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Spy Chief Complains That Edward Snowden Sped Up Spread of Encryption By 7 Years (theintercept.com)
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."
Fantastic. Well done.
Thank you, Mr. Snowden. Countless around the world are in your debt.
Boohooo, we actually have to work now, that's not fair!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even more important than just the spread of Encryption itself, but the fact that more and more of the non-tech community is becoming acquainted with it and why it's important. It's exciting to see people who clearly prescribe to the "I just want my technology to work" thought process to be actually caring about the underlying processes.
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.
Snowden is not responsible for this.
Clapper and his friends in the intelligence agencies have been abusing their spy powers for years with overreaching dragnet surveillance operations.
If they were not such abusive, power hungry megalomaniacs, most people would not consider encryption a necessity.
Clapper needs to take responsibility for his own actions, and not blame people who actually do something to protect and defend the constitution that he uses as toilet paper/
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in lab rats.
It was at great peril and disregard to himself and his personal safety that Edward Snowden went into hiding due to proving yet again the danger of a government left unchecked, unquestioned and ungoverned. It is my hope that he is allowed to safety one day return to the US and take his place among the countless heroes there.
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.
The fact is, the US hasn't been hit by a major attack since 9/11. That doesn't prove the security measures are effective or necessary, but it certainly doesn't discredit them. It's necessary for law enforcement to combat terrorism. There is no reason that facing terror attacks should be the price for freedom. Slashdot commenters are happy to criticize law enforcement but fail to offer better solutions to stop terrorism. If you don't like what law enforcement is doing now, what's your solution to keep terror attacks at least as infrequent as they are now?
You know prison sexual assault has increased since 9/11. I theorize that the threat of prison rape is part of what deters terrorist attacks. For them it's a zero sum game now. Die or get violated. Since dying is so hard they don't bother anymore unless they can guarantee death. So you know what I now oppose people who try to work to end prison rape. Who cares about all the innocently assaulted prisoners. It's what keeps our country safe.
Just another second banana
-3 + 7 = 4
What a bunch of entitled whiners, probably makes their grandparents sick.
"oh investigating crimes is too hard" "why won't you let me read your email" "if you're doing nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Funny how there is enough broad historic and current data in order to analyze this trend, but they can't (will not) provide a rough estimate of how many people have their comms/metadata sucked up into their data centers... funny that.
I didn't minimize their accomplishments.
And yet he posted as AC - the irony here is palatable.
The reasons why encryption is necessary for the internet to actually function are legion. The reasons why making things hard for government surveillance are likewise manifold.
I am not obligated to provide you the education to realize that private communication being private goes to the core of western democracies. I ask you this: I could use physical mail to send communication back and forth. Without a warrant, this communication cannot be read. I could also write this communication in a code, before I mail it. These facts are set. The legal protection of these papers is set. Any yet, some people believe that electronic communication should not be private. There are wonderful existing reasons why physical mail is protected. Why have we allowed governments to decide that simply because the format of communication has changed, its protection is no longer needed?
a professional spy working for a spy agency is complaining that the easy methods to gather communication are becoming obsolete, because folks are protecting their communication. Meanwhile, credit card agencies are bringing in tighter security to ensure credit cards are protected. Security is good for business. Security is good for the internet. Security is good for communication. Security is good for law enforcement. If the easy, cheap ways are beaten by simple encryption, then proper investigation is necessary. Getting permission to spend that money usually requires a warrant to justify its expenditure. Any government action/investigation that needs a warrant for justifications for invading an individual's rights will be done properly, using better tools.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Four years ahead, not seven.
His job is not to complain. His job is information gathering and information warfare. Remember something else: all warfare is deception. This is not my paranoia. This is established understanding of how the world works. Now see what follows if you adapt this premise.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The thing to realize (and the way to view) these technology-based impacts to social/public policy is that power flows back and forth between the protagonists and antagonists over decades. And the newfound power that ordinary people now have (or just began to realize) is a gradual shift from government unsupervised/unchallenged intelligence, to protection in the hands of ordinary people.
It's a refreshing public realization of what we've been giving up, unawares, because we didn't know any better. And note that it may not even last. People may forget why we need privacy, and vigilance against an all-pervasive state. They may choose to give it up in the name (not even reality) of security. Maybe there'll be another event that changes public opinion in favor of more surveillance. Or, people might gradually see the extent that stupidity/invasiveness has reached, and continue to make decisions with their wallets and votes.
But as long as this issue has been around, the balance of power has, and will continue to, ebb and flow between the struggling parties on either side. (And note, the good guys / bad guys are not always definitively on the public/individual vs. government sides -- that can swap too.)
