Without Encryption, Everything Stops, Says Snowden (thehill.com)

An anonymous reader writes about Snowden's appearance on a debate with CNN's Fareed Zakaria: Edward Snowden defended the importance of encryption, calling it the "backbone of computer security." He said, "Encryption saves lives. Encryption protects property. Without it, our economy stops. Our government stops. Everything stops. Our intelligence agencies say computer security is a bigger problem than terrorism, than crime, than anything else," he noted. "[...] Lawful access to any device or communication cannot be provided to anybody without fatally compromising the security of everybody."

Comments

Re:Exaggerate Much?

[rsborg]

A little OTT me thinks

Explain to me how the digital economy works if encryption is broken wide open so that even a script kiddie can break public key encryption?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

From wikipedia:

Currently used popular public-key encryption and signature schemes (e.g., RSA and ElGamal) can be broken by quantum adversaries.