snowden has done more for national security than the NSA has in the same time. Why don't we just give him Clapper's job?

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  3. Re:Thanks Edward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What makes you think that the best interests of the American People are always aligned with protecting National Security?

  4. Terrorists use encryption? by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Didn't they establish that the most recent attacks were done using burner cell phones, and no encryption was involved at all?

  5. They found terrorists? When? by emil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How can encryption have "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists" when they never found any terrorists to begin with?

    You can cite the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s review on section 215, and their specific quotes, this is their words, “We are aware of no instance in which the [mass surveillance] program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack."

    On May 31, 2015, the most controversial aspects of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which included the collection of phone records (among others) in bulk, expired.

    President Obama did not agree with the board's decision, which was announced in January 2014: "I believe it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved."

    We can only assume that the justification for bulk collection has little to do with terrorism.