It's necessary for law enforcement to combat terrorism.
Law enforcement is the cops, not the NSA/CIA/etc. So, you're wrong.
If you don't like what law enforcement is doing now, what's your solution to keep terror attacks at least as infrequent as they are now?
Get the fuck out of the countries where terrorism comes from. They're trying to do the same thing we did to the British, but nowadays they have further reach.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It would not surprise me in the slightest if this was just an attempt to make the masses believe we are more secure than we actually are. In the phone world at least, yes, Facebook have enabled e2e encryption by default and google push out regular security updates but, like a recent post spoke about, the updates are not filtering down to the end user instantly like they should be. Also, one minute I hear iOS is rock-solid and impenetrable, next it's been split apart worse than a bride on the wedding night, then it's secure again. Is this just yet another attempt at public manipulation? Or are they (3 letter acronyms) actually as fucked as 'The Clapper' implies?
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
"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."
That reads like the revelations only pushed it ahead by 4 years.
Clapper is a moron who is totally failing to see the bigger picture.
Didn't they establish that the most recent attacks were done using burner cell phones, and no encryption was involved at all?
The shortened timeline has had "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against citizens of the world," he said.
FTFY.
You see, Mr. Clapper, no one believes you, specially considering the fact that we don't know of any terrorists or their plots that you've been able to expose for the past 20 years. None. However we approximately know your budget and how terrorism is basically a non-issue for people 'cause the number of people dying of other causes is several magnitudes higher. This "war" on terrorism is a plot against people, not for people.
Yes, you're right, but the NSA and CIA do provide information to actual law enforcement for investigations and warnings. So this does affect law enforcement capabilities, if not directly.
The question is whether the added capabilities are worth the price and that is a political one.
Clapper lied, under oath, to congress.
He was given the questions he would be asked, in writing, before hand.
He lied when asked those questions.
When asked afterwards, in writing, if he wanted to amend any of his answers, he declined.
He only admitted the truth after it came out in the Snowden revelations.
Why would anyone now believe anything he says?
Seriously? You want the Slashdot crowd to tell the WHOLE of the US security machinery how to do their jobs while respecting citizens rights & freedoms? That's not going to happen but here's some guidance:
1) Accept that people WILL die - ~3100 since 9/11 to 2014 INCLUDING 9/11 deaths and including the perpetrators....that's .0002% of the citizenry alive in the US in any given year (e.g. estimating ~300 Million US citizens). e.g. 'You WILL Fail'...failure IS an option here....in fact it would go a LONG way for a President with real 'balls' to come out & say so...e.g. the 'price of freedom is that some people will die but as a free country we accept such risks because we value freedom above ALL OTHER VALUES'
2) Understand the 'size' issue here...~10K people died due to drunk driving in the US in 2014 ALONE...that's in 1 year not 13 years as in above...so as an estimate that's ~40x differences in # of people dying due to drunk driven since 2001 to 2014...which one of these 'problems' should we be spending more resources on?...and that's just 1 example of 'unnecessary deaths', there are MANY more (murders etc.)...
3) Do some fucking HARD work...you know, things like infiltrating organizations the old fashioned way.
4) RESPECT the people's rights!
5) More to the government policy as a whole than the security agencies themselves but...GET THE FUCK OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S COUNTRY...stop messing with duly elected governments (this doesn't just apply to the US but the 'free/democratic countries as a whole') and undermining THEIR choices...
'You can have security or you can have freedom, never count on having both at once...'
I guess that's about enough though I doubt anyone that has any ability to implement this guidance will ever take any of this to heart...
Note that this probably refers to civilian encryption being accelerated by seven years. Most likely many sensitive US government databases, such as the personnel database, still have the password "admin", with no encryption at all.
Law enforcement doing national level work is a perfect example of how badly FUBARed the entire 'war on terror' is.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Technically it was the warrantless access by government that drove Snowden, which drove this.
And sloppy, logless, no-tracking warrantless access at that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The underlying reasons for terrorism and whatever other perverted activities initiated by humans are not addressed, not even is the ability to look at those and recognize what is going on is remotely present!
If one group says "A", the next group says no, it is "B", where the eliminating causes actions are "C".
This Mr. Clapper is right in the middle of the blame/manipulate/denial/stroking his own butt game.
And yeah, the idea that black holes could be gateways to other universes helps a lot...
The Federal government Alphabet Agencies are the cause for this.
Snowden just let the puppies that they were going to drown out of the bag.
Snowden still deserves a lot of gratitude, but let's be honest here. If the NSA/CIA/FBI weren't performing illegal/treasonous actions, Snowden wouldn't have had anything to blow the whistle on.
So let's get all the people that gave Snowden something to report, line them up for an Execution^H^hve Branch Party.
No one here seriously has a problem with law enforcement monitoring legitimate suspects for potential risk. We *DO* have a serious problem with wholesale monitoring of personal communications, absent probable cause, in the hope of catching someone, somewhere, doing something they don't like. The notion of 'general warrants' by the British authorities was the reason for their explicit ban in the Fourth Amendment. And the whole 'Founders didn't have to deal with terrorists' argument is put to bed by a quote from Madison to Jefferson: "It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." The majority of the disrupted terror plots since 9/11 have been accomplished by old-school boots-on-ground detective work, not by signals intelligence. There is no indication that plotters like the Boston Marathon bombers, etc, that *were* sadly successful had used any crypto in their communications. The 'lone wolf' nutcase is by nature hard to track. Most of the additional screening put in place since the attacks has been window dressing ("security theater") meant to make us feel safer, not particularly contributing to actual security. The solution to terrorism is NOT TO BE TERRORIZED, to deal with the nutjobs as just that, and refuse to turn ourselves into the sort of regulated police state they'd prefer to see.
and the DOJ is fair and just?
35 years for downloading information that is free in the civilized parts of the world.
there is no crime America can commit that is not supported by the ignorant masses 100%
What happened to tommy Chong was also Justice? it only cost you a few million.
Terrorists rarely, if ever, use encryption. Those were some of the big reveals from the analysis of past terrorist attacks...they used simple low-tech ways of planning and organizing. So, the government does not need to break encryption to keep us safe from terrorism...that isn't the tool they are using.
On the other hand, the government includes corrupt officials, who use their spying powers for their own personal (and illegal) profit, to our detriment. We must protect ourselves against that threat by the use of encryption.
The government is using your fear of terrorism to convince you into making yourself more vulnerable to crime. Don't let them.
If "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" were the only thing ESR had ever written, people might remember him more fondly. Crediting him with creating "open source software as we know it today" is a wonderful troll though.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
CORRECTION Your blanket, warrentless spying is the reason for the mass adoption of Encryption. If you had developed a program that was honest, forthcoming with clear and strong safeguards instead of running a clandestine black-ops style program then people would not have been so shocked and appalled and rushed to defend themselves and their communications from your greasy fingers
Is turning random characters into an a with a circumflex[1] a form of encryption?
[1] That thing you call a "chinaman hat", manishs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well considering that if one wanted to pull of a major terror attack it wouldn't require much thinking it seem that there are either very few terrorists or the ones that are here are so dumb I'm surprised they don't choke on their own tongues. Likely it is both and there are very few terrorists in the US and those that are here and the ones who are here are only slightly smarter than a jar of mayonnaise from what gets reported. If I wanted to pull off a major terror attack the simplest one I could think of would be to go and get 20 of my terrorist buddies, and each go and make a couple of bombs from smokeless powder. One goes in one of those suitcases that everyone knows is to large to fit into the overhead bin but no one says anything to you about because you're a dick head. The other goes in a larger backpack. Then on some nice busy travel day you and your 20 terrorist buddies go to 20 different large airports and detonate your suitcase + backpack bombs in the middle of the security lines at the same time. The easy thing here is anyone can go get into the line and you don't even have to buy a ticket. If you pick the winter time you could also have a suicide vest on under a coat for a little added punch and no one would be the wiser.
Time to offend someone
ie, why keep giving CLAPPER more air time and press time?
he's a traitor (by many definitions of the term) and he's definitely anti-freedom and I dare say, anti-american. he's a pox upon us.
why keep giving this idiot more and more air-time?
WE SHOULD BE IGNORING HIS BULLSHIT.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
What is it about digital communications that makes it any different from written communications?
We all use the United States Postal Service to send letters, bills, renumeration for bills, etc., and none of it is subject to Government snooping. What gives them the legal right to snoop electronic communications?
Answer: nothing. There is no legal difference between me encrypting an email and sending it, and me encoding a piece of written correspondence with a one-time pad and putting a stamp on it. The Government cannot and should not be able to do jack shit about it without a proper legal warrant, approved by a sitting judge.
Absent that warrant, Director Clapper can go fist himself. And if he has a problem with that, he can review the 1st and 4th amendments.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So far, they haven't provided any information leading to prevention of terrorism. They have provided plenty of red herrings.
All they have managed to do is bust a few drug trafficers, and that at the cost of undermining justice in the U.S. It's really not worth the cost.
Swartz broke an obscure law that did nothing but line the pockets of a few to the damage of many. Swartz probably did not even consider that such a thing was possible. Hell, when I read it I had a hard time imagining that this is actually illegal in a country like the US, until I realized that profit trumps any right you might think you have.
What happened afterwards can only be described as legal bullying.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I ask you this: I could use physical mail to send communication back and forth. Without a warrant, this communication cannot be read. I could also write this communication in a code, before I mail it. These facts are set. The legal protection of these papers is set. Any yet, some people believe that electronic communication should not be private. There are wonderful existing reasons why physical mail is protected. Why have we allowed governments to decide that simply because the format of communication has changed, its protection is no longer needed?
While I agree with where you want to end up, the problem is not the difference in treatment between a physical letter and an electronic one. Warrantless access in most cases is limited to metadata. Law enforcement does need a warrant to read your email (with the exception of the glaring "still on the server after 6 months" exclusion). And they haven't (yet) proposed to make it illegal to encrypt it with the software of your choice before sending. What they have done is proposed that US companies can not provide you with secure encryption. Which is kind of the difference between DRM to stop the casual user and thinking it will stop all piracy.
If I had to offer a compromise between what I want and what the feds want, I could live with this:
* Access to a device requires a warrant
* Any form of encryption backdoor requires physical access to the device
* Using the backdoor breaks the device or in some unambiguous way signals that the backdoor has been used.
I don't mind a backdoor existing in that limited scenario. My concern is what happens if backdoors can be applied remotely, non-destructively and without a warrant. That way takes us right back to mass surveillance. But if they first have to get my phone, and opening the backdoor either breaks the device or makes it clear that the backdoor is open, it becomes less likely to be abused.
I recognize that any backdoor represents a lessening of overall security. But I think the government doesn't care.
The shortened timeline has had "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists," he said
We are all glad it had a profound effect on your ability to collect against the other people, you know, us, the innocent that you used to lie about not collecting anything.
particularly against terrorists
How would you know? It's encrypted. Unless the communication was from a know terrorist (like one featured in a magazine), in which case not doing anything but complain about their encryption is plain and simple failing at your job.
Anyway, we know you collected the communications of the terrorists you let do the attack in Paris, it was not encrypted.
I could not begin to list all of the crazy things ESR has written, especially since CatB. Rationalwiki has a collection, and they do mention his non-batshit writing, but essentially everything in the last fifteen years has been a stain on his character. Honestly, even before that he was a little unhinged. He has his place in open source history, but the best that you can say about him these days is that no one listens to him.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
How can encryption have "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists" when they never found any terrorists to begin with?
We can only assume that the justification for bulk collection has little to do with terrorism.
I see the word "metadata" thrown around like it means something innocuous.
This makes me very disturbed.
Metadata, is data about data.
That can take a wide universe of forms. It could be something as simple as an access statistic, to a simple parity bit for each byte on media, down to full data protection correction codes to prevent corruption of the data. (say RLL encoding, or the full parity stripe set from a disk array-- or both together.)
All of those are metadata.
Some are more or less harmless as individual pieces of information-- such as the access log for a file.
Others allow you to completely reconstitute the data they describe, and basically are functionally the same as giving them the data.
Blandly just saying "it's just metadata!" is ignorant at best, and willfully disingenuous at worst.
Given that these agencies have some very intelligent/capable people working for them, I cannot attribute it to incompetence. I have to seriously consider blatant malice.
Given that these people are able to make a quantification of exactly how much Snowden accellerated encryption adoption, this means that they have been actively observing and metricising encryption adoption for some time, otherwise they would have no baseline from which to make such a detetmination. Since this is a requirement for their metric to be accurate, coupled with how angry they are about it changing ahead of their projections, it means that these people are clearly not ignorant, and are actively engaged in malicious intent to violate privacy, and to stay ahead of advancements that would lock them out.
The "metadata" rhetoric came straight out of one of these agencies. I know what forms metadata can take, and it is not all just benign metrics data. What kinds of metadata do they collect, and how do they use it?
Do they use it to reconstitute messages of people they do not have warrants for?
If so, they are violating the right of privacy and security of papers and posessions of the people they are collecting metadata on.
"Just metadata!" is not justification for looking aside. There IS something to see there citizen, do NOT just move along.
See for instance: This bit of cleverness.
The feds want to know about the contents of my voicemail mailbox. They dont have a warrant, and have been given absurd power to demand "metadata" without a warrant.
They can thus demand:
Information about the file format used by voice messaging system.
The dates and times of the messages.
The disk parity data for the files implicated, and the data stored in the block inode (whatever filesystem this.) which gives what blocks were written, and in what order-- along with total file size, and some other useful tidbits, like parity data, and if compression was used, the entries of the dictionary and how well each block was compressed.
With this information, the possible solution space for reconstruction is narrowed down from the total permutation of a file of n length, to one of n length which follows the conventions and behaviors of that file format, with data comprised of atoms contained in the dictionary, further constrained by internal granularity structure imposed by how well compressed each block was, and then finally on each byte, with even-odd parity or disk-stripe parity.
The resulting reduced solution space takes a previously insurmountable problem, and renders it into a "computationally expensive, but reasonably possible" one.
The more useful pieces of metadata they can bring against it, the greater their odds of successfully reconstructing the data they want without needing a warrant.
No. I will not accept "it's just metadata!" as an excuse.
They need a warrant for metadata as well, as far as I am concerned.
Terrorism cannot be stopped. That is the whole reason why people are doing it. Even the most repressive regimes in history had terrorism. You can reduce it by not pissing off so many people, e.g. by not killing a lot of innocent bystanders with drones, but that is it. You can to an inordinate amount of damage trying to stop terrorism or by pretending to be trying to.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Snowden stopped the wholesale abrogation of civil rights, seven years sooner than the spies would like?
Give that man the Medal of Freedom, HE earned it!
No, ISIS and AQ were deeply in bed with the encryption movement long ago.
Now it's ordinary U.S. citizens, saving their rights against unreasonable search in defiance of criminal 3 lettered agencies of repression.
Good for you Snowden!
I don't known if it's the proper word here: smells sensationalism (just saying...)
James Clapper said. The shortened timeline has had "a profound effect on our ability to collect, particularly against terrorists,"
Huh? What?
Is it "terrorists" that are the primary users of encryption?
Dear Jimmy Clap: "[Citation Needed]"
An obscure law? The dude broke into a closet and wrote customized software to make copies of things he was not authorized to copy and give them to other people who were not authorized to view them and, in the process, caused major issues to two different networks of computers. This is not the act of some petty offender who has broken an obscure law and then been hammered for it. Hell, I think they offered him something like six months?
To even mention him, in connection with Snowden, is to do Snowden a disservice. One's a common criminal and the other one is accepting the consequences of his actions. What's that? Well, the consequences are that he's a wanted man and now has to live in *RUSSIA* for the rest of his life and only so long as he is politically useful. His life and freedom hang on a thread - he's got the Sword of Damocles hanging above him and, surely, ulcers the size of lamprey mouths.
One's an attention whoring coward and the other as close to a hero as you can get without actually getting the title.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I am all for encryption but I would like to point out the flaw in this argument. Gun can take lives while encryption cannot.
Sounds like the oligarchs weakened the US, and I doubt any of them are feminists. Certainly the Koch brothers aren't, neither is Trump.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
If three years ago their prediction for encryption use in seven years exists today, then it's only accelerated by four years.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the state security apparatus expends most of their efforts spying on their own people, under the bogus pretext of protecting us from the 'terrorists'.
Get them out of 'their' country.
Sorry that wasn't so obvious.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I completely agree that metadata is 99% as dangerous as actual data, but my reply was limited to the current state, where they are legally distinct from one another.
with his other criminal buddies.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism
There is a difference, though. Given a warrant, LEOs can open your mail. Even with a warrant, LEOs can't break strong encryption with decent key management. I'm against banning strong encryption for several reasons, but it does carry its own issues.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
To make this point, I simply keep pointing out that the term "metadata" contains the word "data" and therefore metadata is data. To which, there is no logical reply except agreement.
And the word "women" includes the word "men", so therefore women are men?
One crucial distinction between the content and the usual metadata - who you called and for how long for instance, is that it really can't be encrypted. The network needs to know who you are calling so they can connect you. It needs to know where you are so it can route the call to the correct cell tower. And for billing purposes it will keep track of how long the call lasts. Even it there are technical solutions to that, there is no incentive for the network operator to pursue them. But content can be encrypted in a way that doesn't interfere with network operations, in a fashion analogous to the fact that the postal service doesn't need to know what is inside the letter in order to deliver it.
Yeah, they can open the mail, but if the message inside is encrypted with a one-time pad (as I mentioned) they're still fucked and unable to decrypt it.
I ask again, why is it different if it's digital?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The difference is that, in the case of the post office, the LEOs can see what I sent, but that isn't the case with strong encryption. Practically, the difference is between security the user has to work for and security the user doesn't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